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jools1978
Community Member

Are the postings actually being reviewed?

I am just wondering why there are so many postings that are scams. Does anyone review these postings? Does anyone do checks on the people that are posting these jobs? Just last week I reported 10 or more posts because they are scams. Also, most of these postings have payment unverified! It's absolutely frustrating. Please do better with this! 

10 REPLIES 10
g_vasilevski
Retired Team Member
Retired Team Member

Hi Julianne,

 

Thank you for your feedback, I will share it with our team.
You can also reach out to us (Moderators) via PM at any time if you would like to report something. Thank you.

~ Goran
Upwork
roberty1y
Community Member


Julianne B wrote:

I am just wondering why there are so many postings that are scams. Does anyone review these postings? Does anyone do checks on the people that are posting these jobs? Just last week I reported 10 or more posts because they are scams. Also, most of these postings have payment unverified! It's absolutely frustrating. Please do better with this! 


 

I've said the same myself. But if Upwork had the staff numbers necessary for constant vigilance over the job postings, it would probably cost more to run the site. I think the best approach is to make sure freelancers are warned. Scammers aren't very inventive, and the same tricks keep reappearing, day after day. A few simple precautions would protect everyone.

martina_plaschka
Community Member


Julianne B wrote:

I am just wondering why there are so many postings that are scams. Does anyone review these postings? Does anyone do checks on the people that are posting these jobs? Just last week I reported 10 or more posts because they are scams. Also, most of these postings have payment unverified! It's absolutely frustrating. Please do better with this! 


I'm sure they have a keyword check on every job posting. Heck, they even have it here, sometimes I say something completely inoffensive, and the second I post it get's zapped with the edited for community guidelines line and people will think I said something really bad, and I didn't. 

Anyways, a typical job posting of a scammer will not contain any language that will pop up. They will look like regular job postings. The scam starts in the interview phase, especially when inexperienced (giving them the benefit of the doubt) newbies think nothing of talking outside of upwork before hire, but later come to complain in the forum. If they only honored the ToS, none of that would happen. 

So in short, scammers can create client accounts and job postings every day. I'm sure they do some sophisticated technical thingy to try to find them, but in the end, it's up to the individual freelancer to use his common sense and adhere to the rules he signed up for. 

So no, if you are asking if job postings are reviewed individually by a real person, I'm sure they are not. And lastly - being not payment verified is not a sign of a scammer at all, so don't throw that into the same bucket. 

There are rudimentary automated keyword-based checks of all job postings. These aren't perfect. There is no way for that process to be perfect.


Even if dedicated human employees checked every job posting by hand, there is no way for the process to be perfect. Because scammers intentionally craft their job postings to look as authentic as possible.

 

So most scams are only evident once contact has been made with a freelancer. There is no way to determine that most scam job postings are scams.

 

Detecting and reporting scam job postings is primarily the responsibiilty of freelancers.

Ok thank you for your feedback! Whenever I see payment unverified, I get worried. I will keep applying and hopefully have some luck on this site. 

I like to think of the scam situation as like walking around a big city. Some people are going to try to scam you, especially if you look new in town. If you keep your wits about you and pray attention to your instincts you'll be OK. As you become more experienced, you'll end up dealing with scammers less and less.

About unverified payment methods - don't let it put you off. But if you win a contract, make sure to ask the client to verify their payment method before you start work. It can feel a bit awkward but it's worth it.


Liz S wrote:
About unverified payment methods - don't let it put you off. But if you win a contract, make sure to ask the client to verify their payment method before you start work. It can feel a bit awkward but it's worth it.

That's a good example of a big city and new person in town, make a lot of sense.

 

Also, there is actually no need to request the client to verify the payment method. If the client wants to hire they will either have to fund the escrow or verify the payment method for the hourly contract.

 

A contract cannot start without verifying the payment method.

 

That is the reason I do not care too much about the payment method, and I have often had success with clients that are new to the platform and have unverified payment method, But one the contact is created their status is updated!

 


A contract cannot start without verifying the payment method.


I don't avoid clients with unverified payment methods either, but as far as I know, it is possible to start a contact when the client's payment method is unverified. It's just impossible for the freelancer to get paid.

 

https://community.upwork.com/t5/Freelancers/Creating-a-contract-with-unverified-payment-method/td-p/...

 

https://community.upwork.com/t5/New-to-Upwork/When-to-ask-client-to-verify-payment-method/td-p/34384...

 

 

roberty1y
Community Member

There must be some way of detecting pre-contract contact between clients and freelancers. Most scams start out with that.

tlbp
Community Member


Robert Y wrote:

There must be some way of detecting pre-contract contact between clients and freelancers. Most scams start out with that.


If technology or regulators were able to keep up with scammers' innovations, the world would have been free of fraud a long time ago. But...

 

Upwork has prohibited pre-contract contact. (Although, I admit that I dislike this rule because I find it inconvenient.)

 

They can't protect people who decide to break the rules because they are desperate for a gig and think that there's no harm in believing some stranger on the internet who tells them what they want to hear. 

 

When I first got started on Upwork, I didn't bother to read through all the rules and was naive enough to believe internet strangers. So I understand the impulse and t hat scammers are successful because they are skilled at their craft. Fortunately, I didn't get completely sucked into any of the scams. 

If Upwork were to do anything, I would suggest strengthening the "test" everyone has to take when registering for an account so that users are forced to learn about internet scams. 

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