Can Upwork Please do something about all of these Fake Job Posts

[mattyturn95]

I spend about 20 minutes a day filtering through 100's of Fake Job Posts/Scams all with a huge price set out and an email address for us to contact them privately.

I always mark/report the job but nothing seems to be done about it.

It really is frustrating and creates a negative image for UPWORK.

[pgregory_indigo]

Also noticed, it's really frustrating. IMHO it's a simple fix from Upwork, simply don't let anyone post a job if they don't have payment verification. Posting a job without payment verification is pointless anyway, as clients have to pay through Upwork, so why even bother allowing it? None of these scam jobs have payment verification, for obvious reasons, so banning non-verified posts would solve the problem in one fell swoop, with no negative consequences I can see.

[petra_r]

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Paul G wrote: simply don't let anyone post a job if they don't have payment verification.

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That is categorically NOT the solution.

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Paul G wrote: Posting a job without payment verification is pointless anyway, as clients have to pay through Upwork.

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It isn't "pointless", it allows genuine new clients to post a job post, which hopefully leads to great freelancers applying, which then leads to the new client wanting to hire someone and verifying their payment method then.

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Paul G wrote: None of these scam jobs have payment verification, for obvious reasons, so banning non-verified posts would solve the problem in one fell swoop.

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Wrong again. The most dangerous current scam which results in victims losing literally thousands of Dollars depends on the payment method being verified.

There is no point killing off all the scam- and spam-jobs and at the same time killing off most new business. That is not sustainable.

The solution is a mix of algorithm-based filtering and human review.

[pgregory_indigo]

I see, in that case, there should be some other verification process that clients have to go through before they are able to post jobs, freelancers have to be screened, why shouldn't clients?

Human review isn't working, I've reported at least 100 of these in the last 3 days, and I've not had any response from Upwork that the flag is even being looked at, let alone actioned, and I certainly haven't seen any reduction in the number of these annoying posts. 

I think we're talking about different scams here, as the ones I see are just a boilerplate job posting with one of a selection of gmail addresses included, very simple, and the goal is clearly to harvest email addresses from people who respond, not to actually scam freelancers out of payment, far less sophisticated, but just as annoying. With >50% of the jobs on my feed being these at the moment, it makes it very difficult, not to mention time-consuming, to actually see the real job posts. If I had any confidence that Upwork were responding to the flags, I'd be happy to keep flagging them, but I see nothing, it's like it just goes into the ether.

[pgiambalvo]

"Human review isn't working, I've reported at least 100 of these in the last 3 days, and I've not had any response from Upwork that the flag is even being looked at, let alone actioned, and I certainly haven't seen any reduction in the number of these annoying posts."

I also have seen no reduction in them despite our flagging.

[mwiggenhorn]

As I have said many times, in the past 12 years most of my clients have been "unverified" when they hired me.  I work exclusively for attorneys and they are not going to post a payment method on a website unless the website works for them and they find someone to hire.  I simply tell them I cannot start work until their payment method is verified, which it always is in less than an hour.