Fake Job Postings - 100% Solution Recommendation

[500bc793]

Hello,

I noticed a lot of fake job postings.
It's a little late for me to realize this. I lost a lot of connections before I figured it out.
I spent a lot of money out of pocket to buy these links.
Then I realized that 50% of the jobs are actually fake.
I saw that many jobs were posted multiple times in a day.
Dozens of applications are made, but not a single invitation is sent.
They're just traps made for people to spend their connections.

I have two guesses for this job;

Note: These opinions are solely my own. They're just guesses.

1- Other freelancers doing business in that category put these fake job postings themselves to destroy the competition.

2-Upwork system gives automatic fake job posting for freelancers to spend their links and buy new links.

I have a solution suggestion that we can solve this problem 100% with 3 small steps! - I hope it's taken into account.

1- In order for a customer to post a job, it should be mandatory to verify the payment method.
2- If the price of the job advertised is fixed, Upwork should withdraw that amount from this verified payment method. (Must keep it in its own pool)

3- If the person says that he will pay hourly;
By taking the average of the hourly payment interval entered, a minimum of 5 hours' wages should be withdrawn from the account and kept in the system pool.

(If the job takes less than 5 hours, the fee calculated on the contract should be paid to the freelancer and the remaining money should be returned to the customer.)

(If the job takes longer than 5 hours, it should be mandatory for the customer to deposit money into the system pool equal to the weekly amount.)

(If the client cancels the fixed price or hourly rate posting, the client must be paid and the freelancer must be reimbursed for the link)

With these 3 items, the customer and the freelancer are 100% secure and we can use a cleaner system.

[martina_plaschka]

See my reply in the message in italics:

I noticed a lot of fake job postings.
It's a little late for me to realize this. I lost a lot of connections before I figured it out.
I spent a lot of money out of pocket to buy these links.
Then I realized that 50% of the jobs are actually fake.
I saw that many jobs were posted multiple times in a day.
Dozens of applications are made, but not a single invitation is sent.
They're just traps made for people to spend their connections.

I have two guesses for this job;

Note: These opinions are solely my own. They're just guesses.

1- Other freelancers doing business in that category put these fake job postings themselves to destroy the competition. I doubt that very much. It would be a lot of work to drain millions of freelancers of their connects. 

2-Upwork system gives automatic fake job posting for freelancers to spend their links and buy new links. I doubt that very much, that would be fraud.

I have a solution suggestion that we can solve this problem 100% with 3 small steps! - I hope it's taken into account.

1- In order for a customer to post a job, it should be mandatory to verify the payment method. No, it's quite enough to verify when they hire, not necessary to do that before hire. 
2- If the price of the job advertised is fixed, Upwork should withdraw that amount from this verified payment method. (Must keep it in its own pool) Exactly as it works now. 

3- If the person says that he will pay hourly;
By taking the average of the hourly payment interval entered, a minimum of 5 hours' wages should be withdrawn from the account and kept in the system pool. No, I would hate to see a client having to pay more that he anticipates and then have to wait to get it refunded. 

(If the job takes less than 5 hours, the fee calculated on the contract should be paid to the freelancer and the remaining money should be returned to the customer.)

(If the job takes longer than 5 hours, it should be mandatory for the customer to deposit money into the system pool equal to the weekly amount.)

(If the client cancels the fixed price or hourly rate posting, the client must be paid and the freelancer must be reimbursed for the link)

With these 3 items, the customer and the freelancer are 100% secure and we can use a cleaner system.

---

[spectralua]

Your Solution already here, it is Escrow. As you can see, it is useless.

Connects you have wasted for jobs will be refunded asap as job deleted. You have flagged it?

[500bc793]

What solution is this? customers can submit jobs without verifying the payment method. Only if this is made mandatory many problems can be solved!

Jobs are not cancelled. I didn't get any of my links back! Nearly 150 of my connections are gone.

[spectralua]

Oh, you about connects, not about scam jobs. Yep, it will help.

Use "Flag" option for fake job. Upwork will check it then delete as rules violation. Connects returning for this (deleted as violation) jobs to all who spent it.

[pudingstudio]

---

Emre K wrote:

What solution is this? customers can submit jobs without verifying the payment method. Only if this is made mandatory many problems can be solved!

Jobs are not cancelled. I didn't get any of my links back! Nearly 150 of my connections are gone.

---

Which?

Client verifies payment upon hiring. What changes if clients were to be forced to do it before posting a job?

[tushar_nagose]

problem is at cost of connections. then @upwork : reduce the pricing for connections and keep 1 connect for 1 project. why to keep 6 and 4 and 8 connections for 1 project. 
I think, if upwork can reduce the pricing (or increase connects in packages) and change 1 connect for 1 project then dont nobody should have problem. Just like freelancer.com or other platforms. 
Upwork also want to get more money from client and freelancer.  I have also spend money a lot on upwork just to get connect and plus payment fees of project thats too much.! 

[feed_my_eyes]

---

Emre K wrote:

Hello,

I noticed a lot of fake job postings.
It's a little late for me to realize this. I lost a lot of connections before I figured it out.
I spent a lot of money out of pocket to buy these links.
Then I realized that 50% of the jobs are actually fake.
I saw that many jobs were posted multiple times in a day.
Dozens of applications are made, but not a single invitation is sent.
They're just traps made for people to spend their connections.

---

No, they're not. The multiple posts are made by scammers who will try to take you off the platform and steal your money. If you flag them and Upwork takes them down, then you get your connects back. Nobody cares about stealing your connects.

Other posts may have dozens of proposals with no hires because the job is no longer needed, or the client found a freelancer through another platform or a referral, or because the first few proposals that the client read were of such low quality that they decided not to use Upwork after all. You'll have to get used to the idea that most of the proposals you make will not result in you being hired, especially since you have hardly anything in your portfolio (you should fix that, if you want to have any chance of finding a real client).

As for the rest of your post, maybe you should learn more about how to use Upwork before you come up with ideas that either (a) are already how the platform works, or (b) have already been proposed and rejected many times.

If you don't want to see any posts from clients who have unverified payment methods, then simply use the advanced search function to filter them out. I make a lot of money from new clients and have never been scammed, so I'd like to keep making proposals to those jobs instead of scaring the clients away.

---

[lysis10]

Scammers use stolen CCs so this doesn't fix anything but run off real clients and give dumb dumbs a false sense of security. Look at the dude who just lost $6k. That card was verified and escrow deposited. Freelancers need to use their brains. Having a brain is a requirement, which eliminates like 95% of people on the platform it seems.