Flagging Suspicious Job Posts

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To Freelancers,

Some “clients” come to UpWork only to exploit freelancers; and they usually ask freelancers to send them an email.  Those of us with some knowledge of information security will know what a malicious person can do with just an email address (even getting our bank details from our emails).  If that email has a weak password, it makes it even easier for exploitation.  Do your best to flag any suspicious job posts with contact information, instead of contacting them by email and opening yourself to some form of cyber-attack.

The flag button is highlighted below:

To UpWork,
I personally flag any posts with contact information any time I see them. Sometimes it takes up to 24 hours for the job post to be removed from the list of active jobs. These malicious people can harvest many emails within an hour of the job post; especially when the Job Details suggest that it won’t be a difficult one to execute. So, you can imagine what can happen in 24 hours, if the job is not removed early enough.  Is it possible to remove the job (or at least suspend the post for investigation) with the flagging event? I know that contact information in the job post could be just ignorance of the processes on UpWork, especially for new clients. It is nevertheless a violation; and so an immediate suspension of the job post after flagging will not be out of order.

Thank you

[NikolaS · Accepted solution]

Hi Ebenezer,

Thank you for reaching out to us and sharing your feedback and concerns. Our teams are working to address the situation around scam and spam jobs, including higher than usual volumes of scam posts, constantly changing methods of scam accounts and gaps in user education around Upwork TOS and safety.

Additionally, I assure you that we'll continue sharing users' feedback with the team and providing updates to the Community about team's initiatives.

Feel free to check an update in this post for more information about the team's efforts around addressing these issues.