Insulting responses from upwork 'Upwork Trust & Safety' department

[ottawadeveloper]

I find the upwork 'Upwork Trust & Safety' department to be anything but that!
Actually a pretty insulting responsed from them. My main point here is about feeling they have no respect for those that actually bring them money.
I have used upwork (and previous elance) for more than 10 years, and they have rated me as 'top rated plus'.
They have earned thousands of dollars in commisions from my work.

I reported an issue where freelancers had posted profiles that are copied from my profile, in august about 4 months ago.
At that time there were a few copies, today there are 17 'Muhammad' in pakistan with this plagerized content.
The response from 'Upwork Trust & Safety' is: Kindly be advised as well that actions are taken internally and they may not be visible on your end.
They then mark my case as resolved and lock up the request so i cannot reply.
Searches for my skills continue to find all these which is confusing to potential clients.

Clearly they are not taking any action as these profiles remain.
While that is annoying, the BS responses from 'Upwork Trust & Safety' paint a false and insulting picture which has not helped, but in fact made my annoyance much worse.
I have completely lost faith in upwork and dont think i will entertain new contracts here.

Just want people to know there is no point in reporting such issues, they clearly do not care and they give insulting responses.
I think the term 'gaslighting' perhaps is appropriate.
Onward to look at alternative platforms....

[kochubei_valeria]

HI Michael,

I’m sorry to hear you had a frustrating experience. It’s definitely not the team’s intention for their responses to come across as insulting. I see a member of the Trust & Safety team followed up on your support ticket. However, I’d also like to reiterate here that the Trust & Safety team reviews all user flags and takes action according to our policies and processes. We also have automated and manual processes for detecting accounts and content that violate our TOS.

I understand that it can be frustrating that the team does not share more information about actions they take against reported accounts. While we work towards being as transparent as possible in our communications, for privacy and security reasons we cannot share the details. For more information about the Trust & Safety Policy team and their work, please check out this article.

[colettelewis]

The term "frustrating" does not cover the fraudulent practice of so-called freelancers who steal profiles - worse that Upwork does not remove these people. The OP has a genuine complaint and it should be addressed by Uwork. He really does not need either tea and sympathy (or rudeness from CS) but some real action.  Profile stealing is unacceptable.  It is also against Upwork's ToS. 

[25005175]

If the concern is privacy/security of the users, whether fake or not, I do not see the potential harm in sending a message to the flagger that the account(s) in question were found to be in violation and removed. I also don't see any harm in sending a message to all users who have interacted with the account(s) in question that they were found to be in X or Y violation and consequently removed.

There is no violation of the user's privacy, as the profile is a public element (even when set to private).

There is no threat to the security of the user, as private information that is not already part of the profile is not disseminated.

In fact, sending these kinds of messages would actually boost morale among clients and authentic freelancers.

It would improve trust in the platform.

More trust = more clients.

More clients = more money.

[feed_my_eyes]

I completely agree, but it's pretty easy to see for yourself what steps Upwork has taken - or, not taken - privacy issues aside. All you have to do is check whether the freelancer's profile is still on Upwork - which it almost always is - and whether the stolen/plagiarised content has been removed - which it eventually will be, but it can take weeks or months. So, the steps that they take are evidently to tell the freelancer to remove the content in question, and that's it. No further repercussions. The freelancer can then just steal or plagiarise from somebody else. (I had that happen to me once - a freelancer stole my profile overview, Upwork made them change it, then I checked the profile again and the freelancer had stolen their entire overview from a different person. I couldn't report that, because Upwork's policy is that only the person who originated the content can report it.)

[ottawadeveloper]

Searching for some of my specialize qualifications, yesterday there were 17 faked copies of my qualifications, today there are 20. 3 pages worth.

But the good news is i am no longer available. I have marked my legitimate profile as not available.

The customers can now choose from any of the 20 fakes!

Statements from trust and safety alas do not give me any confidence.

I hope they get nice bonus for doing a good job of following policy - who cares if the policy is actually effective.

[feed_my_eyes]

I agree that it's absolutely infuriating. I do an occasional search myself, and always find a dozen or so freelancers who've copied my entire profile overview and stolen portfolio pieces from me; not just on Upwork, but on other freelancing websites as well. (Try doing a Google search and you'll be even more angry.) The most that Upwork will do - and it can take a month or longer before they even acknowledge your report - is tell the freelancer to stop doing it. I don't know why they don't ban such freelancers - they're obviously lying about their skills and are going to cheat clients and cause many to never hire on Upwork again - but I've given up trying to understand why Upwork wants to keep dishonest, incompetent freelancers on their website.

I think you'll find that it's quicker to message the freelancer yourself and tell them that you're going to report them to Upwork and/or do a DMCA takedown notice. Then you don't need to rely on Upwork's "trust and safety" team at all.

[ottawadeveloper]

So the main purpose of this post was to point out how insulting it is for the 'trust and safety' to repeatedly say the same words and promise they are working hard and we cannot see it. Meanwhile there are now 20 separate profiles of people named **Edited for Community Guidelines** containing text copied direct from my profile. Clearly these processes are not working and i find it insulting for them to talk to me like an**Edited for Community Guidelines** claiming they are doing something.

They ask me to flag fake profiles, but as quickly as they are deleted, new ones appear. They are easy to find but i am not going to spend my time flagging them all. I tried to flag 2 today, the ones earning money on what appear to be fake jobs. Got a message 'flagging is not available'.

I have disabled my profile so Trust and Safety can earn commisions from these 20 fakes earning $9/hr.

I just looked and some are actually earning money using text from my profile!. Hey cool one of them is showing earnings at $500/hr! base on a job that is posted for $50-70/hr. How can this possibly make sense.

And another is earning $150 on a contract now.

So even the accounting which helps give credence to these fake profiles is now very suspect.

And both indicate 'ID verified'.

I have lost all trust in the upwork organization. But at least i am earning 'badges' for posting here - yipee!

[feed_my_eyes]

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Michael C wrote:

I just looked and some are actually earning money using text from my profile!. Hey cool one of them is showing earnings at $500/hr! base on a job that is posted for $50-70/hr. How can this possibly make sense.

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They're probably doing a fake job for a fake client, then will claim payment protection from Upwork. A dishonest person is going to be dishonest in more than one way.

[25005175]

I had a similar thought. That $500/hr one reeks of chargeback scheme. And Upwork won't give them the money, and their account will get banned. Then they have to spend time to copy another account, fake credentials, etc.

[ottawadeveloper]

So this has been going on since august, 5 months. I checked today and there are 40 separate freelancers all using text from my profile. They are all in the same country, have almost the same name, and several have the same photo. UPWORK, tells me this is resolved and i need to have faith in the TOP SECRET policies and procedures that work behind the scenes. Meanwhile new fakes appear every day and the list grows. I HAVE LOST FAITH IN ANY CLAIMS FROM UPWORK TRUST AND SAFETY and after contracting for 10 years on this platform, thousands of commisions earned for upwork, have made my profile no  longer available for new work. It seems upwork is more supportive of fakes than legitimate developers. YOUR POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ARE THE ISSUE and telling me how hard you work on this is just an insult to me.

[lysis10]

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Michael C wrote:

So this has been going on since august, 5 months. I checked today and there are 40 separate freelancers all using text from my profile. They are all in the same country, have almost the same name, and several have the same photo. UPWORK, tells me this is resolved and i need to have faith in the TOP SECRET policies and procedures that work behind the scenes. Meanwhile new fakes appear every day and the list grows. I HAVE LOST FAITH IN ANY CLAIMS FROM UPWORK TRUST AND SAFETY and after contracting for 10 years on this platform, thousands of commisions earned for upwork, have made my profile no  longer available for new work. It seems upwork is more supportive of fakes than legitimate developers. YOUR POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ARE THE ISSUE and telling me how hard you work on this is just an insult to me.

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How frustrating. I would say that your profile got posted to some typical demographic Facebook group. There used to be a voice actor in Australia with some unique title "Your Aussie voice!" and people from probably the same place as your scourge profile thieves created dozens of accounts using his profile text. He eventually changed it but people reported it here all the time. I would say your profile is being used in the same way.

[ottawadeveloper]

I suspect it is one person or organization that is creating all these profiles, they are so similar. Not sure why upwork allows so many similar profiles to be created without any sort of check. I dont think that is it coming from a bunch of different people. Too much similarity and the photos keep repeating on multiple profiles. Occasionally some disappear and new ones appear, all very similar.

[lysis10]

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Michael C wrote:

I suspect it is one person or organization that is creating all these profiles, they are so similar. Not sure why upwork allows so many similar profiles to be created without any sort of check. I dont think that is it coming from a bunch of different people. Too much similarity and the photos keep repeating on multiple profiles. Occasionally some disappear and new ones appear, all very similar.

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It's likely some group of people or someone telling freelancers to copy your profile. They used to do this for payment to get freelancer profile approvals, but Upwork opened the floodgates. These people are usually behind on their info, so I wouldn't be surprised if they think Upwork is still filtering out garbage. They aren't anymore, so my guess is that someone is using your profile to sell accounts or account approvals or you got posted somewhere to some typical demographic group in some trashy coaching course. You'll never really know, and Upwork doesn't seem to care much. Only thing you can do is keep ranting on the forum. Like I said with the Aussie voice guy, he eventually changed his profile.

[ottawadeveloper]

so now over 6 months of fake copies of my profile. After many complaints to upwork support they deleted about 30 fakes, claimed to have improved checking for such profiles. For a while it was quiet. Now there are 31 profiles, all with the same name, text is obviously copied from mine with minor changes, profile photos are about 3 unique onesand all others they crop the photo slightly different but very obviously the same photo. I have been targetted for having successful profile. upwork does not care. Now they want more commision from me. having used upwork since 2011, and they have reaped heaps of commision. UPWORK IS NO LONGER WORTHWILE TO ME. SUPPORT DOES NOT CARE. They keep closing my reports and mark them as 'resolved'. I HAVE HIDDEN MY PROFILE MONTHS AGO AND GIVEN UP. WINDING DOWN WORK HERE. THE SCAMMERS WIN. LEGITIMATE LONG TERM 'TOP RATED PLUS' IS MEANINGLESS. good luck making commisions on fake contractors.

[AndreaG]

Hi Michael,

I'm sorry to hear this is happening again. I understand this is a frustrating experience for you. I went ahead and shared your report with the team so they can review it and take appropriate action against violations. 

[ottawadeveloper]

Alas it is wasted effort. there are now 5 pages of fakes, total 43 with same name. I is not worth more effort to waste time on finding business on upwork now. There are several support tickets and comments i have posted but staff doesnt care or read them.

[mwiggenhorn]

Michael, several freelancers have suggested networking with those frauds.  Contact them through the network thing-y and give them  24 hours to take down your copyrighted material.  And tell them you will flag them if it isn't removed from their profile. Seems to have worked for at least 2 freelancers that I know of.

[ottawadeveloper]

Well if it was one that might make sense. i have flagged many of these, but new ones are posted each day.

I dont think people get the idea that this is over 40 separate profiles, presumably posted with different accounts, and from the same person or organization.

I have no interest in spending my time hunting these down if upwork does not care about frauds and scams.

new profiles are posted, often new each day.

If i flag them, MAYBE someday, many days later upwork will remove the one i flag, but by then several new ones will appear. 

UPWORK JUST DOESNT CARE - or maybe this scammer is some sort of inside job. 

Very hard to explain the total lack of caring on the part of upwork.

It is intentional, somehow the same person creates many profiles. 

They are clearly scamers and to me contacting them seems risky and not fruitful.