Is UpWork a scam?

37085ff9 · ‎06-07-2023

UpWork has been nothing but a disappointment for me.

I had high hopes for this platform, but so far, it has been a waste of my time and money. Despite paying for connects and boosting proposals, I have yet to receive any profile views or job offers. It seems like the only thing UpWork cares about is taking my money and providing little to no value in return.

Moreover, the lack of transparency and communication on the platform is frustrating. I have had several proposals sit inactive for weeks, leaving me to wonder if the job ad is even real or if it's simply a bot. It's not only a waste of my time, but it's also a waste of my hard-earned connects. Charging 20+ connects for a single boosted proposal is not sustainable.

UpWork needs to make significant improvements to its platform and provide more value to freelancers who rely on it to find work. Otherwise, it will continue to be a frustrating and disappointing experience for freelancers like me.

battershall-ramo · ‎06-07-2023

It's not a scam. If you look at the profiles of Top Rated freelancers you can see that many of them have made tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Since the Connects and particularly the Bidding features were introduced this has declined markedly however, and it's really a terrible time to join Upwork as few people see it getting better in the foreseeable future.

iamghanshyam · ‎12-09-2023

I am making a lot less now... A LOT LESS!!!

bijujx0a · ‎06-07-2023

Upwork is not a sacm.But, many fake jobs are posted in upwork.

It is true that getting hired for a job in upwork not easy now a days.

celgins · ‎06-07-2023

Upwork, as an organization, is not a scam. But your observations and concerns regarding Connects, boosting, and the lack of profile views and job offers, is appropriate. Even Top-Rated and Top-Rated Plus freelancers are finding it difficult to get profile views and responses to their proposals these days.

Upwork needs to make a lot of improvements, but they might not be too keen on doing so if it requires the expenditure of too many resources.

fa0bed1a · ‎04-07-2024

I am messaging you because you have a lot to say that upwork isn't a scam, and rightfully so it may not be. BUT, think about the page like this. 10 million freelance on their site, and who knows how many businesses. But the truth is that for Upwork to get paid they need job postings. So they don't fix the issue with emails in job postings, thus allowing the scammers to pay them by posting jobs using scam monies received by the scammers. So I say they are not a business friendly to there freelancers and should he held accountable for their site. Thus fix the issues or be shut down. Harsh as this sounds they in terms of service hold no responsibility to their own site or scams taking place through their site.

c4e453ac · ‎06-07-2023

UW allows scam and fake jobs to proliferate on their platform, and blames new and unsuspecting freelancers if they get tangled up in any of these for "breaking ToS" (usually by leaving the platform, which the scammer invites the user to do, which in and of itself is a breach of ToS that invites someone else to breach ToS). The worst of it is - these scams can be prevented outright by UW. When you see a job showing an email address in the description, and inviting freelancers to apply by email, you have to wonder: "do UW think it's impossible to filter an email address in a job description?". They have more sophisticated filters on this very forum, but jobs descriptions? In 2023, they don't know how to filter email addresses and shady links. Remember, we're not allowed off the platform pre-contract, why is there an email address in a jobs description?

So...is UW a scam? Technically, no. Does UW allow the proliferation of scams to occur on their platform, when there are trivial technical solutions to prevent such scams occurring in the first place? Absolutely.

It seems UW just want activity on the platform: scam job gets posted, scam job receives 50+ applications, scam job gets flagged, scam job gets talked about in the forum, UW admins reply to said forum post, scam job is removed. All that heat and light when it could have been prevented being posted in the first place by some code. Why do that, when such scam jobs create so much activity and make the stats look good?

Someone might say I'm being unfair, but I've asked UW admins: why don't you prevent scam jobs being posted in the first place via scanning the title and jobs description, and the messages sent from "hirer" to freelancers ... for shady URLs, obfuscated URLs, email addresses, mentions of Skype, WhatsApp, Telegram? (remember, this is pre-contract messages, nobody allowed off-platform at that point). I never got a cogent answer as to WHY these are allowed. Are we to believe UW don't have the technical chops to prevent an email address or shady URL being in a string of text!? In 2023?! Come on...

celgins · ‎06-08-2023

When you see a job showing an email address in the description, and inviting freelancers to apply by email, you have to wonder: "do UW think it's impossible to filter an email address in a job description?". They have more sophisticated filters on this very forum, but jobs descriptions? In 2023, they don't know how to filter email addresses and shady links. Remember, we're not allowed off the platform pre-contract, why is there an email address in a jobs description?

I agree -- a simple pattern-matching script will detect email addresses in titles and job descriptions. My guess is this:

Upwork already employs detection/removal filters for job descriptions, but the filter does not work very well
Upwork does not use a detection/removal filter for job descriptions and have, what they believe, is a good reason for not using it.

I highly doubt it's incompetence; Upwork has smart engineers and developers on staff.

Similarly, freelancers often mention receiving .exe and other suspected malware as file attachments through the Messages interface. The .exe file extension, and several others, are unsupported by Upwork, and I have no idea why their filters fail to detect these file types. A lot of scammers will obfuscate files, but it still shouldn't be a monumental task to detect and stop the transmission of these files.

c4e453ac · ‎06-08-2023

I know UW devs can filter email addresses because they censor a list of words in this very forum. I mean, identifying an email address - whether naked or obfuscated - is utterly trivial via regex. Devs have been writing these two or three lines of codes since the 90s. It is not incompetence, though I sarcastically suggest it might be (I just wonder WHAT will make them address this, maybe shame?).

My only theory is that scam jobs create activity, and ANY activity that "makes the numbers go up" can't be touched. Heck, half the posts in this forum are about scam jobs that are trivial to block via a few lines of code. UW would rather have this "activity" than people say "UW is a ghost town" and a 90% drop in jobs postings.

The fact they are allowing .exe files to be attached in messages is staggering. The UW platform is a de facto malware/virus threat to unsuspecting freelancers.

test: **bleep**

^ As you can see, they know how to do the very basic thing of reading an input, and identifying a string within that input (I typed in Ess-Haitch-Ai-Tee if you're interested).

spectralua · ‎06-09-2023

You are right. Lot of jobs is great. Dont matter that it is not real jobs. FLs applying, connects wasting, all happy. 🙂

celgins · ‎06-09-2023

Yes--the filters in these forums work very well. I typed a few words in the past that I thought were innocuous, but the words were filtered by Upwork, and I had no idea why.

Allowing the proliferation of scam jobs to create activity that "makes the numbers go up" is an observation I've seen throughout these forums for a while. It would be highly unethical if true, but it's too difficult to prove since we are on the outside.

I'm more inclined to believe the failure to use better filters for the marketplace (not the forums) is due to the potential negative impact on their best-matching algorithms. I don't know how filtering spam could negatively affect their matching algorithms, but I can't think of any reason to not employ better filters.

c4e453ac · ‎06-09-2023

Clark S wrote:
I'm more inclined to believe the failure to use better filters for the marketplace (not the forums) is due to the potential negative impact on their best-matching algorithms. I don't know how filtering spam could negatively affect their matching algorithms, but I can't think of any reason to not employ better filters.

How hard is it to filter email addresses in the job description? Right now, I see one posted 4 hours ago in my feed that has an email address, telling everybody to send their applications to that email address. This isn't a lack of capability, but a deliberate choice on UW's part to allow this kind of thing. Put it this way: if it was a lack of capability on UW's part, who have they got employed here that can't filter email addresses from a description? Better still, prevent the job being posted - because by identifying an email address in the job description - the job posting as it stands is already violating the ToS. An ounce of prevention, and all of that.

With messaging pre-contact, what genuine hirer is going to post Telegram, WhatsApp, Skype details to candidates, knowing that inviting them off-platform pre-contract is a violation of the ToS ? And violating ToS is something old hands love to castigate brand new freelancers for doing when they accept said invites, but are strangely quiet about the initial ToS violation by the "hirer".

The icing on the cake is that they are not protecting freelancers from malware via allowing .exe files to be sent to them in the messaging.

Without jobs/"jobs" postings, there can be no activity on the platform. Everything starts with jobs/"jobs" postings. It doesn't matter if it's a job, or a "job" (scam and/or fake job). Imagine tackling scam and fake jobs with a few lines of code, and activity on the platform drops even 20%? That's not going to look good in the next shareholder meeting. And yet, it would be worth biting the bullet to do this: UPWK is at all-time-lows. Might as well just clean up the platform and be open about the amount of fake activity on it. The only way would surely be up?

It seems like this is a permanent policy of UW to do nothing. They only reply with "flag the job", as if manually flagging a job that has an email address in its job description is the only way to deal with it, because although they can censor words in this forum, they can't censor email addresses in job descriptions.

feed_my_eyes · ‎06-10-2023

Andrew L wrote:
With messaging pre-contact, what genuine hirer is going to post Telegram, WhatsApp, Skype details to candidates, knowing that inviting them off-platform pre-contract is a violation of the ToS ? And violating ToS is something old hands love to castigate brand new freelancers for doing when they accept said invites, but are strangely quiet about the initial ToS violation by the "hirer".

If a scammer ever shows up in the forum, I promise you that I'll give them a very thorough scolding about breaking Upwork's terms of service. I somehow don't think that they're big rule-followers, though.

Andrew L wrote:
The icing on the cake is that they are not protecting freelancers from malware via allowing .exe files to be sent to them in the messaging.

I could be wrong, but it sounds like malware files are being sent mainly via email, not attached to messages on Upwork. So again, that 'no contact' rule is pretty important and bears repeating to newbies. Who opens .exe files from a stranger anyway? That's been a common method of sending malware for decades now.

I agree that Upwork could be doing more, but really, people need to get smarter about protecting themselves as well. Upwork isn't the only place on the Internet where scammers lurk. The same people who are getting scammed here probably already have computers filled with viruses from downloading all kinds of stuff, and they must be the same ones who send payments to exiled princes who contact them via email. I don't know what the solution is for being hopelessly naive.

c4e453ac · ‎06-10-2023

I've been a developer for over 25 years. I can tell you: if you can protect your userbase with just a few lines of code, that's what you do. It's called efficiency. It's also a responsibility of the plaform owner to protect their userbase as much as they can. Do Twitter and Facebook and Instagram allow users to upload viruses/malware, and then when that happens, blame the people who received the viruses and clicked the link? NO. They do something that might blow your mind: they prevent the sending of viruses/malware in the first place. They lockdown particular filetypes that can be shared. You don't blame your userbase for something that you (the platform owner) can easily prevent with a few lines of code. I actually can't think of another plaform other than UW that allows the sending of malware/viruses from one user to another.

celgins · ‎06-10-2023

How hard is it to filter email addresses in the job description? Right now, I see one posted 4 hours ago in my feed that has an email address, telling everybody to send their applications to that email address. This isn't a lack of capability, but a deliberate choice on UW's part to allow this kind of thing.

We are essentially saying the same thing.

As someone who has written regex and pattern-matching scripts, I know--like you--how easy it is to filter email addresses from form fields, posts, messages, etc. It isn't a lack of capability of Upwork; rather, it appears to be a willful act to avoid a more effective filter.

I mentioned that I think it's due to the potential negative impact on their best-matching algorithms, but it could be--as you say--a desire to keep the jobs numbers inflated in their shareholder reports. There is no way for us to prove either scenario.

The problem is, Upwork filters some jobs from the platform without freelancer interaction. They also remove jobs upon notification of inappropriateness (i.e. flag as inappropriate). If Upwork wants to maintain high job numbers in its reports to shareholders, they should retain all spammy jobs--not just some. Unless it's "window-dressing" where Upwork says internally: "We will remove some spammy jobs to show the world we're working on it, but we won't remove them all because it makes our job numbers look good."

Regarding .exe. and other unsupported file extensions, and malware, Christine might be right. There is a good chance that these files are being sent mainly through email, and not through Upwork Messages. Filtering file extensions is equally as simple as filtering email addresses, so I would have to go back through a bunch of freelancer messages to see if this is the case.

We all know that many flagged jobs are never removed. But as a developer, you should consider this: we only know what we see. Upwork might be actively detecting and eliminating 70% of spammy jobs before they reach the marketplace, and what we are seeing is the remaining 30%. Could it ever be 90% filtration with only 10% spam in the marketplace? Or 100% filtered with 0% spam?

We all agree that it should be better than what it is, but we don't know what we don't know.

c4e453ac · ‎06-12-2023

I appreciate your post. I think you're being overly kind to UW here. To not filter email addreses (naked or obfusacted), to not filter Telegram, Skype, WhatsApp links (naked or obfuscated) is a deliberate decision, 100%. The question then is why are UW accepting such things? Again, the only thing I can think of is it would impact heavily on stats. UW can have 10,000 jobs posted a day and then they can be disingenuous and say "hmm, yes scam and fake jobs are a massive problem! It's such a big problem, that as much as 10% of our jobs are scams or fake!". And in reality, it could be 70%. Their 10% lie makes share/stake holders think "oh well, that means 9000 real jobs a day, and it's refreshing they are honest about scams and fake jobs". There's plenty of wiggle room when scams get recorded as "job posted", but then eventually removed after being flagged. Are they removed from the jobs stats they report? Who could know, right? We are left with the stark reality (you and I) that we know these jobs could easily be prevented from being posted in the first place.

fd1a3637 · ‎06-10-2023

I tried to send a .exe file to a client of mine just recently. The upwork messenger refused to accept it, so I had to zip it. I'm not sure what you all are talking about.

celgins · ‎06-11-2023

Thanks, Garrett. I believe the .exe and other unsupported file types are being sent outside of Upwork Messages.

I reviewed a few older posts where freelancers complained about receiving .exe files or other unsupported file types, and their posts were not clear about the origin of transmitted file. Along with your screenshot, this leads me to believe those freelancers were receiving messages outside of Upwork Messages.

spectralua · ‎06-11-2023

All of them said that shared emails and other contact info before. So with initial ToS violation all next steps dont matter, it is good for scammer.

hullstephen · ‎11-06-2023

all good points Andrew. And I've asked Upwork why they allow so many jobs to be posted that literally go nowhere. Of the 30 jobs I've applied to in the last month almost none have hired anybody. So 50+ freelancers use connects to apply for jobs but Upwork are very slack on closing those jobs. Surely it wouldn't be hard to automatically close jobs after a certain amount of time of inactivity. But that would requirte them returning the connects to us. I wonder why they don't want to do that?

601d72f2 · ‎02-17-2024

My concern and curiosity is if "Upwork" is making more money by allowing Scam jobs and non-closing jobs for people to spend their connects on than actual jobs.

"

tjmisny · ‎03-13-2024

I am certain this is true, DB.

tlsanders · ‎06-07-2023

There should not be any freelancers who rely on Upwork to find work. Every responsible business person should have multiple channels for connecting with new clients.

iamghanshyam · ‎12-09-2023

You're right! But criticizing them for their wrongs will cost you nothing.

37085ff9 · ‎06-08-2023

As a freelancer, I have been working hard to build a steady stream of clients and projects. While I have found success through various channels (mostly cold emails and retargeting old clients for referrals), I recently decided to give UpWork a try. I was drawn to the platform's potential to switch from a "Push" strategy to a "Pull" strategy of finding clients, allowing me to focus more on completing projects than finding new clients.

While I am still in the process of building my portfolio on UpWork, I can see the potential of this platform to grow my business. However, it's frustrating when I put so much time and effort into building a profile and writing proposals only not to receive a view from the potential client. And spending connects to do this only makes the matter even more upsetting.

Let's not forget that many competitive job ads require 20+ connects to be in the boosted range. And once the proposal has been submitted, my experience has been that it sits there for weeks without being opened or seen, leading me to believe the job ad is inactive without actually being closed out. It feels very scammy to me, and I suspect the platform is filled with fake ads/bots.

spectralua · ‎06-08-2023

It is true. You will study how to see fake jobs later. But you cannot avoid it at all. Upwork need your money for connects\boosts but not your skill to complete jobs.

I see an 99% clients already gone. So this 1% can give job to you. Before them will gone too.

miriam-ocampo · ‎06-08-2023

It is not a scam, but it is getting really hard to get new jobs, I have been here for four years and it's been several months since I can't get any new projects, I'm only getting contacted by previous customers. It is not a good option for new freelancers unless it's a category that is not crowded already.

2779bde0 · ‎06-08-2023

No, it isn't a scam. Look at the economic state of the world right now, especially the US. Interest ratse are high, and the cost of doing business is higher than it was a year or two ago. Look at car and food prices. Many companies have hiring freezes now, hence fewer jobs here.

Will this turn around? Eventually it will. Does it make getting jobs on this platform more difficult? Yes it does, People will fall out, as in any other type of economic swing.

The goal is to find the way to make the best of it for now, or go and do something else until the market comes back.

elisa_b · ‎06-09-2023

Upwork is definitely NOT a scam.

I would say it is a very scam-friendly platform, though.

harisfaisal1 · ‎06-11-2023

Yes it is.

hullstephen · ‎11-06-2023

I don't think Upwork is a scam but it's recently become almost unusable due to the issues you've mentioned. I've been a Top Rated Freelancer with 100% job success rate for over 3 years and until recently I've been able to regularly collaborate with clients on many diverse audio jobs, but in the last few months there seems to have been a big change. Perhaps the site is now saturated with freelancers but out of 30 of the last proposals I have written only 8 have actually been viewed by the client. And I know I've applied immediately so there's no reason why the client wouldn't view my proposal. All of the jobs I've applied for haven't hired anybody and the jobs are still showing available. It feels like bots are flooding the site with jobs that don't lead anywhere? The issue is that we have to pay with connects and although Upwork insist they try to get jobs closed and the connects returned to freelancers, in my experience this never happens. So we have to pay to submit proposals, we have to pay id=f we want to have a premium account, we have to pay to boost for jobs that don't go anywhere, we have to pay to have an "availability" badge, we have to pay to be promoted to clients, and we have to pay when we actually do a job. Certainly feels like Upwork are using us to generate revenue but don't provide a great service in return

d8e2411b · ‎12-09-2023

It is a scam. You pay them for credits for the "privilege" of applying to jobs. But if you don't want to get completely ignored you should make sure you pay them MORE via auction so you get to the top of the list. Just make sure you've also paid for the premium membershi(t) so you can see what price other people are offering to do the work for so you can undercut them by a few dollars. This website is a textbook example of predatory pay-to-play and pay-to-win practices. Bunch of useless, greedy animals.

k_pitman · ‎12-09-2023

Over the last year it does seem 100% like a scam. I've never bought more connects than I have lately and never had fewer jobs won too. It seems they're making more money off of me on connects now when it used to be the other way around. I've had very few jobs this year since starting in 2018. It used to be a lot easier to get jobs, partly due to there being more legit jobs that were paying well. Jobs are drying up and when one does pop up, everyone turns into vultures to jump in on the bidding! 🙂

Anonymous-User · ‎12-10-2023

Is UPWork a scam? Of course. Extorting money from freelancers via connectins. Here is an example:

I applied for a job advertisement. The customer didn't even look at the ad again for a month. Now the order has been closed without a message that this happened, but... the calls have not been returned to my account. The client did not hire anyone. Order inactive. And who made money from it? The old legal truth says clearly: the person who benefits from it is a criminal.

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

the-right-writer · ‎12-10-2023

Is UPWork a scam? Of course. Extorting money from freelancers via connectins. Here is an example:

You can't post identifiers in the forum, and I would not be making accusations using words like extortion. I hope you have more evidence. Just because you didn't get a job, doesn't mean the business is committing crimes.

Upwork, is, of course, not a scam. Upwork has serious issues, but the platform is not a scam, and millions of people would disagree. There are a lot of scams on the Upwork platform, but the platform is not a scam.

I applied for a job advertisement. The customer didn't even look at the ad again for a month. Now the order has been closed without a message that this happened, but... the calls have not been returned to my account. The client did not hire anyone. Order inactive

There are no guarantees in freelancing. You never know if or when a client may hire, and that's the way freelancing works. The client saw the responses and chose not to hire. Or they found a better freelancer elsewhere, or cheaper. Or... there are as many reasons as there are clients. You apply, and don't look back. Most freelancers will apply to more jobs than they receive.

Your profile is never going to get you a legitimate client. Scammers can see you haven't bothered to follow the rules or best practices. There are many millions of freelancers and designers, etc, with excellent skills and complete profiles. Ask yourself why would a client hire you with an incomplete profile?

If you want to be successful and not scammed, use the Academy (link at the top of the page) and read every Upwork resource on the platform. Learn the Terms of Service and the information in this link on scams. It can take highly-skilled freelancers dozens of proposals to get started here, and that's with a great profile and even better proposals.

And who made money from it? The old legal truth says clearly: the person who benefits from it is a criminal.

The person(s) (it's a company) that benefit are Upwork's shareholders. They've been waiting for a return for a while, and you need evidence before you toss around words like "criminal." While many agree Upwork has done some incredibly harmful things to the platform, the freelancers and the clients, they can do what they like under the law. Not getting a job, does not make Upwork some sort of criminal network.

Anonymous-User · ‎12-10-2023

Are you pretending or do you really not understand? I wrote clearly - UW charged connects for my offer and despite closing the offer without hiring anyone and without reviewing the offers, they did not return them - which is what they supposedly guarantee. That's cheating! I never wrote that I had a problem with not being hired. As a "farmer", I understand this. Your problem is that you don't see it.

the-right-writer · ‎12-10-2023

UW charged connects for my offer and despite closing the offer without hiring anyone and without reviewing the offers, they did not return them - which is what they supposedly guarantee.

You only get your connects returned if the client closes the job without hiring, or Upwork determines the job is a scam, and the freelancer did not break the Terms of Service. If Upwork closed the job, and you did everything correct, then yes, you should receive the connects in return. It's not cheating, it means there has not been enough time, or they make an error. Instead of talking about extortion and crime, the appropriate things to do is contact Upwork.

From your profile, you do have a problem with being hired, since you have no jobs. And as I have said before, with your current profile, all you will find is scams. But hey, it's your choice.

Also, you misunderstood my use of the word "farmer." It means people who use their profiles to get jobs, while using and abusing other freelancers who do the work, but receive little money, have no profile, and get paid very little.

Anonymous-User · ‎12-10-2023

And as I have said before, with your current profile, all you will find is

Show me! What is scams on my profile?

759e32fa · ‎12-10-2023

Hi Krzysztof,

Please know that Connects are only returned under these circumstances:

If a project is canceled by the client before a contract is made, Connects you used on that proposal will be returned. This does not apply to expired job posts.
If we remove a project’s post because we believe it violates our Terms of Service, Connects you used on that proposal will be returned.

Upon checking the job post, it looks like it didn't have any activity for more than a month hence it expired without hiring. This was not closed by the client so the Connects were not returned.

~ AJ

tjmisny · ‎02-17-2024

Expired job posts really should be a case where connects are refunded. So many clients are lazy and just don't close the posts out (they either hire nobody, or hire somebody off the platform in violation of the TOS) so why should freelancers have to pay for a client's low commitment?

Examples like this are why many people say that Upwork is a scam.