🐈
» Forums » Freelancers » Re: SPAM Job Postings
Page options
bridge_oh
Community Member

SPAM Job Postings

Is anyone else noticing the overwhelming amount of SPAM jobs being posted to Upwork recently? I see dozens posted daily and the telltale giveaways are 1) the hourly rate is abnormally high and 2) there's almost always a phone number/email address to submit a resume through instead of going through Upwork. 

 

What is Upwork doing to weed out these SPAM posts? Certainly there are filters, moderators, etc.? Also wondering why these posts continue to stay up when they are clearly SPAM?

 

As a freelancer, I want to be reading and applying to legitmate jobs, however, I spent a lot of time now having to weed through all the SPAM posts. 

 

What is Upwork doing to handle these posts? I've noticed it in the past few months and prior to that rarely saw SPAM job posts so believe a change was done somewhere that is now allowing them to get through. 

34 REPLIES 34
lalla59
Community Member

You will find many threads about this problem, Bridget... But nothing happens, no news from Upwork! ☹️👎

6125ff0c
Community Member

I agree, Bridget.  It's getting to the point at which it's very difficult to actually find the legit jobs to apply to.  I have been marking the scam jobs consistently but receive no indication that anyone is doing anything about it.  

I've given up flagging. It takes up too much of my time and there's no apparent benefit.

 

If Upwork wants to pay me my standard hourly rate to flag SPAM posts instead of my freelance work, then I'll do it. Why do Upwork's job for free?

6125ff0c
Community Member

I just listed most recent jobs and out of 10 jobs listed, only one was legit.

NOT REFERRING to Upwork, but making a general observation:

 

Any site where 9 out of 10 listings are spam is essentially dead.

 

Such numbers mean that the site administrators have given up and the community has moved on.

 

If I was looking for an apartment to rent and I was on a site where 9 out of 10 listings were spam, I would move on and use another site.

 

If I was reading news articles and in the comments section, 9 out of 10 comments were spam, I may still read the article, but I would not read or participate on the comments section.

 

If I was shopping at a grocery store and 9 out of 10 cans of products on the aisle had been opened and was partially eaten or emptied or was otherwise contaminated, I would not shop there.

Referring to Upwork and other freelance platforms:

 

re: "If I was looking for an apartment to rent and I was on a site where 9 out of 10 listings were spam, I would move on and use another site."

 

I would move on and use other sites as well, but what if all other sites turned out to be much worse than the one I moved on from?

 

Well, that would indicate that all apartment sites have very low standards.

 


Sushant B wrote:

Referring to Upwork and other freelance platforms:

...but what if all other sites turned out to be much worse than the one I moved on from?

 


This would also be a sign to go out and contact apartment complexes directly instead of working through a middle-man that takes money from both sides but doesn't provide value.

Upwork's competition isn't just other freelancing sites - it's also THE REAL WORLD. There are plenty of companies out there who prefer to hire/pay contractors and freelancers directly, and THAT is Upwork's biggest threat re: SPAM job postings.

Also NOT REFERRING to Upwork, but if I were a vendor, I would not sell my products in a store where the other 9 items on the shelf next to my 1 safe item were unsafe.


Peter G wrote:

but if I were a vendor, I would not sell my products in a store where the other 9 items on the shelf next to my 1 safe item were unsafe.


As a client, you don't SEE the other items so this is a moot point.

But if you were a prospective client, you might take a look through the job feed, just to get a feel for what goes on here. All those scams would look terrible and put some people off posting a job.

445c62e9
Community Member

They have alot to work on their product  , But unfortunatunate 80% 90 % scam are not acceptable

at the end community will move on new platforms

No job posting should have an email address or phone number or WhatsApp number to use to contact the client.

 

Hire some entry-level freelancers to monitor the incoming job posts and simply delete all job posts with that sort of contact information.

 

You don't even need to notify the "clients."

 

This would not require any re-engineering of Upwork software. Just hire or assign some people and give them access to the delete button.

On the messages page, didn't Upwork used to watch for email addresses and phone numbers and popup a warning about offsite communication?

Should be possible to add that to job posts and either warn about it or flag the post for review, i.e., quarantine it (without saying why) until a human can OK it.

Of course, the posters can get clever in how they represent the address, so it would only catch them for a while.

Yes they did, and yes it is.

"Hire some entry-level freelancers to monitor the incoming job posts and simply delete all job posts with that sort of contact information."

----------

Or re-assign some of the staff who monitor these boards and delete client identifying information to do it. It amazes me how they manage to stay on top of that but yet can't seem to do anything about the spam.

ericaandrews
Community Member

"What is Upwork doing to handle these posts? I've noticed it in the past few months and prior to that rarely saw SPAM job posts so believe a change was done somewhere that is now allowing them to get through. "

 

Nothing.

 

They do not care about inconvenience to freelancers, only inconvenience to clients.   They have an army of programmers on staff and have access to an army of even more through the freelancer profiles.  If they wanted to correct the problem, they would have done it by now.  They won't care until freelancers begin leaving (which has already started), causing clients to begin leaving: By then, it will be too late.

 

Until then, the site is experiencing a "race to the bottom" and is on a short-track to having a job board of the same low quality as Craig's List or something: That List ALSO allows any and everybody to 'post' anonymously with no identity verification, and you can see the result.  Eventually, it'll look like any other generic internet classifieds site overrun with spam, scams, and 'click bait' to adult web sites and computer viruses. 

 

 

Screen Shot 2022-03-29 at 8.23.25 AM.png

roberty1y
Community Member

But look on the bright side - you can boost your proposals for all you're worth. It might be the only legit job on the whole page, but at least you can make sure you're right there at the top of the list, even if you happen to be the most unsuitable and incompetent freelancer on the planet.

Hmm, I hadn't thought about it that way. That does make things a little brighter. Thanks!

briannordin
Community Member

I'm getting incredibly frustrated with Upwork's lack of response on this issue. I posted on this issue yesterday - a specific repeat/SPAM post with email contact info that appears over and over again.

 

My post was "Edited for Community Guidelines" within 2 hours. Apparently because I identified the potential client in my post. In the mean time, the same post appeared 7 more times in my feed in those 2 hours with no action. Glad to see that these boards are policed much more heavily than the actual job postings. 🙄

Complaints about this are all over social media, too, with nothing but generaic cut-and-paste responses from Upwork asking the freelancers to, 1) get eduacted to identify spam posts, and 2) report all spam posts. No comments about changes or new actions from Upwork's side.

If Upwork really wants to be the "work marketplace" it claims to be, this issue has to be addressed quickly and in full view of the freelancers that are the financial engine of Upwork.

bauerluiza
Community Member

Terrible indeed given the fact that we have all tried to get upwork to do something about it for a few weeks now.

Nothing has been done and as someone said here :why do we have to do their job in flagging the jobs and yet they are still not deleted. On the contrary, just getting stronger, so to say.

Unsafe working environment 

6f83a185
Community Member

True. Upwork used to be quite strict. I remember they used to take down many job posts containing any kind of contact details. But the support seems dead now. It's really sad that a great freelancing site is getting worse because of these spam projects. Its very hard to find a job and apply and if you do apply there are 50+ proposals in less than 5 minutes

mmcgrath_design
Community Member

It's ridiculous and moreover, they don't seem to care. Have flagged numerous times and I get a vague 'we're working hard to keep the platform a safe place, blah, blah, computer says no.' 

 

They're essentially being hacked in plain site and not even acknowledging it. I barely even bother looking for new jobs now as 8/9 out of 10 are just blatant spam. 

 

If they want to shoot themsleves in the face but not doing anything to address the issue, then so be it. With the world opening back up, a lot of decent (and profitable) freelancers will have a lot more options. If I was signing up now and saw the dross that's being served up, I'd delete my account straight away.  

karinskold
Community Member

I agree. It is very tiring. And I spend a lot of time trying to find any post with "verified payment clients".  Why is it allowed to post a job at all without having a verified payment option?

 

Some spammers do verify their payment, but one thing I've never seen is a history of them having paid anyone.

aps
Community Member

I am seeing spam job posting with email address for more than a month now, and they are still appearing in the same format. sad there is no one in upwork dev team to filter them out from list. 

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

 

aps
Community Member


For past 7 days, total 46 job posting. they are still on upwork!

 

**Edited for Community Guidelines** 

 

 

Hi Amjith,

 

Thank you for your report, I've forwarded this to the appropriate team for review.

 

~Andrea
Upwork
pgiambalvo
Community Member

They should be preventing these from appearing at all, and not waiting on us telling them about them. But like you said, even after we do and they are flagged over and over again, they still reappear.

efa8dda5
Community Member

Hello all, as this is my first post in the Community, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Caitlyn and I recently joined Upwork to lead Trust & Safety Operations. First, I want to acknowledge that these job posts are incredibly frustrating to see on the platform. Please know that while Trust & Safety has always monitored the marketplace for scam, we have further prioritized work to mitigate these bad actors on the platform as their activities have increased in recent months. We’ve committed incremental engineering resources to enhance detection and operational resources to increase our ability to remove their content. Please know that this remains a top priority for our teams.

Hi Caitlyn! 

Please fix this. This is getting very annoying.

Hi Caitlyn, I appreciate the acknowledgement of my intiial post ... even though I posted it almost a month ago. We appreciate any help on the matter since again, as freelancers, it's just a waste of our time and energy to have to weed through all the #spam posts and/or end up applying to them. Hoping we see some improvement pretty quickly as being able to find real and legitimate work as a freelancer is the whole premise behind Upwork. I hate to see what once was an awesome platform become degradated by all the spam posts. 

" I hate to see what once was an awesome platform become degradated by all the spam posts. "

----------

I'm sure that someone, somewhere, is aware of Upwork's fall from grace and is working at this moment to design a program that a) makes it difficult for spammers to swindle unsuspecting freelancers (and annoy those who are onto them with their endless posts) and b) does a more thorough job of protecting freelancers. The stage is ripe for another company to take over the #1 spot because Upwork seems to have lost control of the situation and their prestige right along with it.

matnikaudio
Community Member

I've learned to skim the news feed and have a bunch of filters to catch the obvious bad jobs (for example, any job that references or mentions it's for YouTube or TikTok - 10 times out of 10 it's garbage) and I appreciate it's pretty bad. 

 

The worst - or best - one today that I've seen and flagged up is someone looking to pay $3000 for someone to *marry them* for a visa. 

 

Yep, actual crimes now. And as someone who regularly checks multiple P2Ps, this isn't just an Upwork problem, it's happeneing everywhere that buyers aren't required to go through any sort of vetting or checking process. 

 

Latest Articles
Featured Topics
Learning Paths