STOP THE SCAMMERS

[liquidom0092]

For God's sake, I can't be the only person getting 4 to 5 invites mixed in with the real ones every day. Some are very easy, WhatsApp = Scam easy enough, but when you waste time responding to all these scammers it's really hard to keep wanting to accept invites for work due to the overwhelming majority being scams.

Please Upwork, it should be very easy to make sure potential scammers aren't putting WhatsApp in their job description or violating the terms of service in another way. I thought the goal was freelancer and client retention? I'm proud to be a freelancer on Upwork, but it's getting muddy out there, nows is the chance to show that you care about those making the company money.

I do my due diligence and flag them when I see them. That's not good enough.

[nyonomega0]

Don't expect a company that labels scam jobs postings as "Interesting Jobs" to do anything about them.

[liquidom0092]

A perfect example from today (2 scammers already): I followed through just so I can show screenshots for Upwork.

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I hope Upwork doesn't flag me for trolling them!

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Ps. I hired myself!

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[cleodivi]

Sooo fed up with this now. Literally 99% of translation jobs are scams. It's so hard to find a normal job now! I used to flag them but it's just too much work now. Any ideas of where else to look for freelancing translation work? 

[liquidom0092]

There are tons of sites that are strictly for translation work.

[renata101]

Hi Cleo,

This is a total bandaid solution, but I wrote some instructions to help people filter for jobs with WhatsApp and Telegram contact info. This won't filter for all scam jobs, but it might be good for a start.

https://community.upwork.com/t5/New-to-Upwork/Filtering-Scam-Posts-How-to-use-the-Upwork-Advanced-Se...

[gaudsuraj]

So true, these EASY Company and EASY platform posts are nothing but a scam, offering $1000 to $5000 per week for data entry or translation job, same goes for people who put the simple job of listing something on the marketplace and offering payment of fulltime. I don't know why Upwork allowing them to put whatsapp number. They are posting too frequantly. Not sure how these posting are coming from different different company.

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[00137e0a]

They will work faster to delete your screenshots than to delete these job posts. 

[liquidom0092]

They did that fast! The conversation went on for a little while longer until they inevitably asked for my bank information, you know to deliver a check to my footstep tomorrow! Thought about giving them the address to Upwork's headquarters or maybe the white house in the US... Then again I'd be channeling the power of the troll and no better than them, so I just kept working,,, Next time it happens I'll just ignore the problem! I Hope Upwork doesn't blacklist my profile to get any further job invites... One in every 5 or 6 is a real person!

[NikolaS]

Hi Suraj,

Thank you for reaching out to us and bringing this to our attention. I shared your report with our team for further review and appropriate action will be taken as per our internal processes. 

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.

[renata101]

Hi Nikola,

I found some more.
https://www.upwork.com/nx/jobs/search/?q=%22We%20have%20multiple%20apps%20and%20we%20are%20looking%2...

[pgiambalvo]

Me too!

https://www.upwork.com/nx/jobs/search/?q=whatsapp&sort=recency&user_location_match=1

[AveryO]

Thanks, Renata and Peter!

I have forwarded it to the team for their review and action.

[pgiambalvo]

Please read what the team is doing about the problem and then notice that the number of scams and spam is not decreasing at all, and even seem to be increasing and even being more obvious to spot.

[pradopablo502]

Hi Tom, Nikola, and everyone else reading this!

I have noticed the marked increase in spam/scam postings too, in both of my fields, web development and translation. Literally about 80% or more of the posts are scams (and very clearly scams, being payment unverified and with a telegram or whatsapp link).

I already contacted Upwork support directly, but they still haven't done anything about it...

I have a suggestion though: if you have noticed or been affected by this increase in spam (now it's time-consuming to find the real posts), please contact support about this issue. Maybe after seeing many requests (hopefully we can get thousands of these) they will finally do something about it!

Thanks!

[pgiambalvo]

We, well many of us, I can't speak for everyone and would never presume to, have been reporting them for months to no avail. The fact that 80% or more of the posts in your feed are still scams show that our requests are not making them decrease.