Scam Proofread Posts

[pgiambalvo]

Same proofreading (and various ghostwriting, copywriting, remote writer, work from home, content writer, social media writer, editing) scam posts over and over, more than 30 per day over the past 2 months. I applied to one and almost immediately got this response: "Alright peter in regards to your attribute the interview is through whats app or telegram and its a chat to chat interview . do you have any of the app installed to proceed with your interview ."

I replied and said "No, that is not allowed.” And then I flagged it as inappropriate. Other freelancers, please beware of these rampant scams and spread the word to help keep us protected because 40 minutes later, the job was still active and the “Activity on this job” showed this:

Proposals:

 5 to 10

 Last viewed by client:

 4 minutes ago

 Interviewing: 7

 Invites sent: 4

 Unanswered invites: 4

It has now been removed by Upwork, so I thank them for their fairly prompt action.

[bundie702]

You're a good person to warn people. It'll be wonderful if it helps even one person. Sadly, many freelancers don't  come onto these boards until after they've been fleeced...

[pgiambalvo]

Thanks, Bettye. I do hope it helps. Sad to see 10-20 people still applying to all these day after day before they're removed..

[pgiambalvo]

Ok, guys, this is now getting nuts. I’ve been on Upwork for years and have never seen anything close to these amounts of scam and spam posts. I don’t know what’s changed, but they are being reposted repeatedly like every 15 minutes, all day, every day, and they all show that they are a “new” client with no history.

[joansands]

It is an enormous problem. I see these posts every day and try to flag them - but sometimes I make a proposal when the post looks OK - but then I get a response asking for an interview outside of Upwork. Then I flag the post - but it is all taking such a lot of time to review all these posts with so many turning out to be scams. It is such a waste of my time.

[pgiambalvo]

Agreed. I wish that UW would do more to prevent them from being posted and that all freelancers would read the ToS to avoid being scammed since they are so prevalent.

[joansands]

I would think there would be a way to have some kind of algorithm that would keep these scammers off of Upwork.

[pgiambalvo]

Yeah, you'd think so. But from what I've been told, UW is doing all they can and is constantly improving the process. But seeing as how such a vast number of scam posts are present despite UW's best efforts, freelancers need to read and follow the ToS to protect themselves when UW can't.