Solved: Scams in the job title now?

pgiambalvo · ‎04-04-2022

Just saw two IDENTICAL posts, listed one right after the other, asking people to invest in Bitcoin for them IN THE ACTUAL JOB TITLE. Then in the job description, Whatsapp and a phone number. I mean, come on, Upwork, you have to at least be able to block stuff like this. Please?

ericaandrews · ‎04-05-2022

As somebody whose been a software engineer for 24 years, I can promise you it is not "hard' to scan text to filter out junk - body or title. That type of capability has existed for decades. There are free, open source "plug and play" anti-spam software libraries everywhere they could easily use. It's not "hard". They just refuse to do it to fix the overall problem and have resigned themselves to simply taking down "individual" posts when they are reported.

Have you ever filled out a form on the web and tried to provide a fake email, fake address, or a fake phone number to protect your identity and have the form "refuse" to accept what you typed in? Well, if a form can tell if an address or phone number is REAL, that means it can detect the PRESENCE of an address or phone number in the field you typed in.

There are entire fields of IT expertise in AI and machine learning that develop technologies that do this exact type of work and much more advanced stuff. If we have smart phones that can read our e-mails and text messages to us, or compose e-mails and texts by us speaking to our phones, I can promise you writing a few lines of software code to 'spot' an e-mail address in the body or title of a job post is not a 'monumental task'. A college freshman or a high school student in an intro computer science class could do it. Detecting "patterns" and "sub strings" within texts and numbers is one of the first skills any programmer learns.

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roberty1y · ‎04-04-2022

It would be as hard to scan the job title as the body of text in the posting. The crazy thing is that by the time the job comes down someone will probably have bought $2,000 worth of bitcoin for them in the belief that they're being paid $3,000 or whatever to do so.

pgiambalvo · ‎04-05-2022

Hard? i saw them easily.

ericaandrews · ‎04-05-2022

As somebody whose been a software engineer for 24 years, I can promise you it is not "hard' to scan text to filter out junk - body or title. That type of capability has existed for decades. There are free, open source "plug and play" anti-spam software libraries everywhere they could easily use. It's not "hard". They just refuse to do it to fix the overall problem and have resigned themselves to simply taking down "individual" posts when they are reported.

Have you ever filled out a form on the web and tried to provide a fake email, fake address, or a fake phone number to protect your identity and have the form "refuse" to accept what you typed in? Well, if a form can tell if an address or phone number is REAL, that means it can detect the PRESENCE of an address or phone number in the field you typed in.

There are entire fields of IT expertise in AI and machine learning that develop technologies that do this exact type of work and much more advanced stuff. If we have smart phones that can read our e-mails and text messages to us, or compose e-mails and texts by us speaking to our phones, I can promise you writing a few lines of software code to 'spot' an e-mail address in the body or title of a job post is not a 'monumental task'. A college freshman or a high school student in an intro computer science class could do it. Detecting "patterns" and "sub strings" within texts and numbers is one of the first skills any programmer learns.

PradeepH · ‎04-04-2022

Hi Peter,

Thank you for reporting this. I will forward your report to the relevant team to review and take action on flagged job posts.

Thank you

Pradeep

pgiambalvo · ‎04-05-2022

Thanks Pradeep. Sorry all of you moderators have to keep being the middlemen and women in this onging mess. We know you're just the messengers.