Should I bother reporting scams, or nah?

[lysis10]

Every time I report a scam (free work or typical check scammer), nothing happens. I tell the reviewer to read my chat because I lead them on to keep talking to make sure it's a scammer.

Today, I have an offer from the crypto scammer. I haven't accepted it, cuz duh, but I'm wondering if I should just keep playing with this idiot scammer or would the person at trust and safety actually read the convo when I send it so that they can see this is an *obvious* scammer. Should I do it, or nah playing with them is more useful than reporting?

Check all that apply:

[  ] lol waste of time to report

[  ] trust and safety just ignores your reports so don't bother

[  ] just keep playing with the scammer cuz wasting their time is more useful than reporting

[lysis10]

ok so posting on the forum works.

Get **edited for Community Guidelines** too cuz that's his other Upwork profile that sent out the invites. He's separating profiles so when you ban the one with the offer, his invite profile isn't banned with it. You'll see in my chats they are related.

[lysis10]

ok, I see someone is reading my post. They dead. On to the next one...

[the-right-writer]

Don't play with scammers. At the least, it is a massive waste of your time and could lead to the unexpected. Report them and move on.

I understand that reporting and reporting and then nothing happens is extraordinarily frustrating. Unfortunately, it is the only tool we have to identify scams.

[pgiambalvo]

If you report them, they usually are taken down, but not quickly enough to stop many people from applying to them, even after they are reported. And then the same posts are often reposted again and again, even after haven been taken down. So whether or not you think it's a waste of time is up for you to decide.

[lysis10]

Not in my case or I wouldn't be posting on the forum obviously. They dead now though.

[lysis10]

Spoke too soon.

They sent me another offer. lmao This is why I lead them on. They keep coming back and I just pick them off cuz they too stupid to know that I'm messing with them.

[feed_my_eyes]

---

Jennifer M wrote:

[X] lol waste of time to report

[X] trust and safety just ignores your reports so don't bother

[X] just keep playing with the scammer cuz wasting their time is more useful than reporting

---

All of the above, I think. I saw one of those typing scams in my feed yesterday and decided to apply, because I didn't think it would be removed if I reported it. (There were no obvious ToS violations in the job post - well, apart from them promising to pay a lot of money for typing.) I told them that my typing speed is 90wpm (true), but they haven't even tried to send me their Telegram info. What gives? Do scammers only look at boosted proposals these days?

[lysis10]

lol they scam so many people on here. This guy took 2 days to get back to me from his invite, so scammers are busy! I knew it was a scam because he wanted to know the age of my apple ID and put it in the job description.

I just realized that there is no report button on the offer so I have no idea how to report it other than posting about it here. I feel like if I open a support ticket I'll get a canned reply about how hourly contracts work.

[AveryO]

Hi Jennifer, 

I couldn't locate this user you are referring to in your messages. Is it the same guy you mentioned in one of your replies? If so, the team has taken action against that client's account. Otherwise, you can send me a private message and I'll look into this for you. 

[lysis10]

Hi Avery,

Yes they took care of the two clients from earlier, but when this person got the accounts suspended, they sent me a direct offer under a different account. This is the scammer too. Read the message below. He talks about talking to me earlier and references the suspended account:

**edited for Community Guidelines**

I don't see any way to report an offer. There is no chat room because I can't accept the offer since I know it's fraud.

[AveryO]

Thank you for that! 

I'll look into this and will report it to the team so that they can review it further. 

[AveryO]

Hi Jennifer, 

I can confirm that actions have been taken against the client's account even before I could report it. If you access the offer in your account, you will see that it has already been removed. 

Thank you for flagging it here. 

[feed_my_eyes]

That's interesting - I thought that the scammers got back to people ASAP, because otherwise somebody would report them and their project would be removed. I guess there's no rush after all.