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petra_r
Community Member

Sooooo many "The Aussie Voice" freelancers from all over the world...

There are literally dozens of profiles, all exactly the same (apart from names, location, photo). All have the title "The Aussie Voice" and share the same overview (stolen from a top-rated New York-based freelancer) Most share an hourly rate of $ 35 and went to Harvard University between 2012 and 2016. They own micro-studio based in New York

 

 

Run a google search for the keywords The Aussie Voice Upwork

 

Just found one who even has a Rising Talent Badge...

 

120 REPLIES 120


Valeria K wrote:

Hi All,

 

Our teams are aware and are working on a permanent solution for this issue.


With all due respect Valeria, we are not buying this. Considering how long ago this has been brought to Upwork's attention and considering the flood entering through this breach, which is a critical one, it's hard to believe that Upwork is actually working on anything at all.

 

 

 

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"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless


Rene K wrote:

Valeria K wrote:

Hi All,

 

Our teams are aware and are working on a permanent solution for this issue.


With all due respect Valeria, we are not buying this. Considering how long ago this has been brought to Upwork's attention and considering the flood entering through this breach, which is a critical one, it's hard to believe that Upwork is actually working on anything at all.

 

 

 


But Rene ... they are working on things, important things. Like rockets, flames, shading-looking characters for locked-private profiles. Things like that. Important things

And I have just reported two new profiles on René's link. 

 

Upwork needs to establish some sort of partnership with Google. More and more freelancers will set their profiles to private (searchable only  on Upwork). More and more inappropriate profiles will be public on Google. If clients rely on Google, this could result in an arterial bleed for Upwork and for its loyal clients and its established freelancers.  

It looks like they're using some updated text lately.

The Aussie Voice

I pride myself on delivering files on time and on budget, plus my voiceover rates are friendly for small businesses and start-ups. You'll get extra fast (usually same day) delivery during Sydney business hours. Use my warm and friendly voice for your:

* radio commercial

* explainer video

* on hold messaging (with music)

* corporate narration

* eLearning project

* TV or YouTube commercials

* whiteboard or animated videos

* radio and TV imaging * podcast intro and outros

* phone greetings

* IVR (interactive voice response)

* VSL - video sales letters * Facebook videos * video game characters * and more!

That new text is stolen word for word from my profile (thanks Nichola for alerting me to this!) As an aussie voiceover artist on upwork. I had no idea this was going on until today.

I'm pretty shocked this was brought to upwork's attention in MAY and is still going on now - I know upwork is a big company, but surely an issue like this would have a higher priority than taking MONTHS to sort out?

 

Surely there has to be a way to address this.

 

In 2019 there HAS to be some kind of algorithm that can check plagiarism and flags profiles that register with a KNOWN issue (ie the words The Aussie Voice) for new profiles???

What gets me upset is the fact that most of the ones I reported are still on here. Some have been given the opportunity to change their profiles a bit but why should they be allowed to stay since they accessed the site by false pretenses? There should be a video verification PRIOR to allowing anyone on this site. Too many scam artists. The other thing that really is sickening is how they are now saying they are living either in America, Canada, or Europe with a time zone that doesn't even match those areas yet Upwork doesn't seem too bothered. I have flagged some multiple times. Seriously Upwork, what is going on? You say you are trying to handle things by charging for connects yet you are allowing anyone with a pulse on your site. Yeah, yeah, I know that thousands apply every day but only a few are accepted BUT look at the few you ARE accepting.

Hi Catherine, 

I wanted to check the profiles you reported, so that I can check these myself. If you have the time, please send them to me through a private message. 


~ Avery
Upwork
mtngigi
Community Member


Sue M wrote:

That new text is stolen word for word from my profile (thanks Nichola for alerting me to this!) As an aussie voiceover artist on upwork. I had no idea this was going on until today.

I'm pretty shocked this was brought to upwork's attention in MAY and is still going on now - I know upwork is a big company, but surely an issue like this would have a higher priority than taking MONTHS to sort out?

 

Surely there has to be a way to address this.

 

In 2019 there HAS to be some kind of algorithm that can check plagiarism and flags profiles that register with a KNOWN issue (ie the words The Aussie Voice) for new profiles???


You may be interested in this thread as well: the stuff I posted was of course edited, but you'll see that many of these people were being "tutored" by this one guy on YouTube.

 

https://community.upwork.com/t5/Freelancers/Sooooo-many-quot-The-Aussie-Voice-quot-freelancers-from-...

AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Renata, and Sue, 

I checked the accounts that have used the profile overview that you have noted, and can confirm that actions have been taken against these accounts.

 

Please know that we have flagged and followed up on your reports, and have shared this thread with the team for their reference. The team is taking action against these accounts, and we appreciate everyone who takes the time to report these here.


~ Avery
Upwork
reinierb
Community Member


Avery O wrote:

Hi Renata, and Sue, 

I checked the accounts that have used the profile overview that you have noted, and can confirm that actions have been taken against these accounts.

 

Please know that we have flagged and followed up on your reports, and have shared this thread with the team for their reference. The team is taking action against these accounts, and we appreciate everyone who takes the time to report these here.


What's the point? These people will just crawl back in through another loophole. Or maybe the same one that got them in in the first place. 

 

This fiasco reminds me of the Equifax affair, which happened because their head of security was a music teacher. 


 

They use the Aussie Voice trick to get in and then they change their overview to something else. What Upwork is doing is banning the accounts that are reported and whose overviews haven't been edited yet.

 

That's all Upwork is able to do. Their IT **Edited for Community Guidelines**, it always did and always will.

 

 

 

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"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless

I'm curious to know what it is about Australian voiceover artists that makes their profiles so good for getting accepted by Upwork. Is there such a shortage of Australian voiceover artists that the algorithm will accept them regardless of any suspicious signs?

Surely upwork could enact a manual check/confirmation for any new profiles that sign up with the skill of voice talent? It's not like there are hundreds of real voice talent freelancers signing up every week (especially Australian ones!!!) it is a pretty niche field.

 

Would be very quick to work out which profile were real and which ones aren't.


Sue M wrote:

Surely upwork could enact a manual check/confirmation for any new profiles that sign up with the skill of voice talent? It's not like there are hundreds of real voice talent freelancers signing up every week (especially Australian ones!!!) it is a pretty niche field.

 

Would be very quick to work out which profile were real and which ones aren't.


_______________________________

 

I think they rely on us to do that and even then. But on this issue, it is not just a flood of fake profiles but a tsunami. If Upwork does not find some way to stop it, it is going to seriously harm us all. 

 


Richard W wrote:

I'm curious to know what it is about Australian voiceover artists that makes their profiles so good for getting accepted by Upwork. Is there such a shortage of Australian voiceover artists that the algorithm will accept them regardless of any suspicious signs?


That seems to be exactly how it works - claiming to have a skill that's in short supply is the best (if not only) way to get accepted. But now that there are hundreds of Aussie voiceover artists on Upwork, you'd think that they would start rejecting new applicants?

 

Along with others who've posted here, I can't for the life of me understand what's so difficult about doing a search for these profiles and banning them. 

 


Christine A wrote:

Along with others who've posted here, I can't for the life of me understand what's so difficult about doing a search for these profiles and banning them. 


That would not help much. What we see is the mere tip of the iceberg: The ones dumb or disinterested enough to not change their details immediately after being accepted. This is only one of the tricks, there are others which have been reported again and again.

This one dumb and easily found by automated means - others, not so much.

 


Petra R wrote:

Christine A wrote:

Along with others who've posted here, I can't for the life of me understand what's so difficult about doing a search for these profiles and banning them. 


That would not help much. What we see is the mere tip of the iceberg: The ones dumb or disinterested enough to not change their details immediately after being accepted. This is only one of the tricks, there are others which have been reported again and again.

This one dumb and easily found by automated means - others, not so much.


It would be a good start if they even removed the "tip of the iceberg" fraudulent profiles. If the rest of us can easily find them, why can't Upwork? I just flagged another one myself after a 5-second search (and yes, it was an active profile that showed the "hire" button when I swiched to my client account).

 

maybe upwork should  change their signup procedures and do the same thing toptal does - manual approval. you sign up, you get an email from them that someone will be contacting you - then you have a skype interview and only then you're considered an applicant. the whole process can take up to 3 months...

of course, that will require hiring a few extra people - and upwork will rather rely on software - it's cheaper...

In their SEC fillings, if memory serves well, they speak about 10.000 applications per day. There is no way they can manually check each of them, this is why they have a filtering algorithm.

 

That being said, a manual validation process should take place after the automatic filter. And they should close the doors and open them only for short intervals when needed.

 

 

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"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless


Rene K wrote:

In their SEC fillings, if memory serves well, they speak about 10.000 applications per day. There is no way they can manually check each of them, this is why they have a filtering algorithm.

 

That being said, a manual validation process should take place after the automatic filter. And they should close the doors and open them only for short intervals when needed.


Or how about a $10 application fee? That would reduce the number of applicants and pay for extra Upwork staff members who could do some vetting. If they want clients to pay membership fees, then they should be trying to offer better-quality freelancers for them to choose from instead of letting unskilled scammers join the website.


Christine A wrote:

Rene K wrote:

In their SEC fillings, if memory serves well, they speak about 10.000 applications per day.


Or how about a $10 application fee? That would reduce the number of applicants and pay for extra Upwork staff members who could do some vetting.


Just close the door until the current mess is sorted.

A big sign nailed to the gate:

"Upwork is closed for new applications until further notice."

Then do housekeeping and remove all the inactive accounts (nothing happened for years) remove anything with a (really) low JSS, everything with a very low application to earnings ratio, all the 3 jobs at $ 20 a year ones and so on and so on, then take a long hard look at what is left and THEN decide if, and where, new freelancers can or should be admitted.

 

Petra, 1000 kudos.  Drastic action for sure but it needs to be done.  Clean up the inventory and then move on.  


Petra R wrote:


Just close the door until the current mess is sorted.

A big sign nailed to the gate:

"Upwork is closed for new applications until further notice."

Then do housekeeping and remove all the inactive accounts (nothing happened for years) remove anything with a (really) low JSS, everything with a very low application to earnings ratio, all the 3 jobs at $ 20 a year ones and so on and so on, then take a long hard look at what is left and THEN decide if, and where, new freelancers can or should be admitted.

 


This is a fantastic suggestion. Upwork is gonna to ignore it. Mainly because just like a lot of companies from the Silicon Valley, they don't care about what the people who use their services want, or even what is good for the company's own finances. They are confident that they know best and if investors are impressed by big listings, then big listings it is. Even if the weight of cr*p contained in the listings is pulling the company and all of us towards the bottom.

 

 

 

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"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless


Christine A wrote:

Rene K wrote:

In their SEC fillings, if memory serves well, they speak about 10.000 applications per day. There is no way they can manually check each of them, this is why they have a filtering algorithm.

 

That being said, a manual validation process should take place after the automatic filter. And they should close the doors and open them only for short intervals when needed.


Or how about a $10 application fee? That would reduce the number of applicants and pay for extra Upwork staff members who could do some vetting. If they want clients to pay membership fees, then they should be trying to offer better-quality freelancers for them to choose from instead of letting unskilled scammers join the website.


I think it would have to be something like this.  Can you imagine the OUTRAGE.

 

The problem with systematically elminating Aussie Voice or whatever trick they used is of course, as we have already seen in this thread, there are legitimate Aussie Voice actors (assuming she is actually one Smiley Tongue), how do they not get eliminated. 

 

I am way more sympathetic to the Upwork development team as a whole because I have been on that side and I can only guess that it is an nasty, unweildy beast.  Beyond that I know how these decisions get made and it is almost never by the people who implement them.  It is usually someone that reports to someone whose main interest is $ in, $ out.


Mark F wrote:

Christine A wrote:

Rene K wrote:

In their SEC fillings, if memory serves well, they speak about 10.000 applications per day. There is no way they can manually check each of them, this is why they have a filtering algorithm.

 

That being said, a manual validation process should take place after the automatic filter. And they should close the doors and open them only for short intervals when needed.


Or how about a $10 application fee? That would reduce the number of applicants and pay for extra Upwork staff members who could do some vetting. If they want clients to pay membership fees, then they should be trying to offer better-quality freelancers for them to choose from instead of letting unskilled scammers join the website.


I think it would have to be something like this.  Can you imagine the OUTRAGE.

 

The problem with systematically elminating Aussie Voice or whatever trick they used is of course, as we have already seen in this thread, there are legitimate Aussie Voice actors (assuming she is actually one Smiley Tongue), how do they not get eliminated. 

 


Why would it matter if people are outraged, since Upwork doesn't want more freelancers anyway? We already know that people are willing to pay for Upwork accounts, so why shouldn't Upwork themselves profit from this? Plus it would remove the incentive to create a new account just to get free connects (yes, people are doing this).

 

We can't even be sure that the "real" Aussie voice is the woman who posted earlier; the top "Aussie voice" search result on Google is a male who's made a lot of money on Upwork and has great reviews. (I suspect that Upwork won't want to ban him, even if he is a fake.)


Christine A wrote:

Mark F wrote:

The problem with systematically elminating Aussie Voice or whatever trick they used is of course, as we have already seen in this thread, there are legitimate Aussie Voice actors (assuming she is actually one Smiley Tongue), how do they not get eliminated. 

 


Why would it matter if people are outraged, since Upwork doesn't want more freelancers anyway? We already know that people are willing to pay for Upwork accounts, so why shouldn't Upwork themselves profit from this? Plus it would remove the incentive to create a new account just to get free connects (yes, people are doing this).

 

We can't even be sure that the "real" Aussie voice is the woman who posted earlier; the top "Aussie voice" search result on Google is a male who's made a lot of money on Upwork and has great reviews. (I suspect that Upwork won't want to ban him, even if he is a fake.)


I never claimed to be the REAL "aussie voice" that is a poor guy called Nick in Brooklyn, who I notice has changed his description, I am just an actual Australian voice actor who works on upwork, The scammers now seem to have changed their profile description to be a word for word copy of part of my profile description - rather than the micro studio description being used before. I flagged a number of them yesterday.

My point was that yes - there are real Aussie voice actors - but we are few and far between in the scheme of things - surely there can't be more than a handful a week joining the platform at the very most and I am very sure that if the genuine ones had to go through a vetting process, they wouldn't mind.

It wouldn't take much - those "Aussie voice" profiles could go under manual review (even those with the skill voice talent could be reviewed?) and the fake ones weeded out before they even hit the platform and the real ones processed.

How hard could it be for upworks system to flag those profiles created using known keywords or copied descriptions (ie "Aussie Voice") then manually check them?!?!?! I just don't get it. Honestly, it makes me wonder if Upwork don't want to or can't be bothered close the loophole... This has been going on for months!



Why would it matter if people are outraged, since Upwork doesn't want more freelancers anyway? We already know that people are willing to pay for Upwork accounts, so why shouldn't Upwork themselves profit from this? Plus it would remove the incentive to create a new account just to get free connects (yes, people are doing this).

It matters because I find outrage delicious.

And many more kudos to Petra's comment -

"Just close the door until the current mess is sorted.

A big sign nailed to the gate:

"Upwork is closed for new applications until further notice."

Then do housekeeping and remove all the inactive accounts (nothing happened for years) remove anything with a (really) low JSS, everything with a very low application to earnings ratio, all the 3 jobs at $ 20 a year ones and so on and so on, then take a long hard look at what is left and THEN decide if, and where, new freelancers can or should be admitted."

 

This should have been done a few years ago ... and is more important now than ever.

 

IF ever done, then implement the $10 application fee as Christine suggested.

And surely Upwork could demand a DMCA when people post damaging videos about how to scam the system? 


Nichola L wrote:

And surely Upwork could demand a DMCA when people post damaging videos about how to scam the system? 


I flagged it on You Tube, but it doesn't violate any of their community guidelines so I doubt that it'll be removed. But if anyone at Upwork is interested, the You Tube poster's full name, email address and domain URL are clearly visible at around the 1:15 minute mark in the video.


Christine A wrote:

Nichola L wrote:

And surely Upwork could demand a DMCA when people post damaging videos about how to scam the system? 


I flagged it on You Tube, but it doesn't violate any of their community guidelines so I doubt that it'll be removed.


That is not what DMCA notices are there for. It's not a copyright violation, "just" a "cheat the system" guide that exposes a clumsy selection process.

 

 

 


Nichola L wrote:

And surely Upwork could demand a DMCA when people post damaging videos about how to scam the system? 


Given the uproar about how badly Upwork's updated ToS were drafted, it seems very unlikley that a DMCA notice drafted by the same lawyers would ever succeed.  

 


Wendy C wrote:

And many more kudos to Petra's comment -

"Just close the door until the current mess is sorted.

A big sign nailed to the gate:

"Upwork is closed for new applications until further notice."

Then do housekeeping and remove all the inactive accounts (nothing happened for years) remove anything with a (really) low JSS, everything with a very low application to earnings ratio, all the 3 jobs at $ 20 a year ones and so on and so on, then take a long hard look at what is left and THEN decide if, and where, new freelancers can or should be admitted."

 

This should have been done a few years ago ... and is more important now than ever.

 

IF ever done, then implement the $10 application fee as Christine suggested.


I am glad they didn't because I wouldn't be here but I am sorry I didn't get the door closed and let all the flies in.

 

I would pay it for sure.  

 

 

So, the Aussie Voice phenomena has become a burr under my saddle.  I have been flagging an average of 4-6 every day.  And everday there are new ones.  One today even misspelled Harvard...

LOL ....

 

Mods, it is waaaaay past time to kick this to the right dept. and take action.

 

How much more shaming does U. need to put an end to this?


Wendy C wrote:

LOL ....

 

Mods, it is waaaaay past time to kick this to the right dept. and take action.

 

How much more shaming does U. need to put an end to this?




Wendy C wrote:

LOL ....

 

Mods, it is waaaaay past time to kick this to the right dept. and take action.

 

How much more shaming does U. need to put an end to this?


Since it's still happening, I'm guessing quite a bit.  Smiley Wink

mtngigi
Community Member

I just flagged a profile where "Aussie" is spelled "Aussi" (without the e). Wonder if this is a new way to avoid raising flags.

 

Photo is that of an Indian actress.

versailles
Community Member


Goran V wrote:

 

Trust and Safety is our top priority, we have security and verification processes in place to identify this type of behavior.


 

Oh you mean this? 😀

 

https://www.upwork.com/ab/profiles/search/?q=%22As%20one%20of%20the%20top%20voice%20over%20and%20aud...

 

This has been going on for months, if not more, there was lots of fuss about it on Upwork and the hole in your system is still here. People are able to getting in and being auto approved just by copy/pasting the profile of some legit freelancer.

 

 

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"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless

Maybe they're having a hard time because they're hiring developers from this site and it's filled with frauds.  Just an idea.

versailles
Community Member

This week, The Aussie Voices of Upwork Association gives you:

 

https://www.upwork.com/ab/profiles/search/?q=%22As%20one%20of%20the%20top%20voice%20over%20and%20aud...

 

At least Upwork is clear that this auto-approval loophole is here to stay.

 

 

 

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"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless
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