Spammy Job Post

[ashraful11885]

Am I the only one who suffered from the spammy job post? Nowadays, more than 50% of job posts are spam, and thousands of fraud clients are in Upwork. I don't understand why Upwork didn't take any necessary action on those spammy job posts. Upwork should update their algorithm so that AI can stop them from posting any copy-paste with contact info job posts. It's very much frustrating to see that many spammy job posts every day. I've tried to flag those job posts. Do you experience something like that? Or do all the spammer comes to my sales and marketing sector?

[martina_plaschka]

No, they are everywhere. 

[jose_rodrigues]

Yes, in the last few weeks there has been quite a bit of work showing up from companies with unverified pay and calling to chat outside of Upwork. They even use the same text as the job offer. Be smart, there is no easy money. 

[fjanev]

I'm being bombarded with those on a daily basis. Not sure how Upwork still hasn't tracked them down and eradicated.

[allergywriter]

I've been trying to figure out what the actual scam must be. The job is to create word docs from PDFs. Do these guys not know there is software that does that for you without a freelancer?

[martina_plaschka]

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Cheryl K wrote:

I've been trying to figure out what the actual scam must be. The job is to create word docs from PDFs. Do these guys not know there is software that does that for you without a freelancer?

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The scam is getting the freelancer to pay some kind of banking or ID fee. The jobs are just pretend to keep the freelancers busy for a reasonable amount of time. Based on the sunk cost fallacy, this keeps people engaged and gullible and ready for the scam. 

Now why typing a pdf to word? Maybe this is a final idiot test, before the scam begins. A last chance for the freelancer to activate some brain cells and ask himself why somebody would pay hundreds of $ for something that can be done in seconds. 

It's probably the same approach as in romance scams, where people are willing to overlook atrocious accents from people who pretend to be US citizens (being stuck on a different continent, therefore in dire need of money, maybe to regain their English speaking skills.) 

Ignoring red flags is a green flag for the scammer - they know they found their newest mark, fresh and ready to be scammed.