TOS Violations

[jorgensons]

I just spent the last half hour scrolling through my feed, trying to find jobs to apply for. In that time, I flagged about 20 posts that are clearly scam jobs and include directives for the freelancer to either contact the client via WhatsApp or Telegram, provide contact info in their proposal, or both. On top of that, they offer high budgets and almost no detals about the work. It's red flag city. 

There were more scam jobs than real ones in my feed today, which is super frustrating and a huge waste of my time as I sift through the crap to find actual work. Is this just happening with writing and editing jobs, or is it happening across other categories as well? Here's a sample of what I'm seeing -- this is the full listing (with identifying info redacted, per community guidelines):

If you are interested in convert PDF to word project so send a msg on WhatsApp ‪+XXXXXXX  With full name and country, We will continue on WhatsApp http://wa.me/+xxxxxxxx 

What's going on, Upwork, and how can we stop it? This isn't good for anyone.

Side note. A lot of these scammy jobs are translation jobs (but not all of them). I'm not a translator, I don't have any skills even remotely related to translation on my profile, and yet my feed is constantly populated with translation jobs. Upwork, why do your algorthims think I'm a translator?

[jr-translation]

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Signe J wrote:

Side note. A lot of these scammy jobs are translation jobs. I'm not a translator, I don't have any skills even remotely related to translation on my profile, and yet my feed is constantly populated with translation jobs. Upwork, why do your algorthims think I'm a translator?

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Because you have a language in your profile.

[jorgensons]

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Jennifer R wrote:

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Because you have a language in your profile.

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Really? Just because I list myself as a native English speaker, Upwork thinks I'm able to translate? (I don't list any additional languages.) In theory, we're all translators then, just for having a native language. This seems like a major algorithm fail.

[jorgensons]

Here's another one. An $800,000 budget for a job with the title "We need a qualified translator who can translate from deutsch, hindu and Arabic to English." The only text in the post is this:  ........Kindly  message  us via telegram link https://t.me/xxxxxxxxx 

[jr-translation]

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Signe J wrote:

Here's another one. An $800,000 budget for a job with the title "We need a qualified translator who can translate from deutsch, hindu and Arabic to English." The only text in the post is this:  ........Kindly  message  us via telegram link https://t.me/xxxxxxxxx 

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[jorgensons]

No, I get it...I'm just saying that this seems like a pretty serious flaw in the algorithm if it thinks anyone who speaks English (or any language, for that matter) has translation powers. I just posted this example to show the outlandish budgets and complete lack of details.

[martina_plaschka]

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Signe J wrote:

Here's another one. An $800,000 budget for a job with the title "We need a qualified translator who can translate from deutsch, hindu and Arabic to English." The only text in the post is this:  ........Kindly  message  us via telegram link https://t.me/xxxxxxxxx 

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Well anybody falling for this one please don't come to complain later....

[d_samuel_udokpok]

They spamming the entire Upwork Job Feeds not just translations. They're demonstrating their superpowers by metamorphosing  into different clients

[jorgensons]

Well, I hope Upwork figures out how to make it go away, and soon. Trying to scroll through my feed is a major time-suck right now because half of what I see (or more!) is these scammy posts. It's a huge waste of time, and it makes Upwork look like a three-ring circus rather than a serious platform where serious work is done.

[pgregory_indigo]

It's across the board, I'm getting similar numbers of the same sort of scam job posts on my feed which is all software development, "create me a website", and then including a random gmail address to contact them.

If it's a new thing, that is just hitting Upwork, then I get it, it can take a while for the wheels to move and for systems to be updated to combat a new attack vector, I get that I'm a software developer myself, but the indicators from various conversations here are that it's been happnening for a while, and complaints are falling onto deaf ears at Upwork.

[jorgensons]

It's frustrating to hear that this has been going on for a while with seemingly no intervention from Upwork. I haven't actively looked for work in a while because I've received enough interview invitations and work from repeat clients that I haven't had to. It was a shock to return to the job feed and have to wade through this monstrosity.

[jorgensons]

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Paul G wrote:

complaints are falling onto deaf ears at Upwork.

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The lack of moderator input on this thread speaks volumes -- in my 6 years with Upwork, I think this is the first time I've posted and not seen an official Upwork presence in the conversation thread. I'm afraid you're right about the "deaf ears" bit. If it's true, I wonder why. What does Upwork gain from letting the scammers run rampant? It seems like it would hurt the platform, not help.

[andreas_fanelli]

I literally just made a post about scammers and just saw this. For me this seemed to have started not long after COVID and the frequency just keeps increasing. At this point I get multiple invites to scams a day. It's getting to the point I almost don't even want to look at an invite anymore. 

[jorgensons]

Yikes. I haven't had any scam invites yet. Let's hope it stays that way. 🤞

[jorgensons]

I think I cursed myself. I just received my first scam invite. Grrrrrrrrrr. More time wasted.

[pgiambalvo]

Yes, this is a real drag to have to deal with every day.

[mwiggenhorn]

Signe, somewhere in the Forum there is a thread on how to set up a job search that eliminates most of the red flags.  I didn't save it because, so far at least, the legal jobs are all sort of okay.

[jorgensons]

Thanks Mary! I'll see if I can find it. That's a great workaround, but still -- it doesn't solve the bigger problem of the platform being overrun by scammers. It affects Upwork's integrity, which will eventually affect of all the real clients and professional freelancers if it remains unchecked. That's my bigger conern.

[gilbert-phyllis]

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Signe J wrote:

Thanks Mary! I'll see if I can find it. That's a great workaround, but still -- it doesn't solve the bigger problem of the platform being overrun by scammers. It affects Upwork's integrity, which will eventually affect of all the real clients and professional freelancers if it remains unchecked. That's my bigger conern.

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In addition to scammers infesting the platform, the Community Forum has been completely overrun in recent weeks with posts reporting and complaining about it. That no doubt accounts for a lack of moderator comment in this thread.  UW has indicated they are working on countermeasures and we can expect some easing of the problem in the near future.  Renata posted a few days ago with detailed tips on constructing filtered searches so as to exclude most of the garbage. And Wassim built a Chrome extension that can flag problematic posts, although it hasn't been released yet. 

Meanwhile, I believe attempts to eliminate scammers will ultimately be a game of whack-a-mole as long as they find a target-rich environment here. While UW lets anybody who wants to, set up a profile and start bidding on jobs and fielding invitations, that sets the table for the scammers. And the scamming is not all on the client side, either, we've seen evidence of collusion. 

[pgregory_indigo]

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Meanwhile, I believe attempts to eliminate scammers will ultimately be a game of whack-a-mole as long as they find a target-rich environment here. 

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Completely agree, as a technologist, I completely understand how difficult it is to automatically spot these, and how expensive it might be to manually filter. However, I just got a invitation from an "Upwork Talent Specialist" inviting me to quote on a job that is clearly illegal and unethical! There really is no excusing that, it's not even as if the job was covertly illegal, the title is "Develop a private cheat for AAA game ", not really hiding the intention much!

[renata101]

Hi Signe,

Fortunately, a lot of what we're seeing may not be as noticable from the client side (I hope).

I put the instructions for setting up searches in the New to Upwork space because I thought fewer people would be familiar with the concepts:
https://community.upwork.com/t5/New-to-Upwork/bd-p/New_to_Upwork

[AndreaG · Accepted solution]

Hi all,

Thank you for reaching out to us and sharing your feedback and concerns. Our teams are working to address the situation around scam and spam jobs, including higher than usual volumes of scam posts, constantly changing methods of scam accounts, and gaps in user education around Upwork TOS and safety.

Additionally, I assure you that we'll continue sharing users' feedback with the team and providing updates to the Community about the team's initiatives. Feel free to check an update in this post for more information about the team's efforts around addressing these issues.

[maki-nws]

The same happens to me! Every day there are more scams and from different parts of the world.
There is no way to stop this?
They usually give their Telegram or WhatsApp and the title of the project is "Convert image to PDF", with an unreal budget.