What could be the potential scam of sharing your email with a client before a contract starts?

[#1]

I've seen a few posts about this exact topic - clienst asking you to send them an email, or asking you for information like country of residence and age.

I understand it's not allowed and I've responded as per the Upwork rules...saying we can share emails once the contract is in place.

My question is this (just out of curiosity) - what is the potential scam here because I've seen it called that in another post?

What could they possible do with my email, name and age?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Scammers want to move discussions off of Upwork because they know that it'll be more difficult to detect them. Also, by going off of Upwork, freelancers demonstrate that they don't know the rules and will therefore be a lot easier to scam. Simply saying, "I'm sorry, but we'll need to keep the discussion on Upwork" will put an instant stop to most scams.

What can someone do with your email? Send you a virus, for one thing. And why would a legitimate client ask for your name and age? Answer: they wouldn't, but scammers don't know how to properly interview freelancers - they're criminals, not business owners. They're just trying to ask you questions that they think are part of a normal interview process, in order to engage you and get your hopes up. The actual scam won't become clear until you've already invested some time and energy, and in many cases, done a few days of "work" for the scammer and are desperate to get paid.

[#3]

I'm not saying it's legit...I'm just wondering what the scenario of the "scam" is. I guess the answer is free work...the posts I came across sounded more insidious than that.

[#4]

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 wrote:

I'm not saying it's legit...I'm just wondering what the scenario of the "scam" is. I guess the answer is free work...the posts I came across sounded more insidious than that.

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No, the goal of a scam is hardly ever to get free work - clients can easily get freelancers to work for pennies or provide free "test" work, so it wouldn't be worth their trouble to drag you off the platform and fake-interview you. They ask you to go off platform so that they can steal your money, or at the very least, get you to take part in fraud or money laundering; they're not interested in your services.

Every new freelancer should read this: Top Red Flags for Scams: From Community Membe... - Upwork Community

[#5]

Thanks for that.

It's wild that people are falling for stuff like this...the Nigerian princes of Upwork.

Apart from asking me to email them, the biggest red flag was interviewing 17 people. I guess it's a numbers game for them.

I see the account is now suspended.