What's telegram? Is this a scam?

[ab_creative_co]

I got a response from a proposal, but the message did not have a lot of information. Instead, it had me download a PDF about setting up an interview, but the document was full of VERY obvious grammatical errors and the layout was a mess. The PDF says the company is Continental, but I am unsure. They asked me to set up an Interview using an app called Telegram... is this a scam?

[nicole_v_]

I submitted a proposal to someone and immediately received a message with just a link to a Telegram profile with absolutely no context. I blocked them. Nobody should be sending someone a link without telling them the reason for it and everyone should err on the side of caution when it comes to receiving links.

There's no reason to redirect someone to another website to set up an interview, we have all the tools we need on UpWork. All communications should be on UpWork to ensure safety. 

[db2f4b0f]

This same happned with me today. What should I do now. I did his work and that job is not longer on upworks.

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

[yasmeenarshad]

i was also being scammed by the job on upwork. They asked me to contact on telegram. It was my mistake that i did that. i convert there pdf to word document as they mentioned and they said they are going to pay $5000 for those pages. After my work completion they asked me to get money you have to pay $60 for this project. They asked me to download binance app so i did after that they started there own trading from this. After that I recieved an email from some company name that for your transaction you have to deposit $100 for your country account. All the transactions I paid was belong to my own country. almost I paid $300 to them. After that again i received an email that session expired for transaction they asked me to provide upword account. I did that then my account was hacked by them and they created business account from there and start posting multiple jobs of pdf conversion. 

I changed my password and start telling to the freelancer that don't go on that telegram they are scamming and hacked my account so they can report. 

Basically they were doing trading by using your money and accounts. They didn't post job aur pay directly. they just use your accounts and pay you from stealing money from others so they can frame you for their fruad. I also didn't get my money back nor my upwork running account. i started from 0 again.

[prestonhunter]

Yasmeen: Thank you so much for sharing your firsthand report about what you experienced. This is very helpful and informative.

[c4e453ac]

I'm sorry to hear of your troubles.  You don't expect to be so thoroughly scammed on a well-known, branded freelancing platform.  This platform puts activity stats ahead of protecting freelancers.  Due to the competitive nature of freelancers on this forum, other established freelancers will blame you 100% for what has happened to you.  As a developer, if you can avoid your users being scammed via preventing such scams in the first place, that's (of course) what you do.  UpWork could have prevented this scam in the first place, but have made a conscious choice to allow scammers to post Telegram links and such-like - which are massive red flags (posting a Telegram link prior to contract would be a ToS violation).  A few lines of code would have prevented that job being posted, and prevented you from being taken in by it.  There is zero data hygeine on this platform, which leads to scammers enticing newcomers off-platform (the enticement is a direct ToS violation, easy to spot via a few lines of code, and thus easy to prevent). I have laboured the point on this forum, but UW don't seem interested in protecting its users, and are happy to foster a toxic "blame the victim" culture on this very forum.

[hoyle_editing]

Andrew,

    I dont think most established  freelancers would 100% blame the freelancer for being scammed. It is of course primarily the scammers. But, as you correctly point out Upwork are willingly letting these scammers post on the platform. This has been an ongoing problem for a long time but has got significantly worse since they decided to let anyone join as a freelancer without any sort of checks!

As Upwork refuse to make any meaningful attempts at fixing the so obvious issues, all we are left with is the next cause which is indeed the freelancers that violate ToS and make this platform such a fruitful place for the scammers.

On a slightly different note, this is causing LOTS of talk about the subject on and off the platform which can only be beneficial in forcing Upwork to take its responsibilities seriously by implementing the most basic of procedures such as word filters in job posts and new freelancer 'ready' tests to ensure freelancers are under no illusion that talking on telegram with a client is a big NO NO.

[barnell09]

Why is Upwork doing nothing to stop the telegram scam? The platform is almost unusable now. Every reply I have gotten about writing gigs has replied telling me to contact someone on Telegram