All I want for Christmas from UpWork....

[Petra R]

After the sad demise of the "Aussie voice" - meet the "UX/UI designer who is fond of colors and attractive designs and quiet"

All 500 of them... Rising Talents among them.

Already escalated to Trust & Safety as of a few minutes ago.

[Vladimir G]

Hi Petra,

Thanks for flagging these profiles, I'll also reach out to our team to make sure we address them asap and investigate further to check for any similar violations. Please feel free to send us a private message if you come across similar profiles, so we can check and confirm whether these are already on our radar and are being actioned. 

[Petra R]

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Vladimir G wrote:

 I'll also reach out to our team to make sure we address them asap and investigate further to check for any similar violation

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Thanks Vladimir!

Someone sure invested a hell of a lot of time creating 500 email accounts, find all the fake pictures, create all the profiles etc...

[Maria T]

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Vladimir G wrote:

Hi Petra,

Thanks for flagging these profiles, I'll also reach out to our team to make sure we address them asap and investigate further to check for any similar violations. Please feel free to send us a private message if you come across similar profiles, so we can check and confirm whether these are already on our radar and are being actioned. 

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And, perhaps, it is time, as someone said long ago, close Upwork for new profiles for a while, and do a deep cleaning before admitting anyone else.
And, of course, during this time, develop what both Preston and Petra comment.
This latest discovery of repeated profiles, with repeated photos, with names, portfolios, studies and others, false, I think it should be the straw that broke the glass.

[Virginia F]

Vladimir G. wrote:

Hi Petra,

Thanks for flagging these profiles, I'll also reach out to our team to make sure we address them asap and investigate further to check for any similar violations. Please feel free to send us a private message if you come across similar profiles, so we can check and confirm whether these are already on our radar and are being actioned. 

And yet, flags and pms I send about fraud profiles are ignored. It appears that as long as someone is making money, it doesn't matter about lies on their profiles.

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[Jennifer R]

What do you call it when there are 38 with the same photo?**Edited for Community Guidelines**

[Goran V]

Thank you for flagging this Jennifer,

I`ve already escalated it to our team to be investigated further. 

[Preston H]

re: "What do you call it when there are 38 with the same photo?"

I call it a good reason to take the time to create an automatic algorithm that checks newly submitted profile photos against all existing photos... in order to flag fraudulent freelancer activity.

[Petra R]

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Preston H wrote:

I call it a good reason to take the time to create an automatic algorithm that checks newly submitted profile photos against all existing photos... in order to flag fraudulent freelancer activity.

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And do the same with text.

It can't be that difficult to develop some algorithm that detects hundreds and hundreds of identical overviews. Those are all 100% identical.

The Aussie voices were dozens. These are hundreds.

The other fun things is that they are all identical, same text, same country, same education, same portfolio, same everything, yet a decent proportion has Rising Talent status...

[Virginia F]

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Petra R wrote:

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Preston H wrote:

I call it a good reason to take the time to create an automatic algorithm that checks newly submitted profile photos against all existing photos... in order to flag fraudulent freelancer activity.

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And do the same with text.

It can't be that difficult to develop some algorithm that detects hundreds and hundreds of identical overviews. Those are all 100% identical.

The Aussie voices were dozens. These are hundreds.

The other fun things is that they are all identical, same text, same country, same education, same portfolio, same everything, yet a decent proportion has Rising Talent status...

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I think it's high time Upwork gets rid of Rising Talent, or at least make sure it's a badge that is earned correctly - I have to believe the RT badge is also given by a flawed algorithm. Think of all the clients who use this as a requirement that are being duped.