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inkmonkey
Community Member

Can people *buy* profile approvals?!

I've recommended Upwork to a number of software engineers and developers I know over the years. To my surprise most of these people's profiles were not approved after signup. I didn't think too much of it because I believed Upwork's email and figured a bit of optimization and/or market shift might help. Nobody was solely counting on Upwork to freelance anyway.

 

But today I just heard of someone else who got their profile approved by paying a third person to get it approved. This seems pretty scammy but somehow it worked?! AFAIK Upwork does not accept payments for profile approvals. But this person offers profile approvals as a service, seemingly does not change profile text but somehow gets profiles through the system, and his only instructions to the person whose profile he got approved were: don't bid more than 2x a day.

 

1. Is there something wrong with Upwork's system that's holding up qualified (in this case software engineers') profiles so long, people start taking desperate measures?

 

2. Is there some way or has some way been devised to game the system, whether in collaboration with someone working in the team or through an algorithmic exploit in the profile approval pipeline? (Let's say if some categories/tags lead to a lower threshold of approval than others and this person changed the profile completely to focus on those before reverting back after the profile was approved--I don't know if this is what happened but I'm speculating because I can't imagine any other way such a practice could survive.)

 

3. Does Upwork have some email notification system in place when massive changes are made to a person's profile, such as when an entire bio/headline are replaced with a new one? This seems like a simple and basic enough security check--wouldn't bother people legitimately overhauling a profile, but would give people who hire these "professional profile approvers" some more insight into how this approval was obtained, not to mention give Upwork a way to keep an eye on possible profile hacks etc? I have a feeling for a lot of good reasons Upwork probably does not want to be known as a marketplace where people can pay money under the table to get in.

29 REPLIES 29
alexandernovikov
Community Member

 

I know quite a few young and honestly barely capable developers who recently started on Upwork. Most of them struggle getting jobs, right, but i haven't heard of anyone just being declined approval. If anything, it may suggest that the approval system is too lax, not too strict.

 

If people can't get their profiles approved they are doing something badly wrong.

 

And for sure, someone who takes your money to 'push you through the system' on Upwork is simply a scammer.

 

Honestly, for this person's sake and my own faith in the integrity of the platform, I hope that's the case because he's from a struggling background otherwise and the work experience here can significantly help him both financially and professionally. I'd rather have him waste what little money he has than lose the chance to work here at all (such as might happen if the person he paid did something in violation of ToS to get the profile approved) so I hope it was just dumb luck/coincidence that his profile got approved when it did (nothing on it seems to have changed). And I hope other people don't fall prey to it. Though the case for security notifications still stands, regardless of this being a coincidence. There's no way to know what/when major changes are made to our profiles.

alexandernovikov
Community Member

As for messing up with categories or tags, i am sure these are irrelevant. About 3 years ago, after already making $500K+ on Upwork, i randomly stumbled on the fact that i never set any category for my profile, just none at all (immediately corrected that). My tags were also totally far from what i was actually doing, just because i always had too much job, a few times working 100-hour weeks, to bother looking into my profile, and i didn't change them for years (seem to be in line now).

kochubei_valeria
Community Member

Hi Fatima,

Paying to somehow "acquire" a profile that belongs to another person and has been approved would be a serious violation of Upwork ToS. Collaborating with an Upwork representative to get a profile approved would also be strictly prohibited and we have security systems in place to prevent that. Applications to join Upwork go through both automatic and manual reviews that evaluate a number of factors.

If a freelancer needs help with proofreading or re-organizing their profile overview and other information, they can hire another freelancer to do that.

~ Valeria
Upwork


@Valeria K wrote:

Applications to join Upwork go through both automatic and manual reviews that evaluate a number of factors.

If a freelancer needs help with proofreading or re-organizing their profile overview and other information, they can hire another freelancer to do that.


Valeria, are you stating that every freelancer application is manually reviewed? Also, does Upwork keep track of reviewers who allow profiles that are subsequently removed after being flagged as inappropriate, and take action in case there's a pattern of a reviewer permitting profiles that are obviously fake?

__________________________________________________
"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce

The following are not qualifications for getting approved as an Upwork freelancer:

 

- coming from a struggling background 

- having lots of money and being able to buy account approval


@Preston H wrote:

The following are not qualifications for getting approved as an Upwork freelancer:

 

- coming from a struggling background 

- having lots of money and being able to buy account approval


True, and/but I feel horrible for this person. He's just starting out but he's a software engineer and no platform is worth compromising your integrity as long as you have skills and a way to communicate that to people looking for them. I wish he hadn't done this, and now he's telling me there are apparently other people too (here in PK) who have paid this guy money for the same "service". I don't know what that guy's link to the review process is, whether he's got a friend at Upwork or just dumb luck, but it also makes me angry he's fleecing desperate people in the name of something that should be fair and welcoming to newbies.

John,

 

I won't be able to share details about the review and approval process for new profile to protect its integrity. It does involve automatic and manual review and agents who complete the manual review of it follow strict guidelines and Upwork ToS.

If you come across any new profiles that appear suspicious or in violation of Upwork ToS, please feel free to flag them and they will be reviewed.

~ Valeria
Upwork


@Valeria K wrote:

Hi Fatima,

Paying to somehow "acquire" a profile that belongs to another person and has been approved would be a serious violation of Upwork ToS. Collaborating with an Upwork representative to get a profile approved would also be strictly prohibited and we have security systems in place to prevent that. Applications to join Upwork go through both automatic and manual reviews that evaluate a number of factors.

If a freelancer needs help with proofreading or re-organizing their profile overview and other information, they can hire another freelancer to do that.


I would totally support that last scenario--an Upwork consultancy service. However, what I am told happened (and has been happening, apparently) is that Person A pays Person B an X amount of money and gives them access to their profile to get it "approved" by Upwork. This apparently entails no changing of the profile, nor is the profile itself acquired by anyone else, but it does get the profile through the review system. My question: how? It should not be able to, as you mentioned. So the system is not working, somewhere.

 

Edit: Also, Valeria, can Upwork send out some kind of general reminder telling people not to pay anyone to get their profile approved because this is a scam and there is no such paid profile approval process and doing so is considered a violation of ToS?

A significant part of the Upwork staff is comprised of freelancers working remotely. Also, Upwork doesn't pay that much. Who knows, there may be someone inside the system who is basically taking bribes.

 

Maybe Upwork's management should look into it, even if the probability of this being true is low.

-----------
"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless

It is so easy to detect and shut down such activities programmatically that i wonder if it could last for long.

Just check what is the rate of profile suspensions of people grouped by the user id of reviewer who approved them. Then run some cluster analysis on this, and you'll instantly see which reviewers you should ban.

 

Too simple to defeat to be true. I'd say, it was just a scam.


@Alexander N wrote:

It is so easy to detect and shut down such activities programmatically that i wonder if it could last for long.

Just check what is the rate of profile suspensions of people grouped by the user id of reviewer who approved them. Then run some cluster analysis on this, and you'll instantly see which reviewers you should ban.

 

Too simple to defeat to be true. I'd say, it was just a scam.


 Why do you suppose their profiles would be suspended? They seem like normal people like you and me desperate enough to pay someone to get their profiles approved; not scammers trying to get multiple accounts. Once they get their accounts approved they would do what everybody does which is applying for jobs, and some of them will be successful and others will stop trying, etc. There is no pattern there.

 

There are suspicious activity with clear patterns. I along with some other freelancers reported a "ring" hiring and giving 5 stars to new freelancers till they get 100 JSS. I never saw anything done about them. There was one freelancer bragging how he is taking clients out of the system on Quora. His suspension lasted till he deleted the post (all of 18 hours). There are freelancers flagging every job post about homework and term papers. There are freelancers whose only source is these kind of jobs. I didn't see anything done about them too.

 

What the OP (original poster) should do is name names and wait to see if it is resolved which I don't believe is going to be.

They will be massively suspended because it is obvious that these people are somehow sub-par and don't qualify to be accepted the normal way, plus they feel like scamming is OK, so level of client satisfaction with them is bound to be much below normal.

 

Also it won't be long scammers will start to 'approve' totally fake accounts (fake name, fake photo etc, just for the purpose of outright phishing) en masse, if they can - and these get shut down in no time these days.


@Baris A wrote:

@Alexander N wrote:

It is so easy to detect and shut down such activities programmatically that i wonder if it could last for long.

Just check what is the rate of profile suspensions of people grouped by the user id of reviewer who approved them. Then run some cluster analysis on this, and you'll instantly see which reviewers you should ban.

 

Too simple to defeat to be true. I'd say, it was just a scam.


 Why do you suppose their profiles would be suspended? They seem like normal people like you and me desperate enough to pay someone to get their profiles approved; not scammers trying to get multiple accounts. Once they get their accounts approved they would do what everybody does which is applying for jobs, and some of them will be successful and others will stop trying, etc. There is no pattern there.

 

There are suspicious activity with clear patterns. I along with some other freelancers reported a "ring" hiring and giving 5 stars to new freelancers till they get 100 JSS. I never saw anything done about them. There was one freelancer bragging how he is taking clients out of the system on Quora. His suspension lasted till he deleted the post (all of 18 hours). There are freelancers flagging every job post about homework and term papers. There are freelancers whose only source is these kind of jobs. I didn't see anything done about them too.

 

What the OP (original poster) should do is name names and wait to see if it is resolved which I don't believe is going to be.


Exactly! They're just regular people whose profiles were rejected because of market saturation (as in this guy's case.) There's nothing suspicious on these profiles or in the way they use Upwork. But I had no idea this sort of stuff happens (the JSS gaming ring scams) and goes unchecked! 😮

If only reason for rejection is market saturation than why anyone would be interested in going there? Why go somewhere where there is a huge crowd of people begging for jobs already?

 

it would make sense to be very picky about approvals in reverse case: fields where there are insufficient freelancers and huge rates prevail: getting a scam account there would be the most paying, and most damaging to the ecosystem. what's the problem of a few scam accounts in a field where even the real ones can't get any jobs because there are too many of them for the few jobs?


@Alexander N wrote:

If only reason for rejection is market saturation than why anyone would be interested in going there? Why go somewhere where there is a huge crowd of people begging for jobs already?

 

it would make sense to be very picky about approvals in reverse case: fields where there are insufficient freelancers and huge rates prevail: getting a scam account there would be the most paying, and most damaging to the ecosystem. what's the problem of a few scam accounts in a field where even the real ones can't get any jobs because there are too many of them for the few jobs?


Because that's the reason Upwork gave him when they rejected his profile originally, which was made several months ago. He reapplied a couple of times but got the same answer, AFAIK, and left it for a while. Came back after graduation, finding it hard to believe that Upwork would still be suffering such a lack of jobs in dev work. That's when this guy stepped in and promised he'd get the profile approved for a fee. He took an undisclosed sum of money as well as the login credentials, the profile owner got an approval email from Upwork, the guy returned the profile and "disappeared" (as described to me by my friend, who says he verified the profile was approved and it all checked out.)

Then it is the problem. Approach to profile approval has to be changed. Market saturation shouldn't be the reason to decline people membership: maybe a warning telling in the approval email saying 'on a 0 to 10 scale, market saturation in your category is 9 so you may expect significant difficulties attracting any contracts', will be enough. If people are willing to waste their time and suffer why declining them that possibility?

 

Approvals should be strict in the fields where there is little competition, not too much: because this is where real scams want to get in, as that makes them most cash, and that way they make the most trouble to everyone.


@Alexander N wrote:

Then it is the problem. Approach to profile approval has to be changed. Market saturation shouldn't be the reason to decline people membership: maybe a warning telling in the approval email saying 'on a 0 to 10 scale, market saturation in your category is 9 so you may expect significant difficulties attracting any contracts', will be enough. If people are willing to waste their time and suffer why declining them that possibility?

 

Approvals should be strict in the fields where there is little competition, not too much: because this is where real scams want to get in, as that makes them most cash, and that way they make the most trouble to everyone.


I wish I could give you multiple kudos for that, I love that suggestion! An approval process that increases freelancer autonomy and gives people a chance to make informed decisions is already a better option IMO, and yeah I think people should all be allowed to choose whether they still want to compete in this market or not. The fact is, market saturation is the flimsiest of excuses: the number, skills, and interests of existing freelancers are not static and it makes no sense to keep new people off the platform indefinitely based on whether current job needs are being served or not.

I think motivation behind it is that ARPU of Upwork suffers if there are too many people on it who aren't making any money. It also hits image - 'several million people out there and only a few thousands make a first-world salary, and a few tens of thousands a third-world salary, others just wasting time'. Naturally Upwork wants to limit numbers of 'dead souls'.

 

Why not allow membership in every field as long as freelancer is Premium and pays monthly fee? Then total time wasters won't be there.

 

Or better yet, just make EVERYONE pay. If you can't pay $20 a month to stay on the platform, especially knowing that clutter will decrease severalfold so getting jobs will be easier, you are doing something wrong and probably shouldn't be there. That would be a no-go for a new site as it has shortage of talent even without fees, but Upwork is the world giant.


@Alexander N wrote:

Why not allow membership in every field as long as freelancer is Premium and pays monthly fee? Then total time wasters won't be there.

 


 Because clients get innundated by endless proposals and with 80% of all newbies in many categories never winning a single contracts there is 0 point allowing more just to make more noise and bury more clients in masses of useless proposals...

 

But well Petra, endless row of time wasters won't pay a $20 monthly fee.

 

While i agree with your view of the problem in general. Like in every crowd-anything platform, say Uber, there is a problem of desperate people who don't realise they can't succeed. No one invented a surefire solution to that problem. Nothing short of extensive system of prequalification (essentially ensuring that only people who will get in are those who are already successful offline or elsewhere - not create a business on Upwork, but present your already provably successful business there) is likely to ever fix it.


@Petra R wrote:

@Alexander N wrote:

Why not allow membership in every field as long as freelancer is Premium and pays monthly fee? Then total time wasters won't be there.

 


 Because clients get innundated by endless proposals and with 80% of all newbies in many categories never winning a single contracts there is 0 point allowing more just to make more noise and bury more clients in masses of useless proposals...

 


A googolplex kudos to this. Oversaturating an already saturated market is not a solution to any problem.

 

But still remains the question of the possibly corrupt Upwork agent. Managment really need to look into this, I say...

-----------
"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless


@Rene K wrote:

@Petra R wrote:

@Alexander N wrote:

Why not allow membership in every field as long as freelancer is Premium and pays monthly fee? Then total time wasters won't be there.

 


 Because clients get innundated by endless proposals and with 80% of all newbies in many categories never winning a single contracts there is 0 point allowing more just to make more noise and bury more clients in masses of useless proposals...

 


A googolplex kudos to this. Oversaturating an already saturated market is not a solution to any problem.

 

But still remains the question of the possibly corrupt Upwork agent. Managment really need to look into this, I say...


I don't see a strong case for the idea that spammers would pay $20 per month to send bids with no response. But there have to be multiple strategies to manage saturation. Some that I have seen are markets that make your profile private if you can't win a single project in the first 1-3 months after joining. Another could be the rate at which your proposals are opened. That's a good way to gauge quality, because obvious timewasters generally don't bother crafting proposals worth reading.

If qualified freelancers are being turned away because someone who monitors new accounts on Upwork, is being paid to pass profiles that are not suitable, then Upwork needs to do something about it. 

 

 


@Fatima A wrote:


A googolplex kudos to this. Oversaturating an already saturated market is not a solution to any problem.

 

But still remains the question of the possibly corrupt Upwork agent. Managment really need to look into this, I say...


I don't see a strong case for the idea that spammers would pay $20 per month to send bids with no response.


 Spammers may not - but people desperate enough would and already do. It's $ 10 a month by the way.

 

People pay some self proclaimed guru hundreds or thousands to be taught how to earn money on Upwork and still don't (make even their "course fee" back.) $ 10 a month is nothing.

 

If a category is oversubscribed, and most entry level ones are, there is NO point admitting more. None.

 

Clients already get too many proposals (in the categories where people are being turned down) - anything that turns off clients is a bad idea.

 


@Alexander N wrote:

I think motivation behind it is that ARPU of Upwork suffers if there are too many people on it who aren't making any money. It also hits image - 'several million people out there and only a few thousands make a first-world salary, and a few tens of thousands a third-world salary, others just wasting time'. Naturally Upwork wants to limit numbers of 'dead souls'.

 

Why not allow membership in every field as long as freelancer is Premium and pays monthly fee? Then total time wasters won't be there.

 

Or better yet, just make EVERYONE pay. If you can't pay $20 a month to stay on the platform, especially knowing that clutter will decrease severalfold so getting jobs will be easier, you are doing something wrong and probably shouldn't be there. That would be a no-go for a new site as it has shortage of talent even without fees, but Upwork is the world giant.


When I got started on Upwork, back in 2013, I was a nearly homeless kid living with no bank balance, no degree, nothing but what I could offer clients here. Upwork opened a lot of doors for me, first to survive on my own and second to suceed in the fields of my choice. It hasn't all been smooth sailing but it's been one of the best and most important career decisions I've ever made, teaching me more about what it takes to be a good professional and engage with people from all over the world than any school could have as well as opening entire career tracks for me to this day. I can understand a scenario where a talented person might not have the means to make online payments (even assuming they have the money). I am profoundly grateful I went through what I did at a time when I had this unexpected opportunity available, and it's not a ladder I'd like to pull up after me.

 

I do support the idea of premium members being approved for their categories as an additional option, not the only option, although Upwork would still have to answer for quality and figure out what do if someone cancels membership afterwards.

Yeah i am getting your frustration people... I feel frustrated as well... Fixing it is a same thing as fixing people being stupid - which ain't gonna happen.

 

Markets aren't oversaturated because of some Upwork's flaws or sins. They are saturated because people are too stubborn and fanatical, many of them desperate for money, and don't think what they are doing.

 

Just take the field of SEO. It is truly pathetic. What all these people are really doing, or supposed to do? SEO is nearly not working any more, but crowds and crowds of people keep offering it, wasting time capturing the few final clueless clients.


@Alexander N wrote:

 

Markets aren't oversaturated because of some Upwork's flaws or sins. They are saturated because people are too stubborn and fanatical, many of them desperate for money, and don't think what they are doing.


That's a significant factor, but if you look at things from a historical perspective, many freelancers who were approved prior to Upwork implementing the policy of rejecting applicants for saturated markets are objectively less qualified than the new applicants being rejected, and that's tough to accept if you're rejected. If you doubt this, do a broad freelancer search in any of the saturated markets, and you will find a great many freelancers who have earned little or no money.

__________________________________________________
"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce

And that's fair. If i bought an apartment in now-hot area 20 years ago, i am rightly enjoying the value i am getting on it. What's wrong with it?

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