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lauraburton13
Community Member

Client asked for home address

I am new to Upwork and a client invited me to Google Hangouts for a long interview process. After a while, I passed the interview, the client asked me for email, full name, phone number, and address to send an employment letter. I asked if they could send it via email, that I do not feel comfortable giving out my address. They said they could send it via email but it needs my home address on the letter. This is NOT normal, right? I don't see any reason someone should need my home address besides Upwork themselves, I thought that was the whole point of this app? As a new user, my first offer, this is quite discouraging.. Please advise. Thank you!
2 REPLIES 2
prestonhunter
Community Member

This is a scam that has been around for a long time.

Stop communicating with these people.

 

As an entry-level newbie, you are unlikely to receive any legitimate offers from out of the blue. Focus only on jobs that you apply to after carefully selecting job postings that are appropriate for your skills and interests. (Plus: You live in the U.S., so you are the prime target for this fake check scam.)

 

If anyone sends you an invite and mentions Google Hangouts, you can ignore them or block them. Those are just scammers.

 

In this variation of the scam, the scammers send you very realistic-looking, convincing physical checks, which you deposit into your bank. Then you withdraw cash from your account and send it to the scammers using a method that can't be retrieved, such as Western Union or with App Store & iTunes Gift Cards. Then when the bank processes the money and realizes the check is fake, the bank does a "clawback" and takes the money from your account to cover their loss. The bank is likely to close your bank account.

BojanS
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Laura,

 

Thank you for flagging this to us. I was able to gather information from your report and will be sure to share it with the correct team for further review and appropriate action will be taken according to our internal processes. 

 

Please check out this post for more tips on how to avoid questionable jobs and do use the flag option found on each job post anytime you suspect.

 

Thank you.

~ Bojan
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