Phising Scam

[krystalfisher]

I was approached by a company called **edited for Community Guidelines** about doing data entry work.  I have completed three jobs for them, and they owe me approximately $300.  They are now requesting my banking information including my credit card number and password.

How do I get the money that they owe me? 

Best Regards,

Krystal Fisher

[timsmith99]

Krystal,

1. Did you have either a fixed-price or hourly contract in place? If not, you completed work without a contract and likely won't be able to get paid.

2. If an hourly contract is in place, did you log your time? If so, your client will be billed for eligible time, following the Weekly Billing Cycle.

3. If a fixed price contract is in place, did you wait until any discussed milestones were fully funded BEFORE you started working? If you did not wait until the agreed upon milestones were funded, you completed work without a funded milestone and likely won't be able to get paid. If you did wait until the milestones were funded, this is great! Go ahead and submit the milestone(s) for review/approval.

** When working on Upwork, it is imperative that freelancers make sure a contract is in place before they start working. If the contract is hourly, the freelancer should log their time via Upwork's Desktop App. If the contract is a fixed-price contract, the freelancer whould wait until agreed-upon milestones are fully funded before they begin working. Please visit this link for more information on Upwork Payment Protection.

[krystalfisher]

Timothy:

Thank you for your response.  I think I just learned a lesson the hard way.  

[kat303]

Krystal - The lesson you learned is to read both here and the Getting started message in the New to Upwork section on what to look out for and thr procedures of working on this site. SO many, (at least one a day if not more) freelancer come on here posting about the exact same scam. Because of that, new freelancers such as yourself, encourage these scammers to continue targeting new freelancers. They know the majority of them don't know anything, thus, they can take advantage of them either by getting free work, getting their personal information such as bank account numbers or credit card information (amoung other things) or get them to send money to them by telling them they need to purchase laptops and other computer equipment from a "certain vendor."

Any interviews that you receive at this time, that you did not send a proposal to, is a scam. And anytime you hear the word Google Handgouts, that's a scame too.

After learning what to look out for and the procedures of working as a freelancer on this site, I encourage you to stick around here and read the MANY mesages that are the same as yours.

[AveryO]

Hi Krystal Kaye, 

 I checked the client's account and job post and can see that the team has taken necessary actions against both for violating the Upwork User Agreement. 

As others have mentioned, please know that you will need to have a contract in place on your Upwork account before you start working on for any contract. For hourly jobs, you will need to have logged hours with the Upwork App, and included appropriate memos while tracking time to be eligible for the Hourly Protection for Freelancers. 

Please check the freelancer resources we compiled and tips for avoiding questionable jobs, for more information about working safely through Upwork.