Friday, June 19, 2020

Upwork Spam How to Avoid it

In a recent article about the changes to Upwork, we pointed out how spam was becoming more prevalent on this platform, how Upwork seem powerless to stop most of it, and how they are actually promoting some of it. There are two reasons for this. The first is that Upwork is growing at a rate of knots. Spammers are like a pestilence, and when you have a large group of people clustered together, that pestilence will spread. Spammers are targeting the site, they are discovering ways to get away with their shit, and Upwork are struggling to keep them in check. This is not so much of a guide as a rant. I didn’t really notice these issues on oDesk or Elance, and have noticed many of them on Upwork. This is a great site, and one that has endless potential, but if this isn’t stopped, then it’s going to get worse. How Upwork Are Spamming Their Own System Upwork are directly at fault for one of these spamming issues. There is an option that allows you to â€Å"Block Invites From This User†, and it can be used when a client is sending you repetitive messages. They might be doing this because they want to hassle you, trying to convince you to work on a job you have no interest in or to work for a price that is far below what you would usually charge. This has happened to me several times, at which point this feature has come in handy. It may also happen simply because the client doesn’t know they are repeatedly targeting you. When a client creates a job, Upwork basically lets them spam invites to as many members as they want. And they continue to let them do this, with rounds and rounds of bulk invites that inevitably end up spamming disinterested freelancers. This is frustrating, but the â€Å"Block† feature works fine, so it’s not something that I’m particularly concerned with. However, there is one instance where that feature does not work, and that’s because Upwork basically stop it from working. This happens when Upwork are the ones sending you the messages. They do this to outsource work on their platform, and they also do it on behalf of big clients. Like many of their annoying clients, Upwork have been known to send invites to everyone on their database. I received one such invite 6 months ago, coming directly from Upwork. It had nothing to do with me or my skills and they weren’t offering to pay much either, so I rejected it and blocked all future invites. But a few weeks later, I got it again. After blocking for a second time, they continued to land in my inbox. It was the same job, the same client, and I had blocked it many times, yet it kept coming. It even had the nerve to tell me, â€Å"You have blocked invites from this client†, while those invites still appeared. Upwork need to understand that the rules they set for others should also apply to them. This is a huge oversight, and one that I imagine will be frustrating a number of clients. If this happens to you, let your feelings be known. If enough freelancers complain, they’ll be forced to do something about it. Spam Profiles I recently posted a job to Upwork, and was immediately struck at how much the quantity and quality of the proposals have increased over the year, certainly from a client’s perspective. Something else struck me as well though, something that is perhaps a product of the increasing quantity and quality. Two profile pictures were exactly the same. It was a young, attractive woman whose location was listed as the US on one profile and the UK on another. Even before I saw the second proposal and realized that they were clones, I was struck by how odd the first one was. They were offering to work for very little, despite being located in the US, where they could barely afford to earn enough to eat at that rate. Their English was also terrible, and clearly not native. In fact, it looked like one of those copy and pasted profiles, the ones that always begin with a badly spelled and structured variant of, â€Å"I have read your proposal with interest and I believe I am the right fit†. It also brought to mind a previous freelancer, one who I discussed in the The Writers’ Companion and one who was possibly the most incompetent freelancer I have ever hired. Her English was terrible, her excuses were odd, to say the least, and it took her 6 months to write a short article, even though she had told me 2 weeks in that the article was completed and that she had just left it at the office (if you think that’s odd, wait until you read the rest of the story). She was clearly not who she said she was, and probably not even a â€Å"she†. The photo used in that profile was of a beautiful young woman as well. This stuff happens all of the time on social media. Spammers and scammers create basic profiles, they use pictures of beautiful women, and they go about their business. Now, it seems, they have crossed over to Upwork. I didn’t hire either of the clones, so I have no idea what they would have done. My guess is that they were connected to writing farms. They were both new, so there are probably teams of people creating these profiles, doing a few jobs, receiving bad feedback and then starting over with a new profile or moving onto the next one. Maybe they had something more malicious in mind. Who knows, but this is something that you need to watch out for as a client. Make sure you only hire freelancers with a proven track record. And don’t assume that freelancers who use perfect English in their profiles will be competent, as this can be copied from elsewhere. Instead, ask them a question, something that requires a long response. Be polite and formal. Begin with their name and end with yours. Wait for their response. You should get something back that is equally polite and professional, something that makes sense and responds to your question. In the past, I have spoken with freelancers who had listed themselves as native speakers from the US and UK, only to give themselves away within a word or two. Literally. As it’s very common for them to begin a message with â€Å"Dear Mr Paul† as opposed to â€Å"Dear Mr Aitken† or simply â€Å"Dear/Hello Paul†.