Someone stole my identity on Upwork (2016) | Hacker News Reader

Someone stole my identity on Upwork (2016)

hackernoon.com

177 pointsuladzislau37 comments

The best part about Upwork is that they have invited me to be a premium freelancer and closed my account all in the same day. Hilariously I was told I'm not "good enough for the platform". I have had 5 positive job reviews, all pretty much 5 stars. That day I applied for 10-15 jobs as I wanted to bridge the downtime gap between two major gigs. I had 1500$ usd on that account, that I have not withdrawn yet. I was not working for peanut rate, but rather north of 50$/h.

Support was unhelpful and I couldn't get a chance to talk to human. Stole my money literally. They deactivated my account, and only after 10th email to their support have they've actually deleted the account.

Boycott Upwork.

For $1500, can you take them to small claims court?

I probably could have - but at the end of the day, it was money well invested.

I moved my business elsewhere (not toptal or any other platform, but a devshop) and told the same thing to 4-5 other devs that are my close friends who were charging about the same rate. At the end of the day, they might have gotten $1500, but they lost 5x that in matter of seconds.

I still feel a bit bitter about it though, but I need to let go.

Yes, but there is no way you can collect if the defendant is in another state.

Is there more to this? How can they just close an account with $1500 that you earned and call it a day? If what you're saying is true there's no question that it has happened to thousands of other people too.

The only other thing I could imagine was the problem was that I was interviewed via skype and that the client had asked for my skype account (at the time there was no voice/video through upwork). However, payment was still done through Upwork which is what they care about. Not a single dispute, nothing.

I went back and forth about the money, threatening to take them to court, write blog posts etc. But, they were still sending me generic replies. At the time, I really could not have been bothered enough to hire a lawyer and go through with this. The project from which they stole my money from involved a RaspberryPi and some other sensors and modules which was at its infancy, so I have learned quite a bit, so I've let go, but a lesson learned was that I should never work through a mediator (if that's the right word), but rather directly and have a lawyer review my contract. Clients have also loved the fact they're not paying 20% extra.

It definitely has happened just read the comments, one guy with 1440$, others with smaller amounts - https://collegetimes.co/upwork-sucks/ plus other things people are annoyed by with Upwork.

Now that this is on the front page of HN, customer service is going to magically appear.

I don't understand why people even try to wrestle with customer service reps nowadays, when the only reliable method is getting visibility on HN/Digg/Slashdot/etc

You are unlikely to end up on the front page.

It's on the front page

And people win the lottery all the time. That doesn't disprove that you are unlikely to reach the front page.

In general though, there are probably hundreds (if not more) posts dealing with customer service that don't hit the front page.

Yeah misread original comment actually

One day I found a fake profile that copied my description. Support said that they can't prove that he got it after me and they will not take any action.

I know two persons who were banned forever after applying to about 20-30 jobs and not getting them. Support said they are not qualified enough to be on Upwork, ever.

Sometimes they ban digital nomads for moving around the world too much. Sometimes they ban people because their clients got unsatisfied and clients are more important for Upwork than freelancers.

So the support is dysfunctional on many levels but Upwork is the only place where a non-US/EU freelancer without connections can find jobs relatively easy.

Needs (2016) in the title.

I've also previously raised the issue of freelancers selling their accounts:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13309640

Hum, this is not a new history. The same history with exactly the same messages happened a few years ago to other (the same?) girl if i'm not wrong. I have seen before the word bombchelle somewhere.

There was also the anecdote of some people (mostly freelancers based in Africa or Asia) using stock photos of smiling blonde caucasian models to create a fake sense of trust (and the other freelancers disclosing it for fun again and again). I remember stock photos taken directly from the web of a dental clinic for example, or appearing in the first positions in google under the tag "entrepreneur" and so. It was an arms race, with upwork banning each time and the fake accounts reappearing and refining their methods each time

As general rule of thumb, If it looks handsome, young and dressed like a model in a studio of photography, is probably fake.

> The same history with exactly the same messages happened a few years ago to other (the same?) girl if i'm not wrong.

So you are saying this thing is a lie? Did you note that the post was published "Oct 24, 2016"?

Probably because this blog post is from 2016.

That 20% at then end isn't quite right - its actually 23.75% - upwork charges the clients 3.75% above the contract amount, and they pay the freelancer 20% less than the amount (for the first $500, then the fees start to drop on the freelancer side).

So both sides are led to believe that the total fees upwork collects are lower than they actually are. Its more than a little shady.

Oh, and if freelances don't pay for membership, their accounts get automatically locked to private for "inactivity" if they go 30 days without receiving any payment. Regardless of actual activity level. So the freelancers who earn infrequently have effectively even higher fees. (Support can unlock it for free, but it can take a day or two.)

Upwork recently increased fees massively and I left for good, both as a client and as a freelancer

Where did you go, if I may ask? I'm also interested in alternatives.

I'm a freelance web developer and I found that what has worked best for me when I'm in a dry spell is finding people who are actively looking for freelancers on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

No one is going to show up to your website or Google you. You have to actively look for people who need someone now. I noticed that the ones who post on social media want to avoid terrible work that is generally associated with UpWork so you can negotiate good prices.

Send them a quick message to get the conversation started and see where it goes. It is a numbers game.

Any particular part of twitter? or is this just your list of followers.

Anybody else annoyed by all the fixed HTML elements on that page? Here is all I can see on my 14" screen (maximized browser window): https://i.imgur.com/u9L81nY.png

I use a Chrome extension called 'Outline' that reduces a page to text only.

Create a browser bookmark with this:

    javascript:(function()%7B(function () %7Bvar i%2C elements %3D document.querySelectorAll('body *')%3Bfor (i %3D 0%3B i < elements.length%3B i%2B%2B) %7Bif (getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position %3D%3D%3D 'fixed') %7Belements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%7D%7D%7D)()%7D)()

Has been pretty good at getting rid of "dick bars"[0].

[0]: https://daringfireball.net/2017/06/medium_dickbars

Upwork is an absolute piece of shit company and so obviously trying to protect their revenue in the race to the bottom of freelance work. We only used them as an agency (to hire freelancers) and they would randomly shut off ongoing contracts, stall refunds for paid but undelivered milestones after shutting down our contract, didn't pay back fees and have horrible customer support. The only thing they do is send a 10 paragraph email explaining that they're not responsible for the contractors on their platform and we should have read the TOS better. Stay away. Absolutely horrible.

It's a bit disconcerting to find someone pretending to be you online. I've had my real name and moniker used multiple times. This has always been associated with a little information about me, namely they know a bit about me and will try to impersonate me based in that.

Usually, they get some details wrong - or make things up entirely. It's pretty well known that I live in Maine. It surprised me when I'd learned that I'd written about my home on coastal Maine. See, I don't live anywhere near the coast.

I've seemingly been an owner, or associated with, a few online businesses. I'm not, I really am not. In fact, I've never even considered doing MLM, sold stuff at eBay, or been a 'security researcher.'

If you discover someone impersonating you, my advice is to pretend to be one of their old friends. The more public you can make this, the better. The page(s) will get taken down, but it is fun while it lasts.

You can have a lot of fun with that. "Oh, man... I still think we did too much coke that weekend. I never thought I'd say too much coke was possible. Shame about that hooker, right?" Things like that will give you hours of enjoyment.

Sort of related, I kind of wish I had people calling me to help me fix my Windows computers. Alas, nobody seems to have put my number on the list. I have a mental script already prepared.

Screw Upwork, i ditched them a long time ago

It sounds like Upwork have a duty to verify their contractors are who they say they are.

They really don't, there is no such process built in. If it where as rigid as with bitcoin exchanges, this (and probably many similar) would not have happened.

I had to do a video chat before, kind of odd there was no one on the other end done through the UpWork site/scheduled.

edit: no one visually but vocally there was someone there

In my opinion; you do not own a total stranger your image just because they will promise you a few bucks. If they want their problem solved, just show that you can do the work. Unless for a very specific type of jobs, it is not their bussiness at all if you are bald, black or like to work in slippers.

Some people typically will want to grab as many of your personal information as they can, for undisclosed reasons. Just decline politely and walk away. Profiles and portfolios are designed for showing what you want to show. In the best cases those pressing to go further are other freelancers studying their competitors; in the worst, creepy people trying to impersonate you or selling your info to a third. Is a dog eats dog world and you do not own them anything.

> "in the best cases those pressing to go further are other freelancers studying their competitors"

There are other valid reasons for requesting a video chat. One of those is to weed out agencies and impersonators of which Upwork and freelancing platforms are rife with.

It also builds better relationship to talk with someone face to face.

Of course and very reasonable, but if the people hiring hides their face wereas asking the freelancers to be videotaped, well... is a red flag. Specially if in the end, nobody is hired for this job.

Maybe is because they are shy, that is a perfect valid reason to me.

Another hypothetical explanation could be that in upwork some well stablished freelancers were targetting new fresh and disperate freelancers hiring then and paying in peanuts to do a job that they then would bill (for a higher amount) to the final client.

This was UpWork the entity not a client on UpWork, my account was on some form of a hold until I did this.

I recently tried out their platform in hopes of procuring a few freelance gigs, hadn't had a whole lot of luck and after reading this I may just delete my account. Sorry this has happened to you, it truly sucks.

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