I'm looking for advice on a similar issue.
Somebody is impersonating me on dating sites and blackmailing women. They convince their victims to send nude photos, and then they threaten to send the photos to their families. The scammer (or scammers) use photos of me that used to be publicly available on social media. They also use my real name, presumably so that the victims see a legitimate LinkedIn profile when they google "me".
Years ago, I got called to a meeting with my work's Human Resources department. The victim had looked me up and emailed my company. HR told me that "I" had to stop doing this. When I realized what had happened, I knew that I couldn't do anything to make it stop. Thankfully HR didn't take any action, but the whole time I worked there I had low-level background anxiety that another victim would contact them.
Last month, a different victim messaged me on LinkedIn because she was suspicious of "my" profile on OKCupid. She sent me screenshots of the profile and messages. The scammer used obviously non-native english, so at least there's some credible evidence that it's not actually me.
I've only become aware of the two incidents above, but I'm sure there are many other victims. I emailed OKCupid to ask them to block the impersonator, but I don't know if they can even stop him from re-registering, and there are other dating sites. I no longer have recent photos publicly available, and I've locked down all social media, but I don't want to delete my LinkedIn.
What else can I do? Has anyone else had something like this happen to them?
I've been on the other side of this, hiring fake people. I'm actually going to stop using Upwork after almost 10 years. It's such a cesspool of fraud now that I can't figure out how to find the honest people.
As an example, I recently hired someone who showed his face on video and had great communication skills. Next time we did a call, he had no video and sounded totally different. It turned out to be a subcontractor impersonating him.
I ran into this a few years ago and wrote about my experience:
https://mtlynch.io/upwork-scammer/
tl; dr - I caught an Upwork freelancer blatantly copying other freelancers profiles. I reported it to Upwork, who said they'd handle it but couldn't tell me the details I reached out to the freelancer's other clients to tell them the freelancer was a fraud, and they said Upwork had never notified them.
I've been hiring on Upwork since 2007. I love the idea of being able to hire people with particular skillsets for a short time. For example, we had a unique issue with elasticsearch. We hired someone on Upwork with a Ph.D. and wrote a book on it. For a few hundred dollars, he was able to resolve our issue in a few hours.
For every good experience, we have had about four bad experiences. The Upwork marketplace is filled with accounts pretending to be in North America and using fake photos. If you start looking at the profile pics on Upwork, you'll see they have the fake teeth from thispersondoesnotexist.
We've accidentally hired some of these fake people. Not only can they code, but they are pretty good. Upwork usually freezes the contractor's account when they try to get their first payout and fail the identity verification. Then we get a request from the contractor to pay by Paypal. It's a mess.
Here's the chat response from one of the contractors when they were found out:
> OK, let me explain. > To be honest, i am based on China. > But i can complete the task really well. > But i can't work with high rate on upwork as Chinese. > I am really sorry for that. > You can confirm me through video call. > Anyway, i am really good developer in Bootstrap 4 and css3, Html5 and etc. > you can check my result.
Upwork should be doing more to fix this. They are very aware of the issue. I once emailed their old CEO about the issue and got a reply from an assistant offering an account credit.
I wish there was a good alternative!
This happened to me and I sent a notice to Upwork's legal department demanding a takedown. Using my likeness to make money is a violation of Massachusetts Right of Publicity law (https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/massachusetts-right-publici...) so I would be entitled to any profits made by Upwork for using my likeness. It is possible and likely your jurisdiction may have similar laws, and if your likeness is being used, do not hesitate to deploy them to expedite these takedowns.
A small company I worked for years ago had a similar problem on one of the gig work sites. Someone listed a dozen or so web sites they had designed, programmed, and provided to clients complete with links. The problem was eight to ten of them were from our portfolio. We got their portfolio updated to not include our work and an assurance the account would be closed if the perpetrator did the same heinous thing again.
So, yes, your accomplishments in multiple different forms can be claimed by someone else. It can pay to be aware of this, but there's a cost to staying on top of it. Make sure to balance the two.
I have experience on Upwork both hiring and being hired. From hiring perspective, the person I interviewed was not the person who actually did the work. Being hired via Upwork, it was a challenge to even land an interview; I'd bid things and be in a pool among 10+ other people internationally with lower rates. I've worked in software in the US for over 10 years. The other aspect is that often those hiring on Upwork don't know what to look for, or have unrealistic expectations. I did find a few mutually successful gigs, but didn't make as much as I could have in industry. I decided that working for a normal company was more advantageous.
I'm not sure what triggers it, but they do identity validation at some point (probably tied to receiving funds) - I recently had to do this. They ask for an ID scan, and then do a video call with a staff member. Once you're in the validation needed phase, you cannot take on more projects or withdraw funds.
I've had the inversion of this occur, when I've been obviously talking to an impersonator working out of China. They always push for a Zoom call. The video is extremely dark. They lie about their location. It's maddening. Even for direct hire, I had two candidates send in resumes with the same avatar, but with the image mirrored. And it was still a resume with an Asian name! And an Asian-featured person! Why would they even bother at that point??
We had a specific project that required hardware to be shipped to the vendor, and required it to be in the US, and people would just lie, openly, as if when the time comes to ship the hardware to them I'm not going to notice it's going to China or a reshipper.
Interesting enough, years ago I worked on upwork. And now, I get emails from developers in India asking if they can partner with me, use my account to get customers and then split the profits.
I have always said no, but this is another way upwork may have an impersonation problem. Using accounts with a great track record, then selling the login information to someone else to pretend to be them. Then when you hire someone, it isn't actually them.
One simple way would be require video submission where you have to speak your name and mention that you have joined upwork as a freelancer. But then upwork would have to spend more money on validations. They probably don't care as much.
I sometimes hire from upwork. My litmus test is simple. I want to talk to you for 5-10 mins on video. If you cannot show up or have issues doing a video meeting, I won't proceed. It may help getting rid of scammers who are hiding behind a fake profile. I remember one guy telling me that he has speech issues and can only "interact" through messages/email. Even if true, I cannot trust someone on the internet like that.
We have one (or more) people posting ads impersonating us hiring translators on Upwork and in Facebook groups. The scam seems to be they "hire" the person, give them work, and then never pay them.
Having zero cost of goods sold makes it possible to undercut on prices and pay for all your acquisition and still make a buck. Doesn't seem scalable or sustainable, but it has been a real nuisance for us. Translators are contacting us for their payment...
Upwork has not been willing to help us at all. They pull the ads quickly so by the time support clicks the link, the ad is down. They act as if it didn't happen if the link doesn't still work. Crazy.
There is a lot of fraud out there. Anything you can imagine and then quite a bit you can't if you don't spend your time thinking about how to screw others.
I deleted my LinkedIn, it’s a source of information that the general public doesn’t need to see. I don’t want to broadcast my employment history to the world.
I think the value of LinkedIn is diminishing and will continue to decline.
How is upwork not liable for this? I imagine there is a cachet that comes with having profile on upwork that the people committing felony identity theft rely upon.
I was just emailed by a "client" asking me why my responses on Upwork had such poor English when I've written multiple books...
Turns out that someone was impersonating me on Upwork.
I now have a call with a potential real client next week.
I feel like I need to go cybersquat my identity everywhere now.
I am not affiliated with it at all, but I am considering using a service like https://www.idcheck.io/ for my own business. Sure there are a lot of users that find such things invasive, but I have had a lot of our users ask for stronger user verification. It would be a great solution to Musk's bot problem with Twitter. Anyone have experience with such a service?
It's a huge problem on some large dev slacks I am part of and one I used to help run. Someone will join and DM every existing member with a sob story about how he cannot join upwork because of his country of origin and asking to use theirs in exchange for 10% of profits he makes.
Not sure if anyone actually responds positively to these DMs but I guess if they do it feeds into the same scam.
What’s the best course of action for you/the person being impersonated, if the platform doesn’t fix the (systemic) problem? Put up a big notice on LinkedIn declaring that you are not on these platforms?
always make sure the upwork profile has a blue check mark ( freelancer's identity has been verified )
I remember trying to hire an iOS developer on Upwork, and got an American developer to bid on the project that seemed too good to be true. Turned out he was, and it was a fake profile. Figured it out only after agreeing on payment and about to start work, before realizing something was off. Contacted Upwork and they took profile down.
The root of the problem is that you uploaded an image of your face on Upwork. Somebody discovering how to use your own data against you, is just a matter of time.
How do I check if my identity is being used on Upwork? Can I see the names of people there without being registered?
> As engineers we really have no recourse.
Upwork takes a commission, so they are benefitting financially from this fraud. You absolutely have recourse.
99% of the work offers I receive on Upwork are fake/spam/"contact me outside of this website" kind of deals.
I got burned by something like this.
I hired an editor (not on Upwork) who had worked for a number of very famous authors (people you've heard of, people who've sold millions of copies). They did a fantastic sample edit, and the quality of the work dropped off precipitously by about the 20% point of the manuscript. The best-case scenario is that they just didn't care, because I'm a nobody and because of the novel's length--over 250K words, so self-publishing is the only option. However, there's a lot of forensic evidence suggesting that they farmed the edit out to more than one person (which would explain the inconsistent apparent level of skill and care). So I started looking into this, and apparently this is a common practice. Being traditionally published won't necessarily help you; the big houses contract out most of their editing work, and the same thing can happen.
Software might have the opposite problem from fiction editing, though. With editing, the issue is that the money (at all stages) is so poor--the average novel only sells a couple thousand copies--that I imagine a lot of people feel they have to do this sort of thing to survive. In software, these problems tend to involve there being far too much money at stake.
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Just wanted chime in with second a second anecdote that I was going to post.
We needed a Django developer. Put an ad on Upwork at the high end of the recommended salary range. The ad specified US Eligible worker for legal reasons.
Of the 10 or so applicants, seven flat out refused to appear on webcam so I decided to talk to the eighth.
This person claim to be in Seattle. Having lived there I asked them two relatively simple questions. First, can you see the space needle from where you’re sitting? Answer: Yes.
Second, what color is the bubbly music museum next door? Obviously, this is a trick given it’s multicolored. My candidate, who did not lack bravado, guesses white.
I get that being born into particular circumstances is luck of the draw. On the other hand there’s a reason that people are willing to pay more to hire US-based workers.
I believe this has become a general societal problem. People running so called two-sided marketplaces regularly fail to take responsibility for gaming by one side. I would further argue that Upwork has even more responsibility given the monitoring of and commission they take from an ongoing relationship.
The US probably has too many regulations - in my opinion - concerning immigrant workers; however, no temp agency could get away with what Upwork is doing without facing severe repercussions.
I’d like to see Upwork punished.