7 ms·

Someone stole my identity on Upwork and all I got was this lousy blog post

146 points by CarolineW 10y ago

fridaa 10y ago
It seems like Upwork is getting a lot of bad press[1] in the last few days, and it seems like it is well deserved. I would certainly not use them in the future. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12773282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12773282
- rabidrat 10y ago
  I've used Upwork in the past. Which site should I use for freelancers going forward?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rorra 10y ago
    There are some options listed on https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer
    - j_s 10y ago
      As discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775983
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - hollaur 10y ago
    If you want marketing-related gigs, check out: https://freelanship.com https://freelanship.com. I wrote about why I created my marketplace here: https://medium.com/@laurenholliday_/10-reasons-i-created-my-own-marketplace-2c5ef9a2ca3f https://medium.com/@laurenholliday_/10-reasons-i-created-my-... If you need developers or designers, check out toptal.com
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
coldcode 10y ago
How is this a billion dollar business?
- hollaur 10y ago
  Such a GREAT question.
binaryapparatus 10y ago
I had very bad experience with Elance some 6-7 years ago. It was really unbelievable, job provider did tried to abuse me (cursing and mind games), I asked Elance to cancel the job and they closed my account because 'thay are losing money on closing $4000 job'. All after making few tens of thousands of successful jobs there. Crazy. I just moved on. If I understand correctly Upwork is the same team that run Elance? If that's the case it won't work well for developers, stories like this don't surprise me.
- zachruss92 10y ago
  eLance merged with oDesk and became UpWork - all a shoddy marketing play. I had a similar story. I ended up winning my dispute with a client, after 2 months of my account being suspended. Honestly UpWork doesn't care about freelancers, they make money on the clients; freelancers are just a replaceable commodity to them.
chinese_dan 10y ago
I don't know how anyone can actually make a living on Upwork. I tried it out and the majority of project owners wanted to pay under $10/hour with the experience of a senior developer. The site seems to attract these sorts of employers and I don't have the time or energy to wade through the garbage. It's like a global sweatshop for software developers.
- vkou 10y ago
  Ironically, this is exactly what many software developers are busy doing to other industries.
larrik 10y ago
There were a few parts here that I had trouble getting my head around. 1) The author doesn't actually have an Upwork account at all, right? I can see why Upwork would be slow in talking to her in that case, since she's not even a customer/user and is "attacking" a customer/user. EDIT: I meant that it wasn't clear to me whether she was a user or not for most of the article. For some reason I went in assuming she was. 2) She never tries to reach out to the insane guy directly? She just goes straight to Upwork? EDIT: clearly, this is not unreasonable, although talking to the nutcase may potentially have been faster. 3) Her plan was to sit quietly and hope Upwork made the problem go away for her? EDIT: apparently she made "a ruckus on Twitter" which I did read and then forgot about. That said, this sounds pretty awful and hard to defend against. EDIT: apparently this came off as being more against the author than I intended.
- drakenot 10y ago
  For #2, I would absolutely first contact Upwork. This person in question has already shown that they are willing to steal someone's identity. This isn't some small misunderstanding that can easily be solved by contacting a reasonable person and sorting it out.
- lifeglug 10y ago
  1) When it's one of their users who is allegedly scamming someone, surely it's in their interests if only to save face, regardless of the injured party being a member or not. 2) Why wouldn't she try to approach the cause of the situation rather than the clearly unstable symptom? The guy is very clearly unhinged and is throwing around threats left and right, it doesn't seem wise to poke that hornet's nest. 3) Her plan was to take steps to make sure the situation got cleared up without escalating the situation and in a way where she's cooporating with Upwork. Not sure why you're so ready to jump on her back over what seem to be quite reasonable actions against a very unreasonable attacker.
- tunicwriter 10y ago
  #1 - The author was being impersonated by a freelancer on Upwork, and no, didn't haven't an account herself. She wasn't attacking a customer/user, she was being attacked by one. #2 - You probably said it best yourself: "reach out to the insane guy directly" ... I can't comment on whether she did or not, but it's usually best to not interact with people who are threatening you. #3 - I'd say it was anything but quiet. She raised the issue on social media and with Upwork, which were her immediate means of remediation.
SloopJon 10y ago
It sucks that someone scammed David, but he needs to grow up and pursue legal options against the scammer and/or Upwork. Meanwhile, Michelle should get a lawyer to help her get control of the Upwork account, and to stop David's libelous posts.
exolymph 10y ago
I have to admit, I'm feeling some schadenfreude re: Upwork's recent PR storm.
eam 10y ago
I use to do a lot of my freelance side work through oDesk (how Upwork use to be known as) in its early years, back around 2010-ish. At the time, I found oDesk really helpful in gaining new work. I logged thousands of hours on it. I built a really good reputation for myself on it. I actually worked with some great clients across the globe. However, as time progressed they started changing a bunch of site features and it slowly started deteriorating from there. It became less and less useful for me. Once they merged with Elance and became Upwork, it became unpleasant to use so I just quit the site altogether. In short, Upwork was great at one point then they tried to do too much with it resulting in not-so-great service.
donretag 10y ago
The registered domain on the person that was scammed/who is scamming is private: $ whois michellenickolaisenfraud.com Domain Name: MICHELLENICKOLAISENFRAUD.COM Registry Domain ID: 2048980654_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.enom.com Registrar URL: www.enom.com Updated Date: 2016-08-03T10:06:56.00Z Creation Date: 2016-08-03T17:06:00.00Z Registrar IANA ID: 48 Reseller: NAMECHEAP.COM Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://www.icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited Registry Registrant ID: Registrant Name: WHOISGUARD PROTECTED Registrant Organization: WHOISGUARD, INC. Registrant Street: P.O. BOX 0823-03411 Registrant City: PANAMA Registrant State/Province: PANAMA Expiration Date: 03-aug-2017
- x1798DE 10y ago
  Even if it weren't, it's not like whois information is validated, last time I checked, and it would be kinda irresponsible to try to "dox" someone based on just that.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
torkable 10y ago
For a pro writer that article was pretty difficult to read. I have no idea what happened. A man starts flooding her with messages and upwork didn't stop him is literally all I got out of that. I have no idea who he is or why he was so upset. I never saw her respond in the screen shots. He keeps saying that she stole money but she never responds or addresses this in the blog with a single sentence. Every message he says he wants his money and she says, "My first thought was that this was the kind of harassment that is, unfortunately, pretty par for the course for marginalized people on the internet." Are you serious? This is pretty clearly about money, good lord. It honestly looks like two morons collided on the internet and a shit show happened. Call me confused.
tzs 10y ago
I'm a bit confused over how many players are involved. Is this right? 1. The author is a freelance writer and does not have any relationship to Upwork. I'll call her Author. 2. Someone has been doing freelance work via Upwork, claiming to be the author. That person apparently has been scamming at least some people who have hired him via Upwork. I'll call this guy Scammer. 3. Someone who was scammed by Scammer to the tune of $2000 wants his money back, and is going after Author because he thinks Author is Scammer. I'll call this guy Mark. Assuming I've got this right, some things are unclear to me. For instance, has anyone told Mark that Author is not Scammer? Author seems to be mostly trying to get Upwork to deal with the problem, and Upwork is trying to dodge responsibility so I doubt they are going to notify Mark that Scammer was an identity thief and that they have no idea who Mark should be going after. (Upwork almost certainly very much wants to avoid doing anything that might make labor regulators in any jurisdiction that they may be subject to think that Upwork is actually an employer of the so-called freelancers rather than just a provider of a marketplace for freelances and those who need freelancers to hook up). Looking over all this, it occurs to me that it might be a good idea in general for people to maintain a list online of places where they have accounts that are visible to the public, with a disclaimer that any public accounts purporting to be them not listed should be treated as fake. Put this list on your website and/or main social media so that it is easily found by anyone searching on your name or the name of any of your public accounts. (If you do not want to make it easy to correlate your accounts at different places, limit this to accounts that are already easily traceable back to your real identity).
roflchoppa 10y ago
I hope that when you or your company fucks up, you take responsibility for it. Take it from me, your client would rather have you take responsibility, and also do whatever it takes to make it right for them. This appears to be a trend, where tech companies don't take Client Support seriously.... Ex. That programming streaming site.... don't be like them... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10487708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10487708
asenna 10y ago
I've been a freelancer for the past few years and am aware of the problems that Upwork has. I think the problem is that there are no better alternatives to it that fills the same space. Yes, you can market yourself by writing blogs, etc but Upwork definitely helps in getting clients and leads. I've been thinking maybe I can create something similar but try to address some of the problems now that Upwork is getting this much flak. Obviously it will be a much smaller, limited platform. But does anyone have any suggestions of what they would like to see? Something that could go in the MVP.
ivm 10y ago
Once I found a freelancer without work history on Upwork who stole my full profile description and also claimed he was working "in his own agency" called "Ubisoft". The account screamed "fake". I went to the support. They said they can't prove he copied my description and he's legit overall. So their verification system is a disaster.
dudul 10y ago
Do other websites take action when somebody creates a fake profile? As far as I know, I could create a LinkedIn profile, impersonating someone else. How would they get LinkedIn to take it down? Does such case even fall under the "stolen identity" umbrella?

146 points by CarolineW 10y ago

It seems like Upwork is getting a lot of bad press[1] in the last few days, and it seems like it is well deserved. I would certainly not use them in the future. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12773282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12773282

rabidrat 10y ago
I've used Upwork in the past. Which site should I use for freelancers going forward?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rorra 10y ago
  There are some options listed on https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer
  - j_s 10y ago
    As discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775983
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- hollaur 10y ago
  If you want marketing-related gigs, check out: https://freelanship.com https://freelanship.com. I wrote about why I created my marketplace here: https://medium.com/@laurenholliday_/10-reasons-i-created-my-own-marketplace-2c5ef9a2ca3f https://medium.com/@laurenholliday_/10-reasons-i-created-my-... If you need developers or designers, check out toptal.com

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

coldcode 10y ago

How is this a billion dollar business?

hollaur 10y ago
Such a GREAT question.

binaryapparatus 10y ago

I had very bad experience with Elance some 6-7 years ago. It was really unbelievable, job provider did tried to abuse me (cursing and mind games), I asked Elance to cancel the job and they closed my account because 'thay are losing money on closing $4000 job'. All after making few tens of thousands of successful jobs there. Crazy. I just moved on. If I understand correctly Upwork is the same team that run Elance? If that's the case it won't work well for developers, stories like this don't surprise me.

zachruss92 10y ago
eLance merged with oDesk and became UpWork - all a shoddy marketing play. I had a similar story. I ended up winning my dispute with a client, after 2 months of my account being suspended. Honestly UpWork doesn't care about freelancers, they make money on the clients; freelancers are just a replaceable commodity to them.

chinese_dan 10y ago

I don't know how anyone can actually make a living on Upwork. I tried it out and the majority of project owners wanted to pay under $10/hour with the experience of a senior developer. The site seems to attract these sorts of employers and I don't have the time or energy to wade through the garbage. It's like a global sweatshop for software developers.

vkou 10y ago
Ironically, this is exactly what many software developers are busy doing to other industries.

larrik 10y ago

There were a few parts here that I had trouble getting my head around. 1) The author doesn't actually have an Upwork account at all, right? I can see why Upwork would be slow in talking to her in that case, since she's not even a customer/user and is "attacking" a customer/user. EDIT: I meant that it wasn't clear to me whether she was a user or not for most of the article. For some reason I went in assuming she was. 2) She never tries to reach out to the insane guy directly? She just goes straight to Upwork? EDIT: clearly, this is not unreasonable, although talking to the nutcase may potentially have been faster. 3) Her plan was to sit quietly and hope Upwork made the problem go away for her? EDIT: apparently she made "a ruckus on Twitter" which I did read and then forgot about. That said, this sounds pretty awful and hard to defend against. EDIT: apparently this came off as being more against the author than I intended.

drakenot 10y ago
For #2, I would absolutely first contact Upwork. This person in question has already shown that they are willing to steal someone's identity. This isn't some small misunderstanding that can easily be solved by contacting a reasonable person and sorting it out.
lifeglug 10y ago
1) When it's one of their users who is allegedly scamming someone, surely it's in their interests if only to save face, regardless of the injured party being a member or not. 2) Why wouldn't she try to approach the cause of the situation rather than the clearly unstable symptom? The guy is very clearly unhinged and is throwing around threats left and right, it doesn't seem wise to poke that hornet's nest. 3) Her plan was to take steps to make sure the situation got cleared up without escalating the situation and in a way where she's cooporating with Upwork. Not sure why you're so ready to jump on her back over what seem to be quite reasonable actions against a very unreasonable attacker.
tunicwriter 10y ago
#1 - The author was being impersonated by a freelancer on Upwork, and no, didn't haven't an account herself. She wasn't attacking a customer/user, she was being attacked by one. #2 - You probably said it best yourself: "reach out to the insane guy directly" ... I can't comment on whether she did or not, but it's usually best to not interact with people who are threatening you. #3 - I'd say it was anything but quiet. She raised the issue on social media and with Upwork, which were her immediate means of remediation.

SloopJon 10y ago

It sucks that someone scammed David, but he needs to grow up and pursue legal options against the scammer and/or Upwork. Meanwhile, Michelle should get a lawyer to help her get control of the Upwork account, and to stop David's libelous posts.

exolymph 10y ago

I have to admit, I'm feeling some schadenfreude re: Upwork's recent PR storm.

eam 10y ago

I use to do a lot of my freelance side work through oDesk (how Upwork use to be known as) in its early years, back around 2010-ish. At the time, I found oDesk really helpful in gaining new work. I logged thousands of hours on it. I built a really good reputation for myself on it. I actually worked with some great clients across the globe. However, as time progressed they started changing a bunch of site features and it slowly started deteriorating from there. It became less and less useful for me. Once they merged with Elance and became Upwork, it became unpleasant to use so I just quit the site altogether. In short, Upwork was great at one point then they tried to do too much with it resulting in not-so-great service.

donretag 10y ago

The registered domain on the person that was scammed/who is scamming is private: $ whois michellenickolaisenfraud.com Domain Name: MICHELLENICKOLAISENFRAUD.COM Registry Domain ID: 2048980654_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.enom.com Registrar URL: www.enom.com Updated Date: 2016-08-03T10:06:56.00Z Creation Date: 2016-08-03T17:06:00.00Z Registrar IANA ID: 48 Reseller: NAMECHEAP.COM Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://www.icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited Registry Registrant ID: Registrant Name: WHOISGUARD PROTECTED Registrant Organization: WHOISGUARD, INC. Registrant Street: P.O. BOX 0823-03411 Registrant City: PANAMA Registrant State/Province: PANAMA Expiration Date: 03-aug-2017

x1798DE 10y ago
Even if it weren't, it's not like whois information is validated, last time I checked, and it would be kinda irresponsible to try to "dox" someone based on just that.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

torkable 10y ago

For a pro writer that article was pretty difficult to read. I have no idea what happened. A man starts flooding her with messages and upwork didn't stop him is literally all I got out of that. I have no idea who he is or why he was so upset. I never saw her respond in the screen shots. He keeps saying that she stole money but she never responds or addresses this in the blog with a single sentence. Every message he says he wants his money and she says, "My first thought was that this was the kind of harassment that is, unfortunately, pretty par for the course for marginalized people on the internet." Are you serious? This is pretty clearly about money, good lord. It honestly looks like two morons collided on the internet and a shit show happened. Call me confused.

tzs 10y ago

I'm a bit confused over how many players are involved. Is this right? 1. The author is a freelance writer and does not have any relationship to Upwork. I'll call her Author. 2. Someone has been doing freelance work via Upwork, claiming to be the author. That person apparently has been scamming at least some people who have hired him via Upwork. I'll call this guy Scammer. 3. Someone who was scammed by Scammer to the tune of $2000 wants his money back, and is going after Author because he thinks Author is Scammer. I'll call this guy Mark. Assuming I've got this right, some things are unclear to me. For instance, has anyone told Mark that Author is not Scammer? Author seems to be mostly trying to get Upwork to deal with the problem, and Upwork is trying to dodge responsibility so I doubt they are going to notify Mark that Scammer was an identity thief and that they have no idea who Mark should be going after. (Upwork almost certainly very much wants to avoid doing anything that might make labor regulators in any jurisdiction that they may be subject to think that Upwork is actually an employer of the so-called freelancers rather than just a provider of a marketplace for freelances and those who need freelancers to hook up). Looking over all this, it occurs to me that it might be a good idea in general for people to maintain a list online of places where they have accounts that are visible to the public, with a disclaimer that any public accounts purporting to be them not listed should be treated as fake. Put this list on your website and/or main social media so that it is easily found by anyone searching on your name or the name of any of your public accounts. (If you do not want to make it easy to correlate your accounts at different places, limit this to accounts that are already easily traceable back to your real identity).

roflchoppa 10y ago

I hope that when you or your company fucks up, you take responsibility for it. Take it from me, your client would rather have you take responsibility, and also do whatever it takes to make it right for them. This appears to be a trend, where tech companies don't take Client Support seriously.... Ex. That programming streaming site.... don't be like them... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10487708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10487708

asenna 10y ago

I've been a freelancer for the past few years and am aware of the problems that Upwork has. I think the problem is that there are no better alternatives to it that fills the same space. Yes, you can market yourself by writing blogs, etc but Upwork definitely helps in getting clients and leads. I've been thinking maybe I can create something similar but try to address some of the problems now that Upwork is getting this much flak. Obviously it will be a much smaller, limited platform. But does anyone have any suggestions of what they would like to see? Something that could go in the MVP.

ivm 10y ago

Once I found a freelancer without work history on Upwork who stole my full profile description and also claimed he was working "in his own agency" called "Ubisoft". The account screamed "fake". I went to the support. They said they can't prove he copied my description and he's legit overall. So their verification system is a disaster.

dudul 10y ago

Do other websites take action when somebody creates a fake profile? As far as I know, I could create a LinkedIn profile, impersonating someone else. How would they get LinkedIn to take it down? Does such case even fall under the "stolen identity" umbrella?