How to Identify Scammers on Freelancing Sites
Freelancing has recently become a mainstream employment opportunity, with platforms attracting millions of freelancers and clients. As with any flourishing market, scammers have set out to pillage freelancing sites.
What started as a unicorn occurrence has quickly grown rife and threatens to overrun the once noble industry. Clients are on edge and untrusting, while freelancers work with their hearts in their hands, terrified of the possibility of falling prey to a convincing scam. This article discusses freelancing scams and how to identify and avoid them. Here’s what you should look for:
1. Risqué Links
Phishing links have been present on the internet for many years. Receiving links in messages is pretty standard for freelancing sites, which makes such scams all the harder to detect. However, with some scrutiny, you should be able to identify them.
Whether it’s a repeat client or a new one, you could save yourself the heartache by usingwebsites that check the safety of links. These sites help to unwind abridged links and show the final destination of every entry, allowing you to decipher whether you have a scammer on your hands.
2. Third-Party Communication
Freelancing platforms typically urge their users to restrict their interactions within the confines of the site. However, clients and freelancers have flouted this rule over time, creating a loophole for scammers.
Despite freelancing sites providing the required communication tools: messaging, text, and video—users sometimes prefer to take their business off-platform. Scammers are quick to join the bandwagon by:
3. Huge Financial Incentives
It’s not what you want to hear, but many people are on freelancing sites to get bargain deals. Can’t get the graphics shop down the street to do a design for cheap? Findwebsites that help connect you to freelance graphics designers. Every freelancer in the business long enough knows that high-paying clients are often far between. So, seeing any of the following pointers may be an indication of a scammer:
You may also want to see what types of scams are most prevalent on a site like Upwork. This video details some of the ones for web developers.
4. Reviews
Freelancing is built on reviews. The more positive, glowing reviews you get, the better your chances are of attracting clients. However, did you know that reviews aren’t always organic?
There is a black market for freelancers and clients to purchase reviews. How it works is that the latter creates a fictional gig, accepts the former, and goes through with the process. Then, they reward themselves with glowing reviews, automatically making clients and freelancers appear more appealing to their respective markets. While there is no way to tell reviews apart, look out for new accounts with stunning reviews in a few days of operation.
5. Multiple Requirements
Some things automatically make clients appalling, even if they aren’t necessarily scammers, the chief of which is multiple requirements. It’s not unreasonable for clients to expect you to be a writer and editor. However, it’s a red flag when they want several unconnected roles simultaneously. So, feel free to boycott any offering that wants you to be an editor, videographer, programmer, and aviator in the same breath.
Often, these clients offer miserly wages with the promise of higher incentives upon completion of the job, which is rather weird. Worse still, when you try protesting the workload, they come up with convincing reasons why you are right for the job. Don’t fall for their gaslighting. Finally, with many requirements, they easily slip in phishing links or viruses masked as files.
Stay Safe and Avoid Freelancing Scams With These Tips
It’s enough hard work being a freelancer without worrying about scammers breathing down your neck every other day. While you might expect these freelancing sites to clamp down on security measures as hard as they are keen on their percentage of your income, they seem to only focus on freelancers, while scammers go scot-free due to the low barriers for entry for clients.
These are a few pointers derived from freelancers' experiences and how they dealt with scammers in their space. If the platforms don’t respond with agile measures, you owe it to yourself to stay safe.
Are you considering quitting your job to become a freelancer? Freelancing can be full of pitfalls and risks. Here are some you should know.
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