Online scams have been on the rise in 2022 and Upwork scams isn’t immune to this phenomenon in a recent article. Upwork stated that in recent months we have seen increased attempts by scammers to impersonate legitimate clients while we have been tracking this closely on Upwork and have moved swiftly to mitigate such risks the FBI has noted the rising prevalence of these concerns across multiple sites that host job postings I will be linking this article down below since they do explain some of the red flags and to avoid and report them to avoid Upwork scams you Upwork profile must be approved.
4 Upwork Scams
Now we are talking about four different types of scams like these have been super popular so hopefully this helps you avoid them and helps you keep safe while still using Upwork scam number one is probably the most common and that’s the pay a fee scam essentially, they will start by obviously asking you to take the conversation outside of Upwork whether it’s telegram or WhatsApp or whatever and they usually promise you a higher-than-average pay or like something.
Scam Number One
That’s so simple that’s almost too good to be true and then what they do is they ask you okay you’ll get paid three thousand dollars for this simple task but you need to pay a fee to prove that you’re serious or to help process payment or any like that this fee amount is Usually dependent on the project that you choose they will usually present you with different options on a pdf and obviously higher to pay you guessed it the higher the fee we have seen this happen where they ask for the fee right away but I’ve also seen them ask for the fee after you have done the work so you kind of feel trapped to pay them which is awful so please don’t fall for this.
Scam Number Two
The scam number two is the id card scam this is similar to the pay a fee scam and they’ll often ask you to pay for an ID card or a library card in order to be able to the work for them and this card always seems to cost fifty dollars.
They’ll give you a number of options to pay for it and then you either never hear from them again or they’ll keep trying to get as much money from you as they possibly can. Legitimate client will never ask you to pay for anything. If anything, they should be the once paying you not the other way around.
Scam Number Three
The pay for supply scam this one’s an oldie but apparently a goodie because it seems to still be going around after how many years like it used to be going around when Skype was a thing so that tells you and this one is actually important to mention because it can be easier to fall for because once again like they promise you exorbitant amount of money for something that’s apparently super simple but then what they do is they send a check in the mail for the quote-unquote first payment that is actually even higher than the agreed amount and.
They say that the remaining amount will be for you to pay for supplies like a computer software whatever and then they catch here that you’ll have to pay for supplies from their vendor and you’ll have to transfer them the money in advance and again this may seems harmless because they’ve literally already sent you the money right, wrong that check will actually end up bouncing but you’ll likely only realize it after you sent them the money for supplies and again at that time they’ll either vanish or block you in some sort of way.
Scam Number Four
Now scam number four this one I’ve seen quite a lot recently and that’s the Facebook marketplace house scam. Once again, they offer you super good super tempting pay for apparently a very simple task to lost properties on Facebook marketplace and give out to their contact info the scammer’s contact info now what’s the scam you ask well you may not be paying the scammer directly but you’ll actually be helping them scam other people that’s right the houses you’re listing they don’t own them yet.
They’re asking all the people that contact them for a deposit in order to rent the house making money off of those people.
Honestly, we don’t know if they’ll end up paying you for the work what you do but even if they do, do you really want to be part of a crime and even risk losing your Facebook account I don’t know if that’s worth it.
The first red flag is that they try to get you off of Upwork as soon as they can. This is because they truly just don’t want to get caught and their account will end up getting deleted anyway sooner or later. The second red flag is it’s just seems too good to be your guts probably right you know the drill if it seems too good to be true if it’s too easy and it’s too good of a pay it likely is so trust you got on this one.
This third red flag is they ask you to pay them once again never ever pay to do work for someone. one thing is to pay for Upwork’s own fees and that’s not something that the client needs to ask you that’s something automatically taken off of your earnings. If the client is asking you for a fee just run the other way for a thread flag is kind of like the second one but it’s Project and the whole thing seems a little bit off and again if you have a bad feeling about a job don’t do it. If you want to learn about car insurance click here.
