
Someone stole my identity on Upwork and all I got was this lousy blog post - CarolineW
https://medium.com/@_chelleshock/someone-stole-my-identity-on-upwork-and-all-i-got-was-this-lousy-blog-post-d63aab2b4c90#.uz3kk8tm7
======
binaryapparatus
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
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.

------
fridaa
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
I've used Upwork in the past. Which site should I use for freelancers going
forward?

~~~
rorra
There are some options listed on
[https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer](https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer)

~~~
j_s
As discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775983](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775983)

------
tzs
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).

------
eam
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
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
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.

------
larrik
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.

~~~
tunicwriter
#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.

------
asenna
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.

------
coldcode
How is this a billion dollar business?

~~~
hollaur
Such a GREAT question.

------
roflchoppa
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)

------
ivm
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
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?

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

------
chinese_dan
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
Ironically, this is exactly what many software developers are busy doing to
other industries.

------
SloopJon
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.

