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Watering hole for scammers


donaldfaulknor

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But, these sites never work anyways

Possibly true for you, not true for a lot of people. And I mean both sites. Such a strange generalization.

I do agree that the spamming/scamming should be dealt with more effectively. The issue has gotten out of hand. I recommended fiverr to two friends of mine, both didn’t stick around thanks to Lee from China’s efforts.

I don’t think fiverr fully understands how much of an “image” problem this has really become.

Fiverr has so many new sellers constantly coming in that Lee might actually be doing fiverr a favor by culling the weak from the herd. Sometimes what looks like a problem is actually a gift.

I don’t think getting spammed with scam attempts would discourage me from using the site.

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When you get a professional with 15+ years of experience who’ve worked on other freelance sites and comes here after on a recommendation to get bombarded by sketchy messages (and those messages only), it’s not a good look.

Fiverr is a hard sell as is because of its communication rules and order first/ask questions later mechanics. I do agree it’s not for everyone but given an overall effort of getting more “serious” sellers, some serious action against this silly stuff wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect.

Lee targets me in waves every few months with a few messages so I personally find them and their evil little schemes adorable but new sellers can get 10+/a day from what I’m being told. That’s bad comparing to any other platform out there.

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When you get a professional with 15+ years of experience who’ve worked on other freelance sites and comes here after on a recommendation to get bombarded by sketchy messages (and those messages only), it’s not a good look.

Fiverr is a hard sell as is because of its communication rules and order first/ask questions later mechanics. I do agree it’s not for everyone but given an overall effort of getting more “serious” sellers, some serious action against this silly stuff wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect.

Lee targets me in waves every few months with a few messages so I personally find them and their evil little schemes adorable but new sellers can get 10+/a day from what I’m being told. That’s bad comparing to any other platform out there.

I would actually welcome it and see it as something that most would be discouraged by, but not me. I kind of like it. The ones who stick it out have perseverance. I’ve been through much harder things than that.

Someone who decides to leave due to that wants things to be too easy. It’s good that they find out right away that this is going to take some struggle.

Wait until some real problems hit them. I sat up until 4 A.M. night before last waiting for the bug where a buyer couldn’t put in her requirements and start her order was blocking her order, and it finally got fixed. She would have left if not for me sticking it out all night with her. Anyone else would have just cancelled the order.

There have been a few times on this site where most people would have given up and left. I stuck to it above all odds, and here I still am today.

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I just joined today. The second message I received from a “Cassy Braswell”. Claimed to be HR person for a company called “Wood Bows”. Company is legit, she is not. She asked me to do an interview on Google Hangouts. Asked me some typical serious HR questions but I started to notice that she had a lot of misspellings. Then she asked about my cell phone provider. Next question was about whether or not I had a credit card and a bank account (reason? so they could pay me). Then she asked what bank I use. Finally on high alert, I went to the company LinkedIn page. This woman is not the HR person. Further searching showed no info on her whatsoever. I asked her why. She stopped responding. Sad to see that scammers would put people looking for legitimate work through all of this. Thankfully I am not so stupid as to have given her any of my info, beyond my email address. I also reported her and blocked her. So beware if you get a message from “Cassy Braswell”.

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I just joined today. The second message I received from a “Cassy Braswell”. Claimed to be HR person for a company called “Wood Bows”. Company is legit, she is not. She asked me to do an interview on Google Hangouts. Asked me some typical serious HR questions but I started to notice that she had a lot of misspellings. Then she asked about my cell phone provider. Next question was about whether or not I had a credit card and a bank account (reason? so they could pay me). Then she asked what bank I use. Finally on high alert, I went to the company LinkedIn page. This woman is not the HR person. Further searching showed no info on her whatsoever. I asked her why. She stopped responding. Sad to see that scammers would put people looking for legitimate work through all of this. Thankfully I am not so stupid as to have given her any of my info, beyond my email address. I also reported her and blocked her. So beware if you get a message from “Cassy Braswell”.

Thankfully I am not so stupid as to have given her any of my info, beyond my email address.

This is strictly against Fiverr’s TOS and could get you into serious trouble, being the least, a warning.

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I’ve only been a seller for one day, and so far, I have had 4 messages. Each message (yes, 100% of them) were scammers. Note, I did not say “spammers”. These 4 messages received were of people trying to gain access to my local computer. Probably in hopes of stealing my credit card numbers and bank information. I am already to the point where I do NOT recommend ANYONE to use Fiverr. You’re unsafe here. And I figured that out on day 1.

I am already to the point where I do NOT recommend ANYONE to use Fiverr. You’re unsafe here. And I figured that out on day 1.

Yeah, I had the same issue with email back in 2002 so I haven’t used an email address since.

A lovely model lady on Facebook who wanted to marry me turned out to be fake too so I deleted Facebook (beautiful engagement ring is available on eBay if anyone is interested).

Don’t even get me started on what happened when I inquired to some locals about buying the Brooklyn Bridge - suffice to say I won’t go back to New York until the Mayor guarantees me that people won’t try to sell something they don’t own.

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(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

You didn’t know it is against the ToS to share your email address?

If someone has your email address, you could easily use Fiverr to do business off of Fiverr. Why would Fiverr allow you to do things that would make that possible?

Read the ToS. You’re lucky you haven’t been banned. You agree to the ToS when you sign on, so you should know it.

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you should have been able to see a warning on screen when typing “email” or the “@” sign.

Similar warnings appear when you type “review” or other related words…

you should have been able to see a warning on screen when typing “email” or the “@” sign.

Similar warnings appear when you type “review” or other related words…

We’re not talking about this type of warning, @cristiscutaru. Those are mere alerts for you to avoid stepping in mud.

We’re speaking about the warnings CS gives to your account. Those warnings are for life and, depending on the severity of the violation, could mean a ban.

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I am sorry I ever posted here. Some mean and judgmental people. I won’t make that mistake again.

Just ignore the locals. Fiverr is like the virus in the movie 28-Days Later. It makes us all rabid after a few weeks. I’m actually surprised no one threw a chair at you. 😉

That’s a joke.

Maybe it would be best to just start over. It is also a good idea to read TOS. There are a lot of things you can get banned for on Fiverr that you would not think twice about when conducting business in other contexts.

The basics are:

  • No swapping of personal contact information.
  • Never invite people you work with to leave you a review.
  • Do not create multiple accounts
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But, these sites never work anyways

Possibly true for you, not true for a lot of people. And I mean both sites. Such a strange generalization.

I do agree that the spamming/scamming should be dealt with more effectively. The issue has gotten out of hand. I recommended fiverr to two friends of mine, both didn’t stick around thanks to Lee from China’s efforts.

I don’t think fiverr fully understands how much of an “image” problem this has really become.

It’s just frustrating. 2 days in and I got 7 replies. All from scammers. Every single reply.

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Here’s part of the problem I have with sites like Fiverr. Scammers message constantly (way more than legit people). Their messages are EASILY identified as scam or spam. Their message goes through. I tell them, I’m not interested in your scam, and MY message is flagged? lol. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

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(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

I came to the forum to help identify a scammer.

Naming and shaming isn’t allowed on the forum. You can report the scammer’s message, and if you wish, you can also report that scammer to Fiverr’s Trust & Safety team (although, in a case like the one you’ve described, the scammer usually gets removed from Fiverr quickly even without submitting a ticket to Customer Support).

But all you focus on is my apparent mistake.

Because that apparent mistake can get you permanently banned from Fiverr (if you get caught breaking the rules, not reading the rules doesn’t work as an excuse). Why wouldn’t she warn an honest seller that she should read the rules and avoid getting banned?

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(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

I came to the forum to help identify a scammer. But all you focus on is my apparent mistake. Congratulations to you.

There are some really grumpy commenters here (I’m not talking about anyone in particular, that’s just my experience) that LOVE pointing out when people are wrong. I think they really look forward to it tbh. The forums for the most part are pretty friendly so I hope you stick around.

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I doubt it. I imagine I won’t get one single sale from Fiverr. I’ll bet, three months down the road, I will have had 800 scam messages and ZERO legit messages.

Honestly I doubt that… When I started out, I too got these messages, but Fiverr always catches them as spam and blocks them for me. The few messages they don’t block, I can easily delete. I would not go as far as to say you will get zero legit messages… as long as you have good gigs that buyers are interested in that is…

Agree with you though, that there are too many of these messages and Fiverr needs to work on their site for sure

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Honestly I doubt that… When I started out, I too got these messages, but Fiverr always catches them as spam and blocks them for me. The few messages they don’t block, I can easily delete. I would not go as far as to say you will get zero legit messages… as long as you have good gigs that buyers are interested in that is…

Agree with you though, that there are too many of these messages and Fiverr needs to work on their site for sure

This. I get a couple, but I don’t see the problem. Block and move on. It’s not a big deal.

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Honestly, I don’t remember. I know it came from Google Documents. But, even if it was an “image”, a big company like Fiverr surely can invest in software to read words from an image file.

Maybe I should work directly for Fiverr. I know exactly how to fix it lol. I’m a programmer and that’s what I do best.

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I don’t think so. The purpose of the information in the document was to trick people into giving them FULL ACCESS to their computer. Besides, the message was readable directly on Google Docs and Google Docs takes security measures. If I had DOWNLOADED it, that may have been a different story. But it was readable directly from Google Docs.

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I don’t think so. The purpose of the information in the document was to trick people into giving them FULL ACCESS to their computer. Besides, the message was readable directly on Google Docs and Google Docs takes security measures. If I had DOWNLOADED it, that may have been a different story. But it was readable directly from Google Docs.

So maybe it was a browser hijack attempt. I actually got one from a link on this forum a month ago although it was lousy because I could open another browser and it went away.

A big red sign said THIS IS MICROSOF* SECURITY AND YOU HAVE A SERIOUS VIRUS. CALL THIS NUMBER TO HAVE IT REMOVED.

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