Possible scam from Buyer?

[melaniedelan789]

Hi,  I've newly set myself up as a proof reader on Fiverr.  I got my first job last week, but I'm a bit worried the buyer may be trying to scam me.  As I said I'm new so forgive me if I don't understand how things work here yet.

Firstly, the buyer sent through a Word.doc. they didn't say much about the job, just said they wanted it correcting with tracked changes. I wasn't thinking at the time about scams, so I just opened it, I've since scanned it and haven't found anything malicious in it.  When I opened the doc, it was the terms and conditions and privacy policy for a website, which seem to have been badly translated from a non-English language.  I kind of thought this was a strange thing for someone to want proofreading, but I figured a job's a job.

The Buyer's account has been open since 2014, and has good feedback from 5 experienced sellers. Their last feedback was 6 months ago. But I was wondering if it was possible for experienced users accounts to be hacked?

Another thing that's confusing me is that the buyer is listed as based in the UK, as am I, but their time zone is showing as a completely different time to mine.

I looked up the name of the website the job was for, but I couldn't find any information on this anywhere, not even a companies registration.  It has a pretty generic name. I googled the name of the person, and couldn't find anyone with their name.

I finished the job they sent me, delivered it and they didn't comment on it or acknowledge it, but then the next morning they sent through 3 more jobs, pretty similar to the first but different terms and conditions for different websites. Then I looked around and found some people have had scammers send corrupted files to them, with a macro activation to harm their computer.

I have macros disabled automatically in Word anyway, but I wondered if there were any other ways a hacker could use a word doc to harm my computer? I have scanned the files with Mcafee and Malwarebytes and found nothing wrong with them.  But something about this seems strange.

I guess I wondered if someone with experience of proofreading could tell me:

1) Is it common for people to request website terms and conditions be proof read?

2) Is it common for people to work from different time zones from where their account is registered?

3) Is there some common scam going on here that I should be aware of?

4) should I report this to Fiverr just to be sure?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give.

 

[imagination7413]

4 hours ago, melaniedelan789 said:

1) Is it common for people to request website terms and conditions be proof read?

That is odd. 

The only explanation I can think of off the top of my head, is for a database kind of thing. Or localization, but that doesn't make sense with the scenario you've presented. Even Fiverr stated in it's ToS that: "The original language of these Terms of Service, as well as all other texts throughout the Site, is English. Fiverr makes this translation available for convenience only. In case of conflicts between the original English version and any translation, the English version shall prevail."

4 hours ago, melaniedelan789 said:

2) Is it common for people to work from different time zones from where their account is registered?

That does happen, especially for 'Digital Nomads', but no it's not common. 

4 hours ago, melaniedelan789 said:

3) Is there some common scam going on here that I should be aware of?

I've not personally heard of any, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. You said you looked up the first one, did you try to  look up any of the others?

4 hours ago, melaniedelan789 said:

4) should I report this to Fiverr just to be sure?

If you like, you can open a ticket with your concerns (or for advice), but it'll likely not lead anywhere unless they detect something odd on the backend.