Handling spam messages

[Kesha]

7 hours ago, dereck_s said:

You want to fix spam? Make every new account cost 1-5 bucks (Fiver makes more money and spam dies overnight).

The reason why spam is so bad is because someone can make a ton of free accounts and spam nonsense before the system catches them. I've had "Pro buyers" give me spam before and they hadn't even made a purchase so it might help to actually have ... literally any requirements to have a pro buyer. A new seller might see a pro buyer and feel more safe clicking their links or interacting with them.

Great point @dereck_s! I have passed this along too!

[priyank_mod]

15 minutes ago, Kesha said:

Great point @dereck_s! I have passed this along too!

This amount can even be refunded to them as discount, when they place their 1st order. 

[awoyemivictor01]

am new here and the first message I received was a spam message. this is so unfortunate 

[nitro86]

13 hours ago, dereck_s said:

You want to fix spam? Make every new account cost 1-5 bucks (Fiver makes more money and spam dies overnight).

The reason why spam is so bad is because someone can make a ton of free accounts and spam nonsense before the system catches them. I've had "Pro buyers" give me spam before and they hadn't even made a purchase so it might help to actually have ... literally any requirements to have a pro buyer. A new seller might see a pro buyer and feel more safe clicking their links or interacting with them.

It is a great idea to terminate/kill almost 99% of the spam messages by charging fees, scammers hates to pay, but they love to take other people hard earned money for no return.

This approach is really good IF Fiverr at the highest of the freelance mountain (and they are) + there is no one near to compete, this could solve a huge problem by creating another, I mean who could pay first to just get access to a freelance market without considering alternatives?, And then start spending?. specially if they've never heard of Fiver before.

Some freelance marketplace will rise up and take advantage of the situation by marketing against the core idea of fighting spams, example: Are you paying to just hire a freelancer? Sign Up It's FREE and so on, this could limit Fiverr ability for growth overtime and they know it.

The bright side is most of the seller will work comfortably with trust anticipating a new message as a new lead not spam and they will reconsider leaving the platform 10 times before making a decision.

The question is: Will Fiverr really consider locking the door like an ATM to protect its sellers?

Apologize for the long comment, I'm not hear to argue.

Edited June 6 by nitro86
typo

[dereck_s]

2 hours ago, nitro86 said:

It is a great idea to terminate/kill almost 99% of the spam messages by charging fees, scammers hates to pay, but they love to take other people hard earned money for no return.

This approach is really good IF Fiverr at the highest of the freelance mountain (and they are) + there is no one near to compete, this could solve a huge problem by creating another, I mean who could pay first to just get access to a freelance market without considering alternatives?, And then start spending?. specially if they've never heard of Fiver before.

Some freelance marketplace will rise up and take advantage of the situation by marketing against the core idea of fighting spams, example: Are you paying to just hire a freelancer? Sign Up It's FREE and so on, this could limit Fiverr ability for growth overtime and they know it.

The bright side is most of the seller will work comfortably with trust anticipating a new message as a new lead not spam and they will reconsider leaving the platform 10 times before making a decision.

The question is: Will Fiverr really consider locking the door like an ATM to protect its sellers?

Apologize for the long comment, I'm not hear to argue.

So the only 2 heavily marketed competitors are Upwork and Freelancer. Both of which require you to pay to communicate to a potential buyer. In some situations you can get a certain amount of their tokens for free for example upwork gives you 10 for free each month but that barely covers the cost of a single message so you couldn't spam as a seller. For the buyers anyone can see info about the buyer such as if there information and payment info has been verified. 

The point is the other 2 real alternatives give you additional info to self assess if the buyer is a scam or charge money preventing the scam in the first place.

[nitro86]

11 hours ago, dereck_s said:

The point is the other 2 real alternatives give you additional info to self assess if the buyer is a scam or charge money preventing the scam in the first place.

Yes, any of those could make the scammers journey pointless from the first hour without a real impact on real buyers and sellers.

If Fiverr didn't implemented this in the near future, this could mean that Fiverr is making money from it.

A marketplace with open windows, if the lock is placed on these windows, they could lose a percentage due to a small lazy group who flee the site once asked for a verification.

It's really a percentage game, are they worth losing? if you asked me, if less than 5% of the overall new joins in 1 year spend on their first day are lost in exchange for safety and peace of mind? Yes.

[sadiajamal745]

Hi, I am Sadia. I have been freelancing for the past 5 years and recently joined Fiverr in May 2024. I received three different scam messages and reported them to Fiverr. Is it correct to report scams to Fiverr?

[Kesha]

4 hours ago, sadiajamal745 said:

Hi, I am Sadia. I have been freelancing for the past 5 years and recently joined Fiverr in May 2024. I received three different scam messages and reported them to Fiverr. Is it correct to report scams to Fiverr?

Hi! Yes, please continue to report any spam messages as they come. This will help us crack down on the issue. 

[katakatica]

38 minutes ago, Kesha said:

Hi! Yes, please continue to report any spam messages as they come. This will help us crack down on the issue. 

I'm sorry to be so direct but this is getting out of hand. 

There's at least 5 new 'is this fake'/ I got scammed' posts daily and that's only people who find the forum.

Is there anything we can do to help? I made a post but I know it was still too much writing likely. It's just scary to see such an amount of people losing money (yes, they should be smarter but still...)

[secrettea]

Honestly I created my first gig less than 24 hours ago and I received 84 spam messages. Sometimes it looks real and I engage just to find out it’s spam. I am mentally exhausted and I clearly did not come here to signal spam all day long.

Does it stop? Is there something done about that?

[rosed_an]

I am new here. I'm also getting spam messages. It looks real but sometimes getting spam notification. How can identify spam and real messages in inbox?

How can stop the spam messages?

[katakatica]

6 hours ago, secrettea said:

Honestly I created my first gig less than 24 hours ago and I received 84 spam messages. Sometimes it looks real and I engage just to find out it’s spam. I am mentally exhausted and I clearly did not come here to signal spam all day long.

Does it stop? Is there something done about that?

It does stop eventually once you manage to get some orders I think. As a TRS I still get a good amount of it but not 84 a day! 

I think new sellers (and new gigs) are targeted because they look the easiest targets...

[catwriter]

15 hours ago, secrettea said:

Honestly I created my first gig less than 24 hours ago and I received 84 spam messages.

I got the impression that translators seem to get more spam than others.

[marketer_mili]

I'm also new here I got a spam  message but I avoided him and i didn't reply any more messages.

[abuhasan420]

Fake or spam messages are a big challenge for new freelancing.  Because newcomers do not understand this easily.  That's why newbies are getting cheated in various ways.

[malkaruxd]

I created my account last night and today I already got my first message - well, not from buyer, from scam spam.

The sender have the "SupportFivver" name in it and they first message only one word before sending QR code to "give us ur credentials".

The country from where they are appears as Netherlands and the date the account created JUST as mine, last night.

 

 

[nitro86]

2 minutes ago, malkaruxd said:

The sender have the "SupportFivver" name

@Kesha How this stupid scammer manged to get what's supposed to be a negative keywords in the filter system (If there is any)? Could anyone register as AdminFiverr too? This reveals so much.

Suggest to the tech team to include some cocktails:

Fivvre
Fivvrr
Fivrer
Fivrerr
Fiveer
Fiveerr
Fivere
 

I don't believe what I'm saying now.

[spanishwithnico]

Is this an scam, i was about to scan the qr?

[anika_touhid]

I'm new to selling on Fiverr and have a question about fees. Does Fiverr charge a fee every time we receive scam messages? Since my gig went live, I've only encountered scammers. I'm concerned about paying fees for these interactions while trying to make a living.

[vickiespencer]

On 6/10/2024 at 12:16 PM, anika_touhid said:

Does Fiverr charge a fee every time we receive scam messages?

You are only charged a fee if you receive a scam message through a gig you promote. 

[ratanml]

Same issue Happened to me I spammed

Quote

 

[calgarypix]

I've been a seller for about 10 days and gotten two spam messages, one for t e l e g r a m and one from "Fiverr Support with a like to fiverr.confirm...... 

So that's normal here?

[drshahidur]

New Sellers like me are the most confused & vulnerable one. It is hard to detect it as a spam. So I hope fiverr would do something more useful to protect us from these messages. 

[adsgenmedia]

Thanks for sharing this valuable information. In the last few months, I have received a few spam messages and I ignored them all.

[khayrul836]

Thanks for sharing this informative post! It's helpful to have all these spam red flags in one place. Especially the part about Fiverr customer support never contacting you through your inbox - that's a good one to remember. I've always wondered about that.