Why does fiverr still let people pretend to be fiverr and try to rip off sellers?

[carineb]

[carineb]

200 profiles 😱

https://www.fiverr.com/search/users?query=fiverr&search_in=everywhere&source=no-results&page=1

[catwriter]

This is worse than I thought, it looks like it's possible to use "fiverr" as a part of a username, not just the display name.

@Lena, does Fiverr know about this, and is it allowed to have "fiverr" as a part of someone's username?

[katakatica]

27 minutes ago, catwriter said:

This is worse than I thought, it looks like it's possible to use "fiverr" as a part of a username, not just the display name.

@Lena, does Fiverr know about this, and is it allowed to have "fiverr" as a part of someone's username?

I wonder if part of the issue now is that technically, usernames can't be changed (like display names). I'm sure it WOULD be possible to just ask people to change them (or block them if they seem untrustworthy but it could be trickier. 
(still quite an issue.)

[uk1000]

The 200 profiles are of sellers though. It's usually the 'buyers' (ie. ones without a gig) that create "Support" display names and imitate Fiverr for scams.

There's no way of knowing the number of those buyers easily as they're not searchable like sellers are.

I haven't checked all those sellers but maybe they could have stopped people using Fiverr recently (I saw a couple from this year but those no longer exist).

Also now new sellers have to use verification to join, so it will be harder for them to pretend to be Fiverr Support than users who aren't sellers.

Edited June 20 by uk1000

[carineb]

And this one who claims to be a Fiverr Success Manager and is a "Fiverr pro client", but has no badge to prove that he's really part of the Fiverr team. 🤡
I don't know if he's really a Fiverr member or a scammer. Anyway, he was supposed to get back to me the following week. A month later, I haven't heard anything back...

[uk1000]

20 minutes ago, carineb said:

And this one who claims to be a Fiverr Success Manager and is a "Fiverr pro client", but has no badge to prove that he's really part of the Fiverr team

You could check with CS if you wanted to check the user is legit. He's from Israel which is where Fiverr staff often is. But they should have some badge or something like you say, like the Fiverr logo next to their name.

Edited June 20 by uk1000

[carineb]

4 minutes ago, uk1000 said:

You could check with CS if you wanted to check the user is legit. He's from Israel which is where Fiverr staff often is. But they should have some badge or something like you say, like the Fiverr logo next their name.

Is it normal to ask CS for confirmation every time you receive suspicious messages?

Not long ago, I was receiving more than one suspicious message per hour (between 20 and 30 per day) for almost a month. I think Fiverr CS would have blocked me if I'd sent them a message every hour...

[mateusbl]

I got one today, @Kesha should move it to staff is so easy to be fixed, just need block these names for regular users "Support" "Fiverr Staff" "Fiverr Team" "Fiverr Support"

[navid_zafar]

Got this one today, though I reported and blocked immediately.

[Kesha]

1 hour ago, carineb said:

And this one who claims to be a Fiverr Success Manager and is a "Fiverr pro client", but has no badge to prove that he's really part of the Fiverr team. 🤡
I don't know if he's really a Fiverr member or a scammer. Anyway, he was supposed to get back to me the following week. A month later, I haven't heard anything back...

Hi there! Assaf is one of our Fiverr employees so please rest assured about that.

We are well aware of the issue of users utilizing Fiverr in their usernames, and our teams are currently working diligently to help eliminate the issue. 

[carineb]

1 minute ago, Kesha said:

Hi there! Assaf is one of our Fiverr employees so please rest assured about that.

From what I can see, Assaf is a "pro client". There are many "pro clients" who send us scams!
What makes Assaf different from the scammers? Nothing at all!

Isn't there a "Fiverr team" badge or some other badge that proves this isn't a scam?!

[creative_howl]

Just wow!!! I feel like there are more and more scammers popping up lately. 

Also, 200+ profiles containing "fiverr" in their username??? lol, that's bad.

 

Anyway... my two cents about this whole debacle for what it's worth:

1. Internet scamming is not a new thing. It has been here for a long long time, and it won't go away anytime soon. Therefore, The staff could prepare some kind of an awareness campaign to protect sellers as well as buyers. By now they should have a good understanding of how these scammers operate. So educating people is a great way to combat this situation (It's not like they don't have the resources. A carefully structured YouTube video will do the trick).

2. These guys must use bots to send these messages in bulk with different accounts using randomized intervals to avoid spam detection (hope they're not sending out these messages manually lol). However, They could perhaps look into buyer-side accounts that are sending out large amounts of messages to sellers without any orders being placed. It feels like buyer accounts have fewer security restrictions than seller accounts, which is understandable because you gotta make it easier for anyone to come in and buy without any weird restrictions. Finding the right balance is gonna be tough.

3. There's not gonna be a one-size-fits-all solution to this problem. So they might want to invest in continuous monitoring and improvement till the scammers get discouraged and leave eventually (It's not like they don't have the resources to do so).

 

 

[carineb]

36 minutes ago, Kesha said:

We are well aware of the issue of users utilizing Fiverr in their usernames, and our teams are currently working diligently to help eliminate the issue. 

We talked about that more than 3 months ago (fiverr logo as image, "support" username, "fiverr" username). 3 months later, nothing has changed!
 

 

[creativecolumn]

Here are some suggestions @Kesha.

• Put some icon like the above. So we can identify actual staff members.
• Show this icon everywhere, even in the mobile app.
• Add a middleware when uploading a profile picture. So it can identify the users when they are trying to upload the Fiverr logo as their profile pic.
• Disallow setting the display names like: Support, FIverr, Fiverr Support, Support Agent, Customer Support etc.

 

[Kesha]

1 hour ago, carineb said:

From what I can see, Assaf is a "pro client". There are many "pro clients" who send us scams!
What makes Assaf different from the scammers? Nothing at all!

Isn't there a "Fiverr team" badge or some other badge that proves this isn't a scam?!

Thanks for bringing that to our attention. We will be looking for ways to have clear indicators for Fiverr Staff so that they are more easily distinguishable. 

[Kesha]

1 hour ago, creativecolumn said:

Here are some suggestions @Kesha.

• Put some icon like the above. So we can identify actual staff members.
• Show this icon everywhere, even in the mobile app.
• Add a middleware when uploading a profile picture. So it can identify the users when they are trying to upload the Fiverr logo as their profile pic.
• Disallow setting the display names like: Support, FIverr, Fiverr Support, Support Agent, Customer Support etc.

 

Thanks for these suggestions. They have been passed along!

 

[atulcodex]

13 hours ago, Kesha said:

Thanks for bringing that to our attention. We will be looking for ways to have clear indicators for Fiverr Staff so that they are more easily distinguishable. 

All the best @Kesha Mam