Increasing SCAM -- Possible ways to educate sellers

[rawque_gulia]

Everyone can agree that scams have increased (a lot) in recent days. People are pretending to be customer support and scamming new sellers. Here, I am suggesting some possible ways to educate sellers effectively and easily to minimize the risks and scams:

1. Educate in the simple way:

Sure, things are already written in the Terms of Service, but it consists of "59,033 characters," and no one in the early stages goes through such a lengthy page filled with text. Even if it were me signing up as a new user on any app or website, I would never scroll to the footer and check their Privacy Policy or Terms of Service page. People use hundreds of websites and services, so going through that lengthy page with 59k+ characters may be troublesome, and they simply avoid reading it.

Sure, it's none of our business if someone is not reading the Terms of Service, but if we can educate them in a simple way, wouldn't that be fantastic? So, probably add a "Rules and Guidelines" button right in the inbox (anywhere that's properly visible and in focus), and instead of a lengthy page, we just give them 15-20 main guidelines (in bullet-point form) that are straight to the point and take hardly 40 seconds to read. I think that would make a HUGE IMPACT, and a lot of scams would possibly be reduced as more new sellers will be educated to the terms in the simplest way possible.

 

2. Add clear instructions at the top

Instead of just writing "We have your back" (honestly, that doesn't mean anything, doesn't make an impact, and is just a dummy Lorem Ipsum text), give clear instructions in a box whenever a new buyer approaches any seller. This way, there will be a 99% chance that the seller won't be scammed (as they will either run to the Forums or Fiverr Support email to get a confirmation if the scam message is genuine).

 

I am not a professional UI designer, and of course, things could be designed in a more beautiful way, but I personally think that these two very basic edits will make a huge impact. When scammers will notice that sellers are getting educated, they will probably stop scamming and shift to another platform where chances to scam people are higher. We do not need to stop scams by 100% -- we just need to minimize it to a point where scammers start feeling that it's not worth their time here.

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@Kesha @milos_siena @Lena @ana_tomy @frank_d

Can this be looked at and passed to the relevant team to see if anything can be done? Please!
The scam is at its peak and something really needs to be done.

Edited June 21 by rawque_gulia

[katakatica]

I like the idea of the guidelines being in the inbox!

I think the tricky / scary part with this scam is that they know who to target (people with 0 experience on the site... and people who's English might not be so good.)

I wonder if it'd be possible for people to get an email on registration written in their language that explains to keep an eye out?

Maybe something with pictures or something?

They could also include a small note on how an order works (eg you will always see it on your dashboard, etc.) just to make it easier to see. 

I'm kind of confused as to why these scams have gotten so much worse recently though. I feel like they have gotten more convincing (yes, the fake support we've seen is often very obviously fake but for newbies it looks pretty 'real'.)

[rawque_gulia]

2 hours ago, katakatica said:

I'm kind of confused as to why these scams have gotten so much worse recently though.

Because scammers have got an open ground where nobody is taking any action. Customer support thinks that banning them is a solution. Bruh! Do they really think that people who are scamming thousands of dollars per day won't have enough money to buy a good VPN, cheat the system, and create 1,000 more profiles?

The question is: Why is Fiverr not doing anything?

No emails to educate new sellers about the scams, no changes to the inbox or registration, literally no warnings whatsoever, and no changes to the algorithm to stop this scam. Around 6 months (since the scam is around) and literally nothing has changed.

If any other platform had done this, trust me, I would have directly slammed the real customer support and accused them of being involved with scammers (with 20% or 40% commission). Fiverr itself is ruining its beautiful ecosystem by not addressing such large issues. They're just hiding from it by not publicly displaying a warning or addressing these concerns. It's like, "I will close my eyes and everything will be alright."

[arafatcoco]

We all should be aware of scam. Fiverr should take vital step to protect the seller from scam.

[creative_howl]

51 minutes ago, rawque_gulia said:

The question is: Why is Fiverr not doing anything?

No emails to educate new sellers about the scams, no changes to the inbox or registration, literally no warnings whatsoever, and no changes to the algorithm to stop this scam. Around 6 months (since the scam is around) and literally nothing has changed.

If any other platform had done this, trust me, I would have directly slammed the real customer support and accused them of being involved with scammers (with 20% or 40% commission). Fiverr itself is ruining its beautiful ecosystem by not addressing such large issues. They're just hiding from it by not publicly displaying a warning or addressing these concerns. It's like, "I will close my eyes and everything will be alright."

 

I was wondering the same thing, and while reading your post, It kinda made sense why they don't.

The likelihood of someone experienced with the platform falling for something like this is almost none. This means it's gonna be the new sellers that are gonna be targeted, and affected by these scams. In other words: "users that don't generate any revenue for the site".

Would they want to invest in to protect such users? what do you think?

There's no guarantee that they will ever generate any revenue, and there's no guarantee that they will even remain on the platform in the long run. 

Is that a bad thing? It makes sense to me at least.

However, the reason why they might want to combat these scammers is because they would not want to be known as the scam central of the online freelance space. Which I think they're actively doing at the moment. 

[Kesha]

HI @rawque_gulia!

Maintaining a safe and secure platform for our users is one of our top priorities. Our risk teams are aware of the issue and are actively working on ways to put an end to the current spam issues. We appreciate the feedback and suggestions!

 

[katakatica]

21 hours ago, rawque_gulia said:

No emails to educate new sellers about the scams, no changes to the inbox or registration, literally no warnings whatsoever, and no changes to the algorithm to stop this scam. Around 6 months (since the scam is around) and literally nothing has changed.

They definitely seem to come up with different techniques so I think Fiverr is trying to some extent - but they definitely should find a solution.

Irregardless of whether someone will make them money or not, no one should be subject to scams like this. 

What rubs me the wrong way personally (and I'm very open about this) is that a lot of the victims end up being blamed (I've seen some posts / etc.) and likely a warning for doing what they thought is right.

On one hand - yeah, they should read the TOS but on the other, it IS an information overload. Some of these scams seems to stem just from links now (so no more - send an email here / etc.) so they feel even more real. 

When you don't know how CS interacts with sellers, this feels very real (especially as we do get emails from Fiverr and do need to add our paypals / etc. at some point.)

I just hope that they'll find a way to keep people safe on the site.

Thinking about it - maybe there could be simple webinars about safety? 

That could help, I think?

(I did also notice that posting on the forum like several of us have done doesn't seem to help much because the damage is already done by the time most people post on here...)

Edited June 22 by katakatica
Added a bit

[rawque_gulia]

3 hours ago, katakatica said:

Thinking about it - maybe there could be simple webinars about safety? 

This scam is not related to "AI," so I doubt that they will do it, haha!

Fiverr has been a big marketplace for years and has arranged thousands of webinars. But there is still no dedicated page where we can check recordings of all webinars (for those who missed them due to time zone differences or other reasons).

The AI that just came into the market recently already has a dedicated page for its webinars:
https://www.fiverr.com/cp/sellers-ai-hub

If webinars for AI have a page, why not other informative webinars? I have seen people requesting this on the forum, but there seem to be no listeners. Some things really surprise me a lot.

3 hours ago, katakatica said:

Irregardless of whether someone will make them money or not, no one should be subject to scams like this. 

Fiverr doesn't want to be called a "scammer marketplace" (just like people have been calling it a $5 marketplace for years). The reason is clear: it's not openly accepting the issues that are going on and doesn't want to address them publicly and openly. If intentions are clear, it shouldn't take 6 months to fix an issue, such as banning certain keywords in usernames like 'support' and 'Fiverr.'