What triggers the system to flag a message for review?

[roots282]

I was going to post this in Conversions but I figured it might be beneficial for sellers to read the answer I’ll hopefully get, so I’m posting in Tips for Sellers.

I sent a message and it got flagged, but I have no idea why. I wrote what I write every day to buyers, nothing inappropriate, no mention of email or other contact info, didn’t use the words such as “money” or “pay” that trigger those warnings, for all I can tell my message is perfectly fine.

So what else can cause this? Is there anything other that the message text that triggers it? Since I’ve done nothing wrong I suppose I don’t need to worry, but I’d still like to know.

[roots282]

Here’s what it looks like (I had to remove the attachment because I forgot to hide the username of my buyer).

[fonthaunt]

It used to be that only obvious words would trigger this. The ones that make the message field turn red. Words or symbols like email, money, pay, @, s***e, etc. Lately I have noticed a change, but I don’t know why. My theory is that they are cracking down on some of the scam sellers and some real sellers are caught in crossfire.

I had a message recently removed with the ToS violation message in your screenshots. The message that was trashed had no flag words at all. I didn’t open a ticket because at the time I had other critical tickets open that needed full attention. I would like to know what’s up too. If anyone gets a useful response from CS, please post it. 🙂

[miiila]

I´d like to see a list with those triggers really. I just had a message flagged, and the only thing I can possibly imagine in there as flag-worthy was me swearing to God…

[roots282]

@miiila I don’t think swearing to god is something Fiverr would care about 😛

A full list would make it super easy for scammers to know what not to write to avoid detection, so I don’t think that’s gonna happen. I reviewed the message again and I think I know what happened - I wrote that I was busy “outside of Fiverr” so maybe these words were what triggered it because they could mean that I was trying to get paid off-site.

The good news is the warning is gone and I’m still here, so they must have realised there was nothing to worry about.

[miiila]

Yeah I know, I didn´t mean I literally want to see that list, I just imagine it must be good for a laugh, because the flagged message was a really short one, and, in addition to me swearing to god, didn´t include any known, or imaginable trigger-words lol maybe some program developed AI and combines random letters from several words into trigger-words now to keep itself entertained -_-

Oh yeah, sure, that would be a trigger-term most certainly.
I guess as long as there are real people, with real English, or whatever language they might also watch, skills, there´s not much to worry about, but if they’ll ever leave it to a program, we´ll be done, then only people who never talk but only work, will remain 😉

I know a place that uses such secret lists too, no fiverr competition, different thing, much to the dismay of the sellers there, as it affects their listings, and there are many threads where people try to find out, with others’ help, which of the word might be the culprit that gets their listings flagged. Much worse than getting conversation messages flagged of course, that costs them real money, while their item isn´t up.

Hm, now that I think of it though, I´m not so sure I´d rather get my PMs read by a human being than by a machine in some cases lol

[zubairfb]

Had the same issue with me too… got a message flagged… What to do when buyer demands your email? What to do if it is necessary to exchange e-mails to complete the Order? Sometimes files are heavier than Fiverr can handle…

[miiila]

I saw dropbox, drive and other filesharing sites mentioned on several forum threads, for sending links to work that is over the limit. I´m yet to find an official statement by fiverr on that though, your safest bet, if it comes up probably is to write to Customer Support and ask them, then you´ll have it black on white.
Since they can and do read messages, if they get flagged by the software that gets triggered by certain terms, I guess they will be able to see from a conversation that it was the buyer and not you who wanted contact info, so nothing should happen to you, unless you react to the buyer’s request of course.

[roots282]

Some time ago I asked CS if they would allow sending additional contact info (s***e in this case) for just one specific order, and they said they could only do it for an entire gig. If you really have to exchange emails with your buyers, you could write in your gig description that external contact information might be needed and ask CS to approve that. Still, be careful and only send your email if and when they okay it, even if you’ve mentioned it in the gig description.
I’d still advise you to try out methods miiila suggested first.

[roots282]

Honestly, humans can read my messages on Internet all they want, it’s safer than having machines read them, and if they learn something they’d rather not know, well, I hope they’re good at repressing traumatising memories 🙂

[Guest idesignforu]

what happens when a message is flagged?

[roots282]

what happens when a message is flagged?

I guess it’s looked into by the Trust & Safety Team. But only they know for sure.