I have been using Upwork, with good results for over a year. However, I recently posted a project looking for some React.js developers. Unfortunately we have been inundated with spam/ fake accounts - something i didn't think happened on Upwork. I had a shortlist of 10 -12 finalised for Skype interviews. After the first 3 I realised that not only did the freelancers not seem to be aware of their own work history or skillsets correctly, as they had described them, but they all had asian accents, despite preporting to be from European countries. I don't care what country someone is from - but i do care about them telling the truth about it.

Out of the remaining 8 candidates i asked them all to make sure they have a webcam that they can use for the conversation. Only 2 of them would agree. The rest of them all pulled out of having a quick skype conversation if a webcam had been used. After going back through all the profiles i noticed a similar pattern to the ones that pulled out. None could be found on linked in, All had similarly vague education history, and all of them have started since roughly january '18. They were all European identities, a majority also had a lot of jobs done but all for seemingly random, low amounts - e.g. 10 projects complete but fo $50-$100 dollars each - so that their work history looks good and they have lots of proejcts with 5 stars until you actually examine the projects. They all also had big projects for large amounts - that were all still open. making their accounts look like they have done a lot of work.

My guess is the same guys that are creating fictitious western identies are also creating fictitious client accounts to juice up their stats and numbers to seem legit. I'm sure some of them are good coders - but are you really going to trust someone to work on your code who is telling you they are a completely different person from a totally different country?

This has been an incredibly frustrating process and wasted 3-4 days of time between organising and tyring to interview these candidates. I really hope Upwork will take note of this and try to improve this spam or it will become an unusable platform.

I'd advise all clients to throw the question out there next time they are hiring - can the freelancer have a skype/ upwork conversation using a webcam. I think you will be surprised by how many candidates will drop out at this suggestion.

These fake accounts do no favours for real freelancers as i've been left totally paranoid now about who it is I am hiring on the service.