Requests to contact via telegram
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Official comment
Hi there,
We take these events very seriously and will immediately remove any user who goes against our T&Cs and is seen to be a threat to our community.
Please get in touch with the support team so they can further investigate and take the appropriate actions.
To ensure the safety and security of the community, all communications must be kept within the workstream and are outlined in our T&Cs.
Please be aware that any communication outside the platform is strictly forbidden and is considered a breach of our T&Cs.
Best wishes,
The Community Team
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And that, Shiv, is the major problem with this site.
PPH should not be sending you these notifications. They should be moderating new projects coming in and stopping these scammers instead of letting the jobs through.
I receive them all the time, and always reply telling the buyer I know they're a scammer and that I'm reporting them. We need to get them off here.
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I encountered same problem here, I asked him why not work on PPH chat platform, he told me because he need a maximum of freelancers to do the job. I believe it is only 1:1 project with the client if they approved it. He then told me to do a 10 maximum design with color and 3D mock-up of it. after a while, I reported him and he canceled the job and blocked me on telegram.. LOL
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Hi there! I got the same issue right now. They just approved my proposal and told me to talk to them through Telegram. They asked me to edit a logo that they sent me and after that they sent 20 more logos to edit. And they said they're gonna pay me through bank transfer and not through PPH. Help here 😓
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That's what I thought. I'm literally new here in PPH so I have no idea how payment works here. They told me they will pay me once I'm done with the 20 logos and they said it'll be through bank deposit. Such a bummer, here I thought I got a client to work on. 😫 Here's their project ID: 3812632
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And always read the Ts and Cs of any new platform you work with. How do you know if you're compliant if you don't? Cover yourself. There are plenty of blogs on here as to how it works, and when you send a proposal for a project it has to be accepted with a deposit paid into the PPH system. Tell them no way. Think you were born yesterday or something. PPH or nothing.
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Everyone - be very careful about projects on all freelancing sites now - even those that do not mention the word 'telegram.'
I've just noticed a project I gave out on this site which had been copied and pasted word for word on Upwork without mentioning the word telegram. People are losing their credits in applying. She has been reported.
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@Nancy, I have often seen projects copied across different platforms. I used to regularly look at PPH, Upwork and Guru and it wasn't that unusual to see a job posted on two or three of the platforms, and they are usually looking for a very low price. I would avoid applying for these, because they have far more applicants than are shown. I did win a project once that was on here and I later found it on Upwork and Freelancer. By the time I was awarded it there were over 100 applicants across the three platforms. These cross posted projects are one of the reasons jobs don't get filled here, and also why UK and European jobs are sometimes priced in US Dollars. Sometimes they mention "Upwork" in the description and don't change it when they copy it to PPH.
I'm worried that the obvious success of the Telegram scams is encouraging other people to try similar scams. I'm seeing quite a few projects that are suspicious. They have relatively high budgets (£200 to £300) and are from new buyers and have very vague descriptions. I applied for one this week that didn't look right but thought it was worth a proposal. The job was cancelled. I had two others recently where they were cancelled and the buyer had left the platform.
Scammers will always try to get you off the platform and that has to be the warning sign. Get your money into the PPH escrow system before you do any work. I wasted some time recently when I broke my own rules on a project by starting work before it was accepted. I had spoken to the buyer on the phone to discuss the requirements and I was keen to get it done. When I decided to chase them and get them to accept the project I found they had awarded it to someone else. That wasn't a scam but it was a waste of time. I have to remind myself it is strictly no work until there is money in escrow.
A lot of buyers will try to tempt you with a promise of more work in the future. This doesn't mean that the job is a scam, but always assume that there is no future work. The genuine buyer is trying to sell their project but the scammer is trying to suck you in to the scam. -
There is a useful description of different types of online fraud on the UK Police website. They have an A-Z listing, but this one seems to sum up the issue:
https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/a-z-of-fraud/career-opportunity-scams
There is a part of the site where these crimes can be reported. I don't think they take any individual report very seriously, but if a lot of people are reporting the same thing, it will take a higher priority.
I just report these to PPH and I currently get about 3 or 4 fake invites every day. I'm getting increasingly frustrated that PPH don't permanently block the person or people behind them. I've logged on this morning and two attempts have been made to steal money from me, by somebody accessing my profile on PPH. -
Morning Simon, I guess as they are fake profiles they cant stop new ones from being created. If they delay jobs getting posted then genuine buyers will look elsewhere. Perhaps they should charge a £2.00 fee for a job post refundable when you purchase a service
More worrying is someone trying to attempt to login to your account
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Adam, there is nobody trying to log in to my account that I'm aware of. What I meant was that these scam attacks are not just picking my email address off my website, they are actual buyer accounts using the platform.
I think we have a difference of opinion on the approach for this. I would like to see PPH make more verification checks before they sign up a new buyer. Not being able to match a new buyer account with a previously banned account is becoming a problem. They also need to be quicker at blocking them. I've just had 3 invites from the same buyer before they were blocked. Limiting the number of invites they can send would be a step in the right direction.
The freelancers also need to be more aware of the scams that are being used. The Police website has an alphabetical listing and they include the "Career Opportunity" scam and the "Advance Payment" scam. PPH is there to avoid this sort of thing by having escrow. -
I think they would have to recruit a team to support this which frankly they won't and ultimately buyers won't want to verify themselves and will just go elsewhere.
Ultimately in my opinion these scammers have only come around in the last few months because of the poor quality of freelancers who are joining daily and the first thing to do would be a complete audit of the site. Stop new applications and review existing profiles and remove all unqualified/fake/inactive profiles. Then make it mandatory for all users to review and read the terms and conditions again.
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There is certainly a lot that they could do to make improvements but there is never any sign of anybody even making adjustments to the website. A big checklist of what not to do when somebody opens an invite could go a long way. From what we see on the forum it is always "I have been awarded my first project", when they haven't, but they have never seen a project being awarded so they don't know what it looks like. They don't make the effort to read up on the process and they seem to be under the impression that jobs are more abundant and better paid than they really are.
I agree that there are far too many low quality, unskilled people signing up as freelancers and it is dragging everybody else down. -
Evert, there are hundreds of them. I've reported more than 60 myself over the last two weeks. I'm a TOP CERT and I get stack loads of them everyday. Just report them from the workstream, or message you get. That's the best way to report them. You're not going to get PPH to open an individual ticket for each one - that's pointless. Just report them from the workstream.
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