3 Common Freelancer Scams and How to Avoid Them

At present, freelancing work is getting all sort of hype but even this sector is not immune from frauds. Scammers are using all sorts of their tricks to harm the other party for benefit.

Scams can be done by freelancers and entrepreneurs in many different cases so one should be aware of potential scammers and stay safe in the gig industry. Infact, most of the freelancers or clients working with the freelancers have experienced scams once in a while.

Such fraudulent activities can influence victims economically and can affect talented freelancers on an emotional level. But as clouds have a silver lining, there are some warning signals that can alarm you about these issues beforehand and stay safe from any undesired circumstances. The best thing in this regard is to have a sound knowledge about all the common types of cyber scams.

Scams in the Gig Industry-At a Glance:

There are bad people everywhere, who with their scams are not only threatening people financially as well as emotionally. One must watch out for some warning before falling in the pit of fraudsters.

To mitigate such frauds, it is crucial to acquaint yourself with common freelancing scams. If you find out the red signals before being trapped by frogers, they won’t be successful.

Some Common Freelance Scams:

Here’s a useful list of scams you may encounter on your journey to the top:

1. Work-from-Home Scam:

Well known types of home based work include freelance writing, editing, and graphic design and these schemes have existed for decades now and go for every category of the gig economy.

Despite many ways to earn income from home, including through some famous freelance platforms some people still fall prey to non-descript work-from-home scams.

Such attractive scams do not require any specialized skill-sets, as opposed to most official and legitimate freelancing platforms. Many work-from-home scams companies do not provide information about what kind of work they perform.

They will ask to call them or give them your personal information. Some of the fraudsters even ask you for the money as an account registration fee which is never refundable!

2. How to avoid work-from-home scams

The easiest way to avoid such scams is to utilize legitimate and well-known freelance platforms only by using know your customer(KYC) strategy. These sites usually have scam artists working within them to report and monitor the number of scam jobs that might be posted.

It's likely a scam if a «work-from-home» company fails to state what kind of work they are performing. So you can always google search some reviews about a certain site, if most people have bad reviews about it, search somewhere else for work.

3. Pyramid Scheme or Multi-level Marketing Scam

Pyramid schemes or direct selling is so common these days. A multi-level marketing scams work this way that you sign up to the services and become brand ambassador or some other related fancy term and condtions and then you have to buy their products at discounts.

They will earn from these products as you buy them and then will ask you to sell them further with profit.

You are compelled to add friends and family members in this act to sell these products. Such schemes are highly indicative of scams as these companies typically promise an easy path to riches but leave the individuals burned out and by that time they have spent a lot of money buying those products. How to Avoid Such Scams:

Before even realizing what people are getting themselves into they get trapped into such scams. By the time they realize, it's already too late. This lures individuals to get benefit by pushing them to sell these products to anyone with MORE PROFIT! So the best way to avoid such scams is to avoid working with such companies. If any company promises that you’ll get rich by this, that's a SCAM!

Request for Account Information

One has different accounts such as facebook, linkedin as a freelancer attached to the business. Such accounts are vulnerable to attack by the fraudsters. Scammers might try to gain access to such accounts.

Account takeover scam is to hold your account hostage in return for a ransom or to get money transferred from your account to their own accounts. So account information is crucial and should not be SHARED!

How to Avoid Account Takeover Scam

As your account has a solid history of good work performed its much likely that scammers will try to get access over that. So do not let the lust of earning extra money sway your common sense. Just not share your account information with anyone asking you for any kind of data.

Your account has your personal and financial information so you need to be very vigilant. To avoid this type of account take over frauds and for your personal data protection do not share your account or its information with anyone.