Mass bans on Upwork? Or just mass panic? Stop the hysteria and read this.
Intro
I got too many messages over the last few days that people read somewhere that Ukrainians are under attack, and Upwork is banning them. That's not true.
Upwork is very serious nowadays about breaking its rules, but 99% of guys who are coming to me are breaking them for real. And even with this, they are able to unban themselves.
Also, I am getting messages from all over the world about bans, so dear compatriots, CALM DOWN!
Agenda for this article
- New reasons Upwork is banning people for
- Old reasons Upwork is still banning people for
- Words you should avoid writing on Upwork
- Advice you didn't ask me for:)
New reasons Upwork is banning people for
Scrapping/Updating the page
When I say updating I mean clicking to update your web page - any Upwork page
You can update your profile. You can! Stop panicking!
Again! The problem is that they receive too many requests from your side when you are updating any ducking page.
When it happened first time, I was suspecting different tools as you can do too. I came to Vadym - Gigradar owner and we started rechecking it.
Vadym shared with me his recurring meaning alive map of users. More than 300 are from Ukraine and are feeling good. Nothing special happens.
Also 5 clients came to me with the same reason. Strange thing, not the main profiles were banned but sales/bizdev managers. So profiles not related to bidding services/bots/tools/ai.
So what did we do? We just shared a browser history showing that we were either updating a job search feed, or searching ourselves in a talent search
Misleading clients
There is a new rule that clients can report you if "you misrepresenting your skills or skill level"
Personally I didn't see the exact ban case like that but I need to warn you it's possible.
Old reasons Upwork is still banning people for
Too many hours per day/week
Don't track more than 2 full-time contracts on one profile; it will look suspicious to Upwork. 12 hours per day, 84 hours per week is the maximum to not receive a triggered ban message.
They will ban you with a subcontracting reason.
Vpn/anonymiser/proxy usage
They see it. Forbidden.
Too many devices
They suspect that one person can't do it, so they may ban you for giving your profile to another person reason.
Reports from clients
They are quite strict with it. If client is reporting you - they can put you on hold, if twice - most probably will be a ban.
Words you should avoid writing on Upwork
Not many of you know that some words are triggering Upwork algorithm. These words you shouldn't write if you want to survive on Upwork
You will receive this letter/ticket
It happened, for example, because one of my clients wrote "whatsup" because they are doing whatsup integration😄
Here was that message
So there are two types of words that triggers Upwork text bot: payment words and contact words. Here is the list I know you need to avoid
Payment related:
- stripe
- payoneer
- paypal
- crypto
- bitcoin
- btc
- ethereum
- usdt
- skrill
- wire
- iban
- swift
- venmo
- transferwise / wise
- revolut
- western union
- moneygram
Maybe there are more...
Contact related (Upwork thinks you want to exchange contact details):
- telegram
- whatsapp / whatsup
- viber
- signal
- skype
- google meet
- emails like @word.word
- fb / facebook
- slack
- discord
Maybe there are more...
Advice you didn't ask me for:)
- When you read something, re-check it, it looks like there has been too much wrong, misleading info for the last few days.
- Don't panic. If you are following the rules, no one will ban you just because you exist.
Hugs,
Tamara
buy me a coffee:) https://buymeacoffee.com/levit
