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Someone is pretending to be me

connortumbleson.com

181–190 of 395 posts

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#181
This is amazing. I wanted to add one thing. I noticed after reading the full blog post, and scanning through all the HN comments here, that there has been actually no mention, as far as I can tell, from any parties involved, or even any commenters, of any intention to make a police report.

Now, I understand not trusting the police, and often it's more trouble than it's worth to deal with them. But this is a situation involving identity theft, which is a very serious crime. I realized that this is an international situation and the local police probably cannot do much, but at some level of policing, be it the FBI or even at the international level, this feels like something that should be reported. Even if nothing can be done, in the worst case it's useful that the police be made aware of new trends in identity theft; in the best case, they will be caught. These people are organized to perform identity theft, which is literally organized crime -- I hope they are aware of the risk they are taking doing this.

Lastly, unrelated to the above, but just a random social aspect of this; it's clearly an interesting and unexpected result of location-based pay. The only reason I can think of that a group of people would organize something like this is because pretending to be native English speakers and presumably pretending to be US- or Europe-based will automatically get them a higher pay scale. (If I understand correctly, they are possibly a team of programmers in some other country, and are offering to actually do the work, but just pretending to be other people while doing it in order to get a higher paycheck.) Not making any judgement here regarding location-based pay, although that's an interesting discussion for another thread, but in today's remote work environment, new kinds of fraud are definitely an interesting consequence to be on the lookout for. Fascinating, and dangerous.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#182
I knew immediately it's Upwork. This is extremely common on there. The main reason is because developers in Western countries can demand higher rates. Just watch out for the red flags: mismatching LinkedIn experience, no camera during interview, incorrect accent, etc. Don't trust the reviews because accounts are routienly shared and/or sold.

I've had some fun with this before where a developer with a clearly Chinese accent, and of course no webcam, posed as German (mispronouncing his own name) and freaked out when I switched to conducting the interview in German. Of course I notified the person whose identity he stole and reported the profile to Upwork, but it's a drop in the bucket of the scams.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#183
> discovered through Upwork

That's been my own experience with Upwork (as someone looking for work).

100% of the contacts I received (100%, like in Every. Single. One.) was a scam (either trying to scam me, or inviting me to participate in a scam).

I realized that Upwork is a sewer, and quickly bailed.

It's sad, because I heard very good things about Upwork. Of course, these "very good things," all came from people who hired through Upwork.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#184

Andrew here. Connor, thanks for releasing this on the orange site. This story is also more fun from my position. I've been applying to internships and interviewing every week. They're mostly rejections. They're the same questions over and over with minor variation (sorry to top comment for "impersonating" your comment style). My days are deteriorating from a colorful sphere down to two points. In fact, down to two po…

[deleted]

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#185
I had something similar happen to me a few years back. Someone using my photo and profile from my personal site and uploaded it to upwork to get contract work. I found out b/c someone hired them for a contract (thinking they were me) and got suspicious. The employer found my real email on my site and contacted me. Not sure what I can do to prevent it. I put a warning on my site saying to look out for impersonators.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#186

I knew immediately it's Upwork. This is extremely common on there. The main reason is because developers in Western countries can demand higher rates. Just watch out for the red flags: mismatching LinkedIn experience, no camera during interview, incorrect accent, etc. Don't trust the reviews because accounts are routienly shared and/or sold. I've had some fun with this before where a developer with a clearly Chinese…

> The main reason is because developers in Western countries can demand higher rates. Just watch out for the red flags ... incorrect accent, etc.

At least in America, that's not a valid tell. There are tons of developers in Western countries that have foreign accents.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#187
post #17

I hope Andrew [0] — the college junior with morals who blew the whistle on the attempt to get him to impersonate the author — gets an internship or job offer out of this; he apparently was having a hard time with that. The author's sleuthing is reminiscent of Cliff Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg from 1989. [1] [0] Andrew blogs at https://unfooling.com/ , according to the article. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cucko…

> I hope Andrew [0] — the college junior with morals who blew the whistle on the attempt to get him to impersonate the author — gets an internship or job offer out of this; he apparently was having a hard time with that. Excellent point. I've been wondering about ways to test students on "trust/morals" and decided its one of the most valuable yet least well understood qualities. Employers generally rank skills, knowl…

I'm big on personal Integrity.

It doesn't seem to win me any points.

In fact, it seems to actually count against me, as I'm sometimes accused of being "snobby."

Ah, well...

STORY TIME:

A few months after I had been promoted (the first time) to a manager, one of my new employees was hired by my boss' boss, while I was out on medical leave.

When I got back, I found out that he had made a promise to the new (now hired) employee, that he was not "legally" allowed to do, and had to let the guy do it (because he promised).

He asked me to sign it off.

I declined, sure that my job was in jeopardy.

Surprisingly, he took it well, and it was never mentioned again (until now). He actually had a lot of Integrity, and was uncomfortable with it (it was a mistake; not deliberate).

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#188
Interesting. I doubt it was the same person, but I was approached with a proposition regarding Upwork not super dissimilar to this three times by somebody on the Elixir Slack. I think it was the same "person" each time just with different accounts because they kept getting banned by the admins.

Basically the person would write to me and say something like, "I'm a good $language dev and am worth $120/hr but in my country that is really high pay and people won't pay it unless you're American. I'll get closer to $25/hr." Then the deal is something like this: "We will apply for jobs/contracts in your name, but I'll do 100% of the work and you keep half the money and send me the other half."

The worst part is, I get the feeling that the premise is actually true and that this person is merely trying to beat the system. However, I could never bring myself to do such a thing due to the dishonesty required. Secondarily (but importantly) I've been burned by low-cost foreign contractors that billed for over a week before essentially delivering nothing, so I'm a bit once-bitten twice shy. I likely never would, but have considered doing a similar strategy but in an honest way where I'm up front with the client that I won't personally be doing all the work, but instead will out-source it, but I would be their point of contact/PM and if the work wasn't acceptable then (worst case scenario) I would (re)do it all personally.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#189
post #17

I hope Andrew [0] — the college junior with morals who blew the whistle on the attempt to get him to impersonate the author — gets an internship or job offer out of this; he apparently was having a hard time with that. The author's sleuthing is reminiscent of Cliff Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg from 1989. [1] [0] Andrew blogs at https://unfooling.com/ , according to the article. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cucko…

Perhaps at the end of the day that's what the scam was about, getting Andrew an internship. I mean if I was writing the movie that would be the twist at the end

He he. For a second, that's what I thought as well. But I want to believe the story is legit.

Re: Someone is pretending to be me

#190

I'm a US-based accountant who is currently interviewing for his first job in software and I was approached by someone on on LinkedIn about an opportunity. Seemed fishy, but figured I could risk 15 minutes. The person set up a meeting between me and a Taiwanese Developer for this exact thing. He said he had 7 years experience and had a contract drafted for he and I to become "business partner" where I would take the m…

If I can play devil's advocate for a moment... if the company gets decent work, the non-US participant gets better (and fairer, globally) pay compared to what they'd get locally, and the US participant takes care of the "soft" side of the operation... who's getting hurt? I can't deny that something smells skeevy about this and I don't think I could ever trust a random foreign developer who I haven't built up a solid…

Say you do it... the company pays you $100/h (making up a number to do math) and $70 of that goes to the person who does the job while you keep $30 of it.

Guess how much gets reported to the IRS that you're making and how much taxes you'll owe on that $100/h.

Next there's the fraudulent representation of who is doing the work to the client.

Lastly, there's the "this is a form of money laundering" and you're taking a significant role.

When this starts to unravel, you're not going to come out ahead.

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