(INTERNAL INFORMATION ONLY - NOT TO BE SHARED WITH USERS)
The CIRC team’s goal with the Lookie Loo Program is to remove freelancers who use the platform merely to find and connect with clients and work with them off platform (circumvention).
Early in the Summer of 2019, members of the Product team found that there were users who would log into the platform and look (or “click”) through job postings at incredibly high rates. “Incredibly high rates” is just that. The users the team is targeting are looking at hundreds to tens of thousands of job postings without any earn. In fact there are several hundred users who are looking at the equivalent of 100 job posts per day, every day, for 90 days straight without earn.
Of course there are less extreme cases, but these are the general groups we are targeting.
- Our most extreme “clicker” is actually a click farm - a single location with multiple users clicking through job postings who looked at over 120,000 job postings in six months, without earn. This is nearly 700 per day.
- The Fl who registered in 2012, has never earned, hasn't bid on a job in over a year and yet looked at over 17,000 job postings in the last six months
- The Fl who registered in 2014, has never bid on a job, and looked at over 7,600 jobs in the last six months
- The NDF FL who was suspended over a year ago, who continued to log in and viewed over 3,500 jobs in the last six months
- The FL who had one $5 contract in his 2 years on the platform, and viewed nearly 1,400 jobs in the last six months
During further review, it was discovered that there are thousands of users who regularly log in, click through job postings with either no or little earn.
- Finding clients with whom to circumvent
- Finding the “right” jobs that are fed to other people in their fraud network (confirmed by the number of NDF suspended users with this behavior), or
- They aren’t able to find jobs that meet their needs
Note: All above behaviors are not supportive of our platform and are out of line with a successful freelancer who brings value to the platform.
The Lookie Loo program has been further developed to identify “normal” behavior on the platform by assessing a click to GSV ratio. We have then identified which users are completely off track with that “normal” behavior by comparing what a normal user's ratio is.
Currently, suspended users can continue to login and click through job posts, as the program evolves with each round of reviews the team is moving to fully locking out accounts for this behavior to ensure these suspended users can not continue to view job postings.
- Have job postings views above the designated thresholds and
- A click to earn ratio half below that of normal users
Exclusions:
- New users - those registered in or inactive until the past 90 days
- Users with truly active contracts at the time of actioning
Appeals:
- Users who have had a lifetime earn of over $1,000 have the right to appeal
- Client appeals on the FL’s behalf will be reversed IF
- Users who should have been excluded (but were missed) will be reversed if they choose to appeal, baring no other violations are found on the account
- MC shows that there is a contract the client wishes to have with the FL, and
- No other violations are found