Be warned, everybody. Your profiles are being followed but by whom? It is astonishing how these scammers are coming up with new ways to swindle people out of their hard work. As a freelance translator, I have been in the translation industry for around 10 years and honestly, although I have seen a lot of them, this was one of the best attempts so far.
It is nothing surprising that my fellow colleagues out there are facing different scamming attempts through various channels or methods every day. Considering the current state of the industry, globalization, the differences in regulations in different parts of the world, one can consider this as an occupational hazard and the only thing that can protect us from these labour exploiters are none other than us. Surely those who have spent a decent amount of years working as a freelancer in the international arena have been the target for countless scamming attempts and are probably an expert in the subject matter yet the attempt that I have witnessed this morning was astonishing.
I have been working for K-International, an international translation agency which is based in the UK, for the last 3 years and it has always been a pleasure working with them. Yesterday, I received an email from one of the project managers for the translation of an e-book. At first, I was suspicious of the name of the project manager as that was the first time I have seen that name but then I thought they might have recruited a new project manager.
When I opened the email, the first thing I realized was how different the formatting was. Being a highly professional agency, K-International's project managers always had an infallible style they use in their correspondences and there was no trace of it. And naturally, this got me quite suspicious of the genuineness of the email. As I kept reading, it became much more clear that this was nothing but an attempt for a scam.
I kept the correspondence going for a few short emails to see how far this scammer was planning to go and I was flabbergasted by the audacity of this scammer. When I told him I could find neither the project nor the instructions on the company's vendor portal and asked him to put the task there, he immediately started threatening me with cancelling my contract with the company. What a farce...
Long story short ladies and gentlemen, I was lucky enough to be working with a highly professional company that has an unfailing work chain and to see yet another style of scamming. To be honest, these people are becoming more and more dangerous and daring and as you can see, some of them are going as far as using the names of the companies that you work with. What is more important here is that this is proof that someone followed my profiles on the internet closely and realized that I have been collaborating with a company for a while and decided to use their name to lure me into a scam.
Stay vigilant and keep an eye out for sudden and abrupt changes in the correspondence styles of the companies you work with. Yesterday, the target was me but tomorrow, it might be you.