What To Do If an Employer is Asking For Your Email On Upwork?

There’s no shortage of potential scammers on Upwork. When applying for different jobs, you may come across an employer who asks for your email address. This is a red flag, as this allows them to contact you outside of the Upwork platform where they can’t be monitored.

This isn’t always the case, as some employers may simply prefer to communicate via email. In the rest of this blog post, we’ll go over what to do if an employer is asking for your email address on Upwork.

So What Do You Do If an Employer is Asking For Your Email Address On Upwork?

There are a few things you can do:

Ask the employer why they need your email address. If they’re legitimate, they should be able to give you a good reason.
See if the employer is willing to communicate through Upwork’s messaging system only. This way, you can still be protected by Upwork’s policies.
If the employer is insistent on communicating via email, you can create a new email address that’s only used for Upwork. This way, your personal email address remains private.
Trust your gut. If something feels off about the employer, it’s probably best to move on to another job listing.
Lastly, if you feel as if they’re a scammer you can send all the information over to the Upwork support team to see what you can do about it. They will likely look into the employer and see if they have any previous complaints or suspicious activity.

Why a Legitimate Employer May Want Your Email Address

There are a few reasons why a legitimate employer may want your email address:

Interview Process

They might want to handle the interview process via email. This is perfectly fine, and you can still be protected by Upwork’s policies.

Scheduling Purposes

The employer may want to use your email address to communicate the job’s schedule or deadlines. Again, this is perfectly fine as long as they’re not asking for any personal information.

Contact Purposes

They may be on their email more than Upwork and want to use it as the main form of communication. While this isn’t ideal, it’s not necessarily a red flag.

Sometimes when you’re busy and working on other tasks you’re in your email more than you are on Upwork. In this case, it may make more sense to communicate via email.

When Should You Give Your Email Address To Clients?

To play it safe you may want to wait until you have a good feeling about the employer. Lets say you’ve done a job or two for them, and they seem to be legit. This is a good time to give your email address out as they’re more likely to be a trusted source at this point.

You can also verify their identity on Upwork by checking to see if they have a payments verified badge. Employers must go through a verification process in order to get this badge, which adds an extra layer of protection.

Keep in mind that you’re not required to give your email address to clients, even if they’re verified. You can still communicate through Upwork’s messaging system if you’d like.

Information You Should Never Give To Potential Clients

Below we will go over what kind of information you should never give to potential employers, as this could lead to them scamming you:

Your social security number
Your address
Your bank account information
Your credit card information
Any type of sensitive personal information

If an employer is asking for any of the above information, it’s best to move on to another job listing.

Also never start doing work for anyone unless you have a contract in place. The last thing you want to do is waste your time working for someone who isn’t going to pay you.

Is it Against The Rules To Leave Your Email Address On Your Profile?

Now this is against the Upwork terms of service. The reasoning for this is because it goes against one of Upwork’s main policies, which is to keep all communication on the platform. This is especially before the interview process because clients can cut out Upwork all together and avoid paying any fees.

What Happens If You Leave Your Email On Your Upwork Profile?

Putting your email address in your profile violates Upwork’s terms of service. If you’re caught, your account could be suspended or even permanently banned.

How About Phone Call Or Skype Call?

Both of these are perfectly fine, as long as you’re comfortable with it. Just make sure that the employer is legitimate and that you’re not giving away any personal information.

Does Upwork share your address?

The only people who have access to your address are Upwork employees. Your address is never shared with potential employers or anyone else on the platform.

Upwork does this to protect their users from potential scammers. So if you’re ever asked for your address by an employer, you can be confident that it’s a scam.

Can I share my Upwork account?

You can’t share it with anyone when it comes to them working on your account, but you can share the link of the account to other people.

You may want to do this when you get a potential client outside of the platform and you want to invite them to Upwork for all of the benefits that it offers.

Take a look at this blog post that goes over how to find your Upwork link and share it with a potential client!

Conclusion

In conclusion, you should never give out your email address to an employer on Upwork unless you’re absolutely sure they’re legitimate. If you have any suspicions, it’s best to communicate through Upwork’s messaging system or move on to another job listing. Lastly, never give out any sensitive personal information to potential employers as this could lead to them scamming you.

If you feel like this could be helpful to other freelancers, send this to a friend or colleague!

Also take a look at our other most recent blog posts below:

What To Do If an Employer is Asking For Your Email On Upwork?