A fraud ODesk job posting by hackers which could steal your email, login name, password

Your email address and password are very important information, you should never put these things in a place you're not sure about.

Just today I came across a job posting on ODesk which specifically wanted Pakistani freelancers and listed Urdu as a required skill. I am a full time mobile software engineer, but I love writing and I got an Urdu language blog. I also got more than one English language blogs including this one. The opportunity sounded very nice to me so I applied for the job considering it good fun.
A few minutes later I got an ODesk message back from Gomez Dambreville. Without further ado, the text of this identity thieve's message is given below:

Thanks for apply first of all see the PDF file through this link  http://www.attachment-pdf1.tk after this download HTML through this link http://www.link-html1.tk and connect with us through  Gmail , Yahoo or Hotmail HTML , so we can go further.
Note:
Use these HTML to sign in to Yahoo,Gmail or Hotmail with your login detail to connect with our manager for interview after that we hire you here on odesk.

Ladies and gentlemen, stay away from this job post. I have reported it as inappropriate and I hope ODesk is going to take care of the fraudsters behind the job post.

If anybody opens any one of these pages, you will reach a website operated by a ring of identity thieves and hackers. First link will take you to a web page that looks like ODesk login page but it is not operated by ODesk. BEWARE!!! Just check the address given in the address bar www.attachment-pdf1.tk . Please note that stealing someone's login name and password is a cyber crime, and anyone doing such a thing is nothing but a criminal.

They have even created fake login pages for GMail, Yahoo, and Hotmail. Now that's what we call fraud full circle.

Signs of trouble
There are things related to this job which can be treated as sure warning signs. A list of the signs is given below:

1. This person is not a very old member, the account was opened on Feb 7 2014.
2. In such a short span of time they've opened 9 jobs but hired nobody on even a single job

A cousin of mine recently got an invitation from a similar job, he later sent me the text of the crook's message. I told him about the ages old method of identity theft, and saved his life :)
This type of crooks try to steal identities of new freelancers, ODesk has been doing a very good job handling these people and I hope they'll keep kicking butt.

Payoneer MasterCard support on bank ATM machines in Pakistan

I have been using Payoneer MasterCard for fund withdrawal from ODesk.com and Elance.com for more than three years. The very first time I withdrew cash in 2011, I went to several ATM machines belonging to various banks only to discover that they did not support the new shining Payoneer card.

Then I came across MasterCard logo on Payoneer Card and conincidently saw Visa symbol on the ATM machine from which my withdrawal had failed a minute ago. Its then that I realized my mistake, not all ATM machines support plastic money powered by MasterCard and not all machines support plastic money powered by Visa card. The Logo of MasterCard is given below:

Most of the ATM machines in Pakistan support Visa credit and debit card network. You will come across Visa logo on many bank cards and ATM machines,  Visa logo is given below for reference:

So my friends, you should stay away from ATM machines that have only the second logo and that don't have the first logo anywhere on there forehead. Payoneer is powered by MasterCard plastic money network.

The list of banks that support MasterCard is certainly not very extensive. I got only two banks in my knowledge that have ATM machines supporting withdrawals from your Payoneer Account using Payoneer Debit Card. The banks that support Payoneer withdrawals are

1. Standard Chartered Bank
2. Muslim Commercial Bank (MCB)

Bank fee per withdrawal and limit:

1. Both MCB and SCB charge a special withdrawal fee of 200 rupees on each cash withdrawal. Please note that this fee is other than the cash already deducted by Payoneer.
2. There is a maximum withdrawal limit of 20,000 rupees per transaction. This means if you want to withdraw 400 USD which will be almost 40,000 rupees you will have to perform two transactions of 20,000 rupees and pay 400 rupees extra.

This list might be incomplete, please take some time to add more banks to the list.

Many contractors hired on one freelance job, should you accept an offer?

On ODesk I recently posted a bid on a job, and got an offer from the client. I had asked for a small upfront payment, just to make sure the client has stakes in the fix price job. But the job offer sent by client was without any upfront payment.

I went back to the original job posting to see something, and I noticed that another contractor was already hired on the job. That contractor had a nice profile, so I started clicking around to get more information about the client. In his the client's past ODesk contracts, I found another job with same hiring pattern, only on a very large scale. The screen shot of the bizarre scenario with 8 people on one job is given below:

Over the weekend I stayed confused, tried my level best to resist the temptation, and finally accepted the job offer.
I sent a message to the client after accepting the job, and started work according to the specifications outlined in the job posting. It was about creating an Android app which would disconnect calls received from a list of numbers maintained by a community. It was a very simple task on older versions of Android but the latest ones don't let apps mess with telephone calls freely. I spent a full day on the job researching ways to make things work, I was also expecting an answer from the client and I got desperate by the end of day cause that's not the way it's supposed to be.
Have got a reasonable number of projects on my profile, and I believe clients serious about their work communicate frequently. But, I decided to wait and see until next day.
The next day I sent another message to the client, expressing the doubts I had about him. But he didn't talk back, and some time after mid-day I decided to end the contract.

Drop Scene:
Later that day, the client sent me a message through ODesk saying that I had already spent several hours on the job and I should not end the contract as my work would be wasted this way.
But, I had taken time before cutting the cord and I had a gut feeling that this project is not going anywhere.

But something good came out:
A complete day was spent without making a dime, but I got a very good idea from this project which I turned into an app and it's already in the play store now.
As a matter of fact, "Best Call Blocker" my app on Play store was a cross between two different stories. First I described above and second one's related to my 18 months old son who loves to play with my phone. He often makes unwanted calls, to his tiny miney girlfriends as I say :)
While researching how to block incoming calls for the "polygamist client", I came to know how can I block outgoing calls based on dialled number.

Payments delayed, projects dropped, locks jammed... Stay calm entrepreneur

I transferred some cash from Skrill to my local bank account last Sunday (2013/07/28) which was supposed to be in my account by now but no, it is not.
Then yet another bank transfer was supposed to put some cash in the bank, which too is delayed for some godforsaken reason.

These were the first two news of the day, the third one came in as I was heading back to my office. Earlier I gave office keys to my assistant, and told him to open the office while I was checking things in the bank. The lad called me to tell that the only office key we had was broken inside the lock. I was like WTFFFFFFF, but I somehow told myself that there's nothing I can do to fix the situation. There was a solution though, bringing in the lock master and getting door fixed.

About the project that got dropped, well it was just a project I was counting on. The client' like a good pal and I had even an iOS developer on the hook since the client said we'll be starting on the project soon. With that project gone, I have been searching for work desperately, I have found a project which is not as good as the one that died a silent death but still its good enough to pay the bills and keep things rolling forward.

A couple of month ago, I was bemused by seeing many senior software engineers and project managers working for others. I thought, had these people worked for themselves, they could have been on much better places.

Just a month of solo flight and I understand the perils of "solopreneurship" pretty well, why people don't dare to attempt a solo career is pretty clear. You can't just sit in the cubicle and write the code, instead you will have to do something about that broken lock, internet connection, faulty laptop and everything. It is this way at least for the first few months. Entrepreneurship, is not the thing for people with weak stomachs.

To be honest, the first wave of challenges would be difficult to handle, afterwards it will be everyday business as usual.

In my case, I believe the first wave came and went away. Luckily, it failed miserably leaving me undeterred.
BRING IT ON!!!

PS: You're right, catharsis was the sole motive of this post :)
Please download and try my free Android "Best Call Blocker" app from Google Play store