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Buyer Safety
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We treat the safety of our users very seriously. Most users are legitimate but it is important to be cautious. We recommend the following:
- Communicate through the oDesk Message Center.
- Do not give out your passwords, bank info, etc.
- Proceed with caution when paying upfront for fixed-price work. These non-refundable payments should only be made to trusted providers.
- Post your jobs as hourly to qualify for the guarantee.
- Manage your assignments using the team room and work diary.
In addition, the following safety precautions are not only recommended, but required.
- Do not include your contact info in your job posts (email, telephone number, etc.). This is a violation of oDesk policy. Report providers who share contact info in their cover letters. You should not to have direct contact until the interview stage.
- Pay for work through oDesk; report anyone trying to take you outside the system.
Your oDesk account is protected by a password and security question. To maintain the integrity of your account:
- Add a security email address to receive vital security notifications.
- Never share your password or security question with others.
- Do not allow others to log in as you. A user ID belongs to an individual; each person must register for a unique user ID.
- Change your password or security question regularly and if you ever suspect they have been compromised.
- Watch out for phishing schemes.
oDesk provides a variety of tools to help manage your workteams and gives you full visibility into work being completed. The team room, work diary and reports allow you to see who's working, when they're working and what they're working on. Utilize these tools and oDesk guarantees that every hour billed on an hourly assignment is an hour worked.
It is your responsibility manage your team and maintain an acceptable quality of work. These tools are available to help you; please take advantage of them!
- Team Room
- The control center for your workteam allows you to see all your team members at a glance, send them messages, access their work diaries, check their activity levels, end their assignments, and more.
- Work Diary
- This window into your workteam's virtual office allows you to see exactly what any team member is working on with screenshots and activity levels uploaded six times per hour. They even have the option to include webcam pictures! Read the memos and task codes and check the screenshots to be sure they're working. Do this every week during the review period. Find something inappropriate? Contact the provider to sort things out (they can remove or refund the time) and file a dispute, if necessary.
- Reports
- Manage the big picture with summaries of time, payments and task codes. Timelogs are statements of all activity during a week, whereas time analyze allows for more robust reporting. Buyers requiring more advanced analysis should set up task codes to get the most out of their reports.
You must keep all work and payments inside oDesk. Please report anyone attempts to move their work outside oDesk to Customer Support.
