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So, I had a "developer" that I hired...

by tritrain
15 replies
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on Fiverr. Yeah, I know, who can you trust? But I did. He claimed he's from England, and had a nice blonde guy for a picture.

He wanted access to my web server, as well as my site. I was immediately suspicious but didn't listen to my gut. After a few questions, I ended up giving him access.

Long story short, he left a big mess for me to fix with respect to my site.

After hours of being completely down, I got sick of it, so I booted him off the server and changed the password. I managed to clean up the mess and recover my site, with the original data intact. Then I looked at my security logs.

He wasn't from England. He's from Lagos, Nigeria!

If he wasn't the crowned prince, I'd be really pissed, says his email.
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  • Profile picture of the author Darryl Smith
    Sorry to hear of your sad experience.

    Sadly this type of thing goes on too often. I have also experienced similar from 'other' sites, so sadly there is no immunity.

    Maybe try here on WF classifieds, but once more - due diligence is needed as I have been taken here too!
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  • Profile picture of the author DWolfe
    Originally Posted by tritrain View Post


    If he wasn't the crowned prince, I'd be really pissed, says his email.
    A little birdie whispered in my ear the bad news about the crown prince......He is really a she
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    • Profile picture of the author tritrain
      Originally Posted by DWolfe View Post

      A little birdie whispered in my ear the bad news about the crown prince......He is really a she
      NOOOooooo!
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  • Profile picture of the author Dennis Gaskill
    tritrain - I'd look through every folder/directory on my site to look for files that aren't supposed to be there. If you can, I'd also look at the source code for every page if your site isn't too big, to look for code that isn't supposed to be there. If your site is too big for that, at least do some random page checks.

    My site was hacked once, and random scripts were placed deep in the directory structure, and thousands of links were placed after the closing HTML tag on several pages, and placed several screens after the source code so you wouldn't see it.

    The whole hack was set up have links from a popular, authoritative site going to a site in China. I didn't notice it until my traffic plummeted, which was because my site was penalized by the search engines. My traffic went from about 100k visitors a month, to about 4k. You can imagine what that did to my income.

    That may not have happened to you, but if it's a money site you can't be too careful.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Word of advice, there are exactly zero developers from England working for Fiverr prices.
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    • Profile picture of the author tritrain
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      Word of advice, there are exactly zero developers from England working for Fiverr prices.
      Actually, Fiverr has changed. They have a pro level, which are hand-picked. The costs are no longer $5, but instead go up into the $thousands now.

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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by tritrain View Post

        Actually, Fiverr has changed. They have a pro level, which are hand-picked. The costs are no longer $5, but instead go up into the now.
        My bad. I have not looked at it that closely in a long time. I generally only go there for graphics.
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      • Profile picture of the author ryanbiddulph
        Aha! Touche Even then though, you are really really really chancing it on those type sites. I got to know my developer over months and even longer before he re-did my site.

        If you really need work done more than anything, only hire someone who you vetted over the phone, with interviews, by checking out their portfolio, and by seeing that they charge top dollar too. Gotta be days or even weeks to trust the gal or guy, because if you are going to hand your site to them, you have to be clear on trusting them implicitly.
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    • Profile picture of the author ryanbiddulph
      EXactly Mike.

      My developer hails from the UK; I know his rates, and they ain't in the Fiverr range. Maybe Fiverr rates times 100.
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  • Profile picture of the author mikeandy01
    Hey mate,
    sorry to hear about your situation
    If you hire developers from fiverr(which i do from time to time when i need more VA's for my projects) its very important that you vet them properly to make sure they...

    1: fully understand the task you have given them.

    2: is trustworthy and looks like a developer/vendor with a few succesful gigs and plenty of positive reviews under their belts.

    3: Send you a custom offer for the specific task/job and for the agreed upon price and budget instead of you buying there gig(s).

    These are just some basic guidelines that will make sure you get only Quality developers or skilled workers in general for any of your Projects
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    • Profile picture of the author tritrain
      Couldn't agree more. Fiverr really needs to have photo ID proof of who the person is and have a way to look at a portfolio or something. More like Upwork.
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  • Profile picture of the author sendizo
    It is alright! it is an experience after all - Thanks for sharing - We never stop learning, right!

    Trust is a dangerous game! you should have backed up data right before giving access to get you up and running in not time incase something goes wrong,
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  • Profile picture of the author tritrain
    Yup all ended up fine in the end. Except I'm pretty sure the seller no longer is on Fiverr.

    Happy ending after all.

    Now, it's time to ride off into the sunset. Yeehaw!!
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  • Profile picture of the author baileyshaw437
    Most of them on fiverr are fake people with fake identities and you can never know that who has a genuine identity.
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  • Profile picture of the author tritrain
    Yeah, agree. Guess who had another fraud attempt? Muah. This time on Upwork. <sigh>

    And then Fiverr claimed I was being exclusionary for not wanting to work with people from Nigeria. They sent me a long email about not discriminating against others. Apparently they are afraid of discrimination, but not fraud. I think they've got their heads on backwards.
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