Spotting a fraudulent brief

Most of what lands in your inbox is exactly what it looks like: a brand, an agency or a producer with a real project. Occasionally someone registers an account to send the same fake brief to as many creators as they can, hoping a few will follow a link off the platform. This page is how to tell the difference, and what happens when we catch one.

When we've removed the sender

If FOOH removes an account, every conversation that account started is marked straight away — you'll see a red Removed account tag on the row in your inbox, and a warning at the top of the thread itself. You don't have to open anything to see it, and there's nothing for you to do: the mark appears the moment we act, on old messages as well as new ones.

It means what it says. Whatever that message asked you to do, don't do it:

• Don't register on any site it pointed you to, and don't reuse a password there.
• Don't send money, crypto, "escrow", equipment deposits, or a fee to be "onboarded".
• Don't hand over documents — passport, ID, bank details, tax forms.
• Don't start work. A brief from a removed account has nobody behind it who will pay.

If you already did any of that, change the password anywhere you reused it, tell your bank if payment details went out, and write to us so we can help and warn others.

What a fraudulent brief usually looks like

None of these on its own proves anything — plenty of honest first messages are short, or arrive from a Gmail address. It's the pile-up that matters.

• It's oddly generic. No mention of your actual work, your city, or anything specific to you. The same text would fit any creator on the platform, because it was sent to any creator on the platform.
• It moves you off FOOH immediately — to a "job board", a "client portal", a Telegram or WhatsApp group — and the link is a domain you've never heard of. Genuine clients do move to email eventually, but usually after a real exchange, and to their own company domain.
• It asks you to register somewhere before anything is discussed, especially with a wallet, an ID upload, or a "verification" fee.
• The money is wrong in your favour. An unusually high budget for very little work, an offer to overpay and have you refund the difference, or payment "released" only after you've paid something first.
• It's urgent. A deadline today, a slot that expires, a reason you can't take a day to think.
• The identity doesn't hold up. A company name with no website, a person with no traceable role, a brand address on a free mail provider, or a story that changes between messages.
• The English is off in a copied-template way — your name missing or spelled from your handle, placeholders left in, formatting pasted from somewhere else.

What to do about one

1. Don't reply. Not even to tell them no. A reply confirms your account is live and worth chasing, and there's nothing to gain from the exchange.
2. Report it from the thread. Open the conversation and press the flag icon at the top right. One press, nothing to write, and the sender is never told — see Reporting a message. Reports from creators are how we caught the last ones, often within hours; reporting from the message itself is what ties your alarm to the conversation that caused it. (If you've already deleted the thread, the form at the bottom of the support page still reaches us.)
3. Clear it out of your way. Open the thread's ⋯ menu in the inbox and Delete it, or Archive it if you'd rather keep a copy. Both are personal to you.
4. Turn off reminders if it was a project request. Stop reminding me in the thread ends the nudges without telling the sender anything.

What we do at our end

We read every report, and reports against the same account are shown to us together — three creators flagging one sender is a single case, not three loose notes.

When one holds up we have two responses. Suspending sending stops that account starting any new conversation, while leaving it able to read and answer the people it is already talking to; it is reversible in one press, which is why we reach for it first. Disabling the account blocks it from signing in altogether and marks every thread it opened, including the ones sent before we knew — that one is final, and a person decides it, never a rule.

Some of this happens before you ever see the message. A message from someone you've never spoken to — the first one, and anything they send after it while you haven't replied — is checked against a few countable things: how many unanswered requests that account already has outstanding, how fast it is sending, whether the same body is going out to lots of people, where its links point. Anything that trips one is held: stored, delivered to nobody, waiting for one of us. We never do any of this to a conversation that has been answered: once you've replied even once, that thread is yours.

We can't undo a payment you've already made, which is why the four "don'ts" above matter more than anything else on this page.

We will never ask you to pay to receive work, and no genuine FOOH email or message asks for your password.