Sometime around 2012 I noticed a massive spike in my daily emails from translators applying to work for my translation agency, from about 4-10 to 30-50 or more a day. I diligently responded to each email, but eventually determined that these new additions were not from real translators.

Below you will find information on the source of these emails and what you can do to protect yourself.

1)  What is the source of these fake email applications.

The fake applications come from at least one company masquerading itself as a translation agency but which collects resumes of real translators from the internet and sends emails in their name using newly created gmail, hotmail or yahoo email addresses (sometimes outlook.com or outlook.sa). If you try to give work to any of these fake translators, you can expect to receive a poor quality, google/machine translation.

2)  What measures you can take to protect yourself.

You can set up a free filter to block out existing and known fake applicants, or use our filter system to block out existing and new ones, since the scammer companies are creating new accounts on a constant basis.

Not only are these fake applications a headache, but they make it more difficult for real translators to enter the industry and for us to accept new ones.

To expose these email addresses to spam, you may find them posted below.

3)  CVs sent through this service, about three a month, use a particular template (although custom is also possible) whose subject always begins with a special code to instruct the 15,000+ recipients that they are from real translators. Read some testimonials to see that this is truly an effective way how to expand your translation client base.

Below is some correspondence concerning this matter and which may shed further light on it.

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I just came across your website. I am getting quite bombarded with these translator CVs. Have you tried discussing this with such organizations as spamcop? A lot of email services base their spam filters on this database. How do you confirm that the email addresses are actually spammers? If this process could be expedited we could nip them in the bud. If they are using their own servers to send out all these emails, as I doubt gmail etc would allow so much messages, their IP address could also be marked as a spammer, and save all of our inboxes in the process. Or gmail etc could close down those email accounts.

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And, what could spamcop (or any other organization) do?
Please send me those CVs for proper exposure. If you could check if they are already in my Directory, that would expedite the posting of their data.
Of particular interest are messages, email addresses, attachments and PayPal addresses used by the scammers themselves (Languagemet, Translator Secrets, etc.) 

A lot of email services base their spam filters on this database. How do you confirm that the email addresses are actually spammers?

All these scammers emails are posted on hijacked CVs. 

If this process could be expedited we could nip them in the bud. If they are using their own servers to send out all these emails, as I doubt gmail etc would allow so much messages, their IP address could also be marked as spammer, and save all of our inboxes in the process.

Gmail addresses always locate back to Google IP addresses.

Or gmail etc could close down those email accounts.

Then what? It takes 3 minutes to scam someone’s CV and open another Gmail address.

This sort of activity can only be prevented (on the translators/companies side) by a proper risk management attitude.
And by exposing scammers IDs and emails used. They live off people not being aware of their operation.
The more they are exposed, the less chance they’ll have to continue their scamming operation in the open.

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If spamcop and others cooperated they could blacklist these email addresses. That means that any future mailouts from their addresses would end in the spambox of recipients. If google cooperated they could close down the accounts. Or they could go a step further by preventing those people from creating new accounts, but I guess the spammers could just makeup another IP address. But if their outgoing mail ended in the recipient’s spambox, or better their accounts were cancelled by gmail, they’d have to start all over again, for it is usually a timely process to get work from an agency (application forms to fill in, email correspondence and so on). I also probably have the list they are sending to (about 16,000 email addresses), so I can send them an email, such as to inform them they should carefully consider giving work to anyone whose email ended in their spambox (at least check more). More below.

Really, I do not expect any cooperation from Google or any other organization. Really. One of the purposes of having these emails in the open is to make them available to spambots. I even publish a TXT file with other addresses used by scammers.

I do not know which ones are the spammers. How do you find that out before adding an address to your dbase?

If you read the copy of my Directory you’ll get a clear idea of what to look for:
1. Gmail / Hotmail address (a good indication is to have an email from Hotmail that was actually sent by a Gmail address, look at the email header).
3. DOC authored/saved by someone different from the scammer’s name… Look at some of the most common names used by scammers in my Directory.
Or by having Arabic words in the File properties, in CVs not belonging to Arabic translators.
2. Funny CVs: Italian name, female, born in France, educated in Cameroon, worked as a “removal man”??? Would you believe it that a translation company in the USA has been tricked by a CV like that?

I don’t believe there is a solution, or a silver bullet for this.
Exposure, awareness and, above all, good risk management from translators and companies.

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To help with the cause I used to post the email addresses found on this site below.