Upwork and Fiverr from one laptop: splitting two marketplaces

Both platforms read the same things from your browser: the screen, the clock, the language, the font list and the address a request arrived from. Matching answers are no offence in themselves, yet they bind two accounts into a pair, and that pair lives on the platforms' side rather than yours.

The danger is not the pair but what happens to it next. A check on one marketplace reaches you exactly when the other has already asked you to confirm who you are.

1. 1

   One browser for both

   Two tabs in one window hand both platforms the same set of answers about the machine.

2. 2

   One address for both

   Both marketplaces see one exit address and one connection provider behind it.

3. 3

   One daily rhythm

   Proposals, messages and profile edits land on both platforms in the same hours.

Split the marketplaces by profile rather than by tab: a profile has its own site storage, its own cookies and its own exit address. Two profiles on one machine know nothing about each other.

The Freelance scenario is built for this case and names three platforms at once: Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer. Put it on both profiles, and what tells them apart is the address and the fingerprint rather than the name of the scenario.

1. 1

   A profile per marketplace

   One marketplace is one profile, even when you hold a single account there.

2. 2

   An address of its own

   Two profiles on one address are told apart by the fingerprint alone, and that is half the job.

3. 3

   Shared daily figures

   The scenario gives both profiles the same six daily figures and the same ramp.

The Freelance scenario opens a profile on Upwork and attaches two sets to it: the fingerprint and the protection against automation detection. Its counter lists are the general ones, with no separate set for marketplaces, because the lists hold no path based tracking of the marketplaces' own.

The scenario also cleans links: tracking tails such as trk, refId and trackingId are cut on navigation, and the marketplace does not learn which email or chat you arrived from. The rule applies to both profiles alike.

Identical scenario settings are nothing to fear. A marketplace compares the address, the clock, the languages and the fingerprint rather than the name of a scenario it cannot see, and those are what the two profiles have to differ in.

The two profiles take different addresses, and the country behind them stays the same, which is a condition rather than an oversight. Your payouts, your tax details and your document name one country, and both marketplaces read them.

A profile in Frankfurt and a profile in Warsaw, run by one contractor with a German bank account, disagree with your own paperwork rather than with each other. Take two addresses in one country, and in one city where you can.

The exit country decides more than the address: the profile's timezone and the order of browser languages come with it. Each of the 114 countries has a timezone and a language order of its own.

So moving one profile to a neighbouring country changes two more answers a marketplace reads at the door. An account opened in Berlin and used from Warsaw answers with Polish time on top of a German history.

Any one fingerprint value looks ordinary on its own, and two of them together sometimes describe a machine that has never existed. An Apple M1 graphics card beside an x86 architecture is exactly that case: both lines occur on real Macs, and the pair occurs nowhere.

So editing a single fingerprint field by hand costs more than it looks. Change the graphics card, and the cores, the memory and the architecture have to change with it, or the pair comes apart.

On a freelance profile card you see today's count of pages opened and a separate line for each marketplace action. On the profile's first day the pages come to 8, and by day seven to 40.

None of these figures holds you back: the bar turns amber, then red, and the decision stays yours. The tightest rows here are not Proposals but Account switches and Payout edits: once a day each, from day one, with no ramp.

The action rows on a profile card are numbers without colour: during the ramp a row shows today's figure and the full one behind a slash, and from day seven the full one alone. There is nothing to colour them by, because the browser cannot count proposals or messages.

Colour lives in one bar, the bar of pages opened: it turns amber from eight tenths of the day's figure and red at the figure itself. An opened page is something the browser sees by itself, and that is the only thing it counts for you.

The ceiling of pages opened for freelance work is 40 a day, and a new profile climbs to it over a week. Day one opens a fifth, the share then grows one step a day, and on day seven it becomes whole.

The steps are the same for all scenarios, and only the ceiling differs. Social work has 200, freelance has 40, and the ladder of seven shares is one and the same.

Splitting the marketplaces is easiest before either of them has built up a history. One evening gives you a finished pair of profiles, and from there the work is keeping them apart.

The order below is written for two platforms and holds for three without changes. Freelancer is the third one the scenario names, and it wants a profile of its own just the same.

• Make a profile per marketplace

  One account is one profile, and they never share a window for a minute.

• Take addresses in one country

  The address is each profile's own, and the country is the one on your documents.

• Leave the fingerprint alone

  A finished machine agrees with itself, and one hand edited field pulls its neighbours apart.

• Go slower through the first week

  On the profile's first day that is 8 pages opened, and by day seven 40.

• Keep payout edits apart

  Change payout details no more than once a day, and not on two profiles in a row.