User at freelancer.com vs criminal in jail - the similarity

Many victim users has commented on the verification process of the site. On one hand the verification is itself used purposely to siege the money of the users, both workers and employers, on the other hand the verification process is very much insulting. It requires you to send a thief like image of yours. It doesn't happen when you ope an account or even deposit money there.

The verification process every time starts when you place a withdrawal request. Many many sources claim the same thing. As per their testimony the asked documents include a picture of the user with passport and a supplied number. According to a user who had gone through the verification process-

            ...asking me to pose for a picture with a passport on 1 hand and the code they give on other hand.

A user has also notified that the site even asked for documents four times given that all three previous demands were met! But the story doesn't end here. It was very interesting to find out what freelancer.com actually asked for. The famous image pose required to verify the user is posted by the blogger of Omnipresentwords blog.


The feeling that a victim user had was-

I never have seen such a verification process from a website, this not a government agency to ask valid ID along with your photograph holding the ID. This is the first time in my entire life I have heard something like that. Freelancer.com is just a bidding platform, and the company is based in Australia. So, what assurance a person has that the ID with his/her photograph is not going to be misused? This is ridiculous and absurd. They can not ask such things, after all this is just a website.

Same feeling was echoed by another user - I agree that security and verification is important, but a company hardly has the right to ask id-cards; that is more the task of the PAYMENT PROCESSOR (Paypal, MoneybookerS).



Lisa A. Martin while clarifying her association with Freelancer.com admitted that she was once paid by Freelancer staff to write a Wikipedia page, was once paid by Freelancer to copyedit an eBook entitled, ‘How to Boost Your Business with Online Freelancers’ and wrote two SEO articles about online freelancing which were used in some way to promote the site.  She said about the verification process- I agree that Freelancer’s identity verification methods are somewhat bizarre! 

AND

I agree that Freelancer’s identity verification methods are strange, and unneccessary too. I’ve never heard of any other company asking anyone to verify that they are who they say they are by taking a photo of themselves holding their ID! I’m sure there’s a better way, and I agree that this should be done at the stage of initial account registration and with more transparency.