Privacy and Elance
Obviously, the privacy and protection of your personal and financial information is paramount to any long-term successful business venture, online or otherwise. Without this trust the foundation will quickly crumble.
Given the quantity of financial transactions Elance does in any given day, week, or year, it’s no surprise they’ve spent a lot of time working on member privacy. It wouldn’t work otherwise; it’s as simple as that.
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BEST PRACTICES |
Some Elancers like to keep their earnings and/or amount spent on projects private. Others use this information to prove they’re active and successful. The choice is completely yours and can be changed at any time.
Your financial information is encrypted within Elance and cannot be accessed by anyone unauthorized. They use the same encryption technology that most major ecommerce sites use and will continue to update. In order to access your account information you have to use a user name and password. This is all pretty standard stuff.
Additional privacy settings can be found by clicking on your user name in the top-right corner of most any Elance page. In the drop-down menu, click on Settings. In the menu on the left, click on Privacy Settings to see the screen shown in Figure 14.4.
Figure 14.4: Elance privacy settings give you the opportunity to hide your earnings, job titles, and other information.
For contractors, you can choose to keep the amount you’ve earned on Elance public or private. If you select the private option, those numbers will only be available to potential clients whose projects you’ve bid on.
For clients, you can choose to keep the total amount you’ve spent on Elance private or public, as well as the job names and descriptions. There’s no real right or wrong to this, it just gives you the option to share what you want.
Both clients and contractors can choose to allow their profiles to be searchable on public search engines. This can be a great way to get added exposure, but it all boils down to what you’re comfortable with.
The Least You Need to Know
• The quantity of business passing through Elance demands a high standard of protection for both sides of any transaction.
• Use the project agreement templates for added legal protection.
• Check with your CPA and/or lawyer if you have any tax or legal concerns.
• Elance policies are straightforward and designed to protect both sides.
• Use the Privacy Settings page if you want to keep private the amount you’ve earned or spent.