What a check is, and what it is not.

The written bar

Every profile is read against the same numbered clauses before it appears, and they are published. The standard prints every clause in full, says what decides each one, and carries a version and a date — and every record then prints which clauses it cleared and when. The clauses live there and on no other page.

Identity first

No record is published until the person behind it has proved who they are. Every record says which of two things happened: checked against a government-issued document, or checked by a person here. A document means a passport, a national ID or a driving licence. The automatic check is run by Stripe, who keep the images: they never reach us, and we cannot ask for them. What we keep is the outcome, the date, the country that issued the document, its type, and the name printed on it.

The country a freelancer is tax-resident in is asked for separately. It is a declaration they make on the form, never a guess from an IP address, and it decides nothing about whether they are listed — there is no country rule on this register. It is kept as a record; the privacy page says for how long and why.

Then the reading

The profile is then read for the rest of the bar. It looks for the things that make a listing useless or dangerous: contact details hidden in the description, claimed skills nothing in the work supports, an agency writing as a person, borrowed or duplicated prose, and anything a client could not sensibly judge.

Anything that trips a clause is held, not published. So is anything the reading cannot complete — if it fails or times out it is retried, and after three attempts without an answer the profile is held rather than published.

A person decides a hold

Every held profile goes to a person, who publishes it or refuses it. Until someone decides, the profile does not exist publicly: it is on no list, it is not in the sitemap, and its own address answers as not found. A held freelancer is told which clause held them and what to change, in the plain terms of the clause itself.

The Mainstayer writes it

The description on every record is the Mainstayer’s own writing. We never generate one, and we never rewrite one. A near-copy of another profile already on the register is held rather than published.

A photograph is required before a record is submitted to a search engine, and no stand-in is ever drawn in place of one: no grey square, no monogram, no initial. A record without a photograph stays readable and stays linked; it is never offered to Google.

The weekly check

Every week a profile has to show a sign of life — a sign-in, an edit, a change to the hours they have free, or a reply to the one email we send when we have seen none of those. Miss a week and the profile drops out of every list a client sees. Its own page still answers and nothing is deleted; one press brings it back. Six weeks of silence and the record is hidden altogether.

Active in the last 7 days, re-checked every hour. Freshness is recomputed on the hour, so a profile that goes past 7 days stays listed for at most one more hour before it drops — 7 days and an hour at worst.

Edits are read again

Changing a headline, a description, a contact field or a skill list returns the profile to the queue and it is read against the bar again before it goes back on a list. Changing a rate, the hours free, or whether someone is taking work does not. The declared country of tax residence cannot be changed here at all: it is recorded once, at the door, and correcting it is a person’s job rather than a form post — reply to any letter from us and it gets fixed. It decides nothing about whether anyone is listed.

Every record carries a report link

Reports go straight to a person. A report never takes a record down by itself, and no number of reports can. Several separate reports about one record in a day escalate it immediately, which changes how fast a person looks and nothing else.

How a record is taken down

A Mainstayer takes their own record down from their account, in one press, without asking anyone. It leaves every list immediately, its page stops answering, and it drops out of the sitemap.

If a record is about you and you did not put it there — an impersonation, or your work shown as someone else’s — email hello@uwork.asia and it comes off while it is looked at. A person does the removal by hand, so it is prompt rather than instant.

What this does not mean

A check is not an endorsement and it is not an identity guarantee. It says a profile was read against a written bar and that the person answered a check this week. It does not say they are good at the work, that they will reply to you, that they will quote the rate on their record, or that the work shown is theirs beyond what the reading could tell.

Do the ordinary things: talk to them before you commit, start small, and pay through a method you can trace. If someone on this register asks you for money to start, tell us at hello@uwork.asia.