Clickworker: Privacy-Intrusive Micro Task Site

What is Clickworker?

Clickworker connects freelancers with a wide array of money-making options. However, a good number of these appear to be poorly-paid surveys and “AI learning” projects.

How it works

You sign up and the site presents you with jobs — often surveys and “learning projects.”

Clickworker review

Clickworker offers low-paying, but theoretically easy, gigs to anyone who is 18 or older. But where the gigs are simple, they’re also often privacy intrusive in ways that could make you an easy mark for identity theft.

For instance, the “learning projects” have you uploading sensitive personal information, from your facial features to a copy of your driver’s license. Notably, projects that ask for a photo of your driver’s license bar you from covering the personal data in it.

Another project asks you to provide a video of your car, license included. Each of these projects pay from $1.50 to $3.50. And, while the site says the data will only be used for machine learning — not violating your privacy — do you really want to put your personal data at risk for $1.50?

Higher-paid projects, including one that supposedly paid $20 to take photos of perfumes at Macy’s, could not be accessed. Meanwhile, there were seemingly endless projects that promised to pay 3 cents to 33 cents for evaluating search rankings, which could take a considerable amount of time.

Disturbing terms

The site can kick you off and take your accumulated earnings, at any time for any reason, before you cash out. It can also reject your work and refuse pay for projects it deems substandard.

Pay

Freelancers are paid once a week via PalPal or Payoneer, but only after accumulating at least $15.

Recommendations

This appears to be a truly miserable way to make money — much like signing up with Mechanical Turk.

Better options abound. If you want to take surveys, we recommend Prolific. If you want to take product pictures (a la the Macy’s option that we couldn’t access on Clickworker) check out Product Tube and IvueIt.

Those willing to participate in medical research — testing everything from vaccines to skin treatments — should check out Covance, WCCT Global and Princeton Consumer Research. All three sites pay handsomely for people willing to be human guinea pigs for the greater good (or clearer skin).

Want other easy side hustles? Check our blog post: “Easy Side Hustles.” Or take our Quiz to find a side hustle that suits your interests and skills.

What their users say (from Google Play)

Awful. I can not express enough, DO NOT GIVE YOUR INFO TO THIS APP. They make it seem like you can get lots of jobs, tasks, surveys, and whatever else with the promise of you getting paid. IF you make it through the registration and “verification,” you will see some jobs available. It’s a try and fail type of task. BUT once you do see a “balance” in your account, that’s when it gets weird. At least for me. I got kicked off and was told I was suspended for inconsistency. 🙄 don’t take the risk.

This app will take all your sensitive information, like real video of your ID, ID cards, driver license, also your family, your everything• !!!! Don’t sell your information for a this.

I don’t like that you have to give them all your personal info including your ss#. Then you go to fill out surveys literally putting in your personal info on each each survey which seems redundant. Waste your time then to not be eligible for the survery. Save your privacy and your time.

Banned

I had registered a couple of days ago, and decided to complete some jobs. However, with one job specifically I was having trouble with my camera and I had to submit a photo several times. Sadly because of this I did not manage to finish my job and get paid. I switched to a couple of other ones and completed them fine. But, I then discovered that my account was banned for “low quality work” and “spam”.

Waste of time

For now its a waste of time you wont qualify for most jobs however you still asked 100 questions. After answering all it tells you you are not qualified. I will keep try for now i change my view after the first payout.

You do a survey for your precious 45 minutes then it says you don’t qualify after all that time, they should have disqualified me when starting.

I have been using it for months and I fail 95% of the surveys. Especially when they ask you about your economic level, if you are low-income they will disqualify you. I have seen in forums that people who earn something have to falsify their data to say that they are CEOs or other executive positions. There is another that is a video game test and for 5 hours of play you get €1 and they will have earned €20 with advertising.

(from Glassdoor)

“Very slow. Micro jobs. Tedious work. Too many error pages. NOT clear instruction on job listings. Very, very low pay, even for a survey/odd task site.”

“The jobs are all maybe 3 or 7 cents each, I made less than 2 dollars for every 2 hours straight of work. In addition they give you assessments which are supposed to give you better jobs but they don’t. The assessments are also rarely available so even if you want to get better jobs you can’t.”

Horrible pay

“The pay is horrible, next level horrible. I really tried to give it a go but it was not worth a second of my time. Stop underpaying people for working hard. This entire thing is an elaborate scam to take advantage of people.”

“If you have nothing better to do, then this is a perfect way to make a little extra money on the side. But many jobs posted are bogus and false and just a way to waste the employees time by waiting some minutes on a specific job only to find out the job was rejected, even after complying with all the guidelines. Also, customer service is like a broken record.”

“My 3 months hard work and result is ZERO.”

From Apple App Store

“I have used Clickworker for a short time now .. the app is okay so far, but there are no concrete descriptions of what exactly you can expect before you take a job”

“Loads forever, Hangs up. Jobs bring in cents, if at all, if you can do them.”

Wow. 7 cents

“Wow 7 cents to 2 € for the time I have to invest in there. I can also look for returnable bottles…”

“With the prospect of 0.07 €, I have now clicked my way through some surveys for almost 1 hour in which my professional status was asked again and then to find out that I do not belong to the group of people. I give up.”

“Unfortunately, I have the experience that completed orders are simply canceled after they have been submitted. Conversely, this means that you work for about 30 minutes and don’t get anything … should something change, I would also be happy to leave a better rating :-)”