Abstract:
Freelancing applications have gotten quite attention in the past few years due to the
perks one gets from it such as working independence, higher pay rates, flexible timings, and
exposure. People tend to go for freelancing, as they want to work for themselves instead of
working for others. Due to online freelancing platforms like Freelancer, Upwork, and Fiverr
people can work on international projects while sitting in their home town. They get to work
for international clients and get an experience on a whole different level. The freelancing
platform work as a middleman between freelancers and clients. Freelancing platforms charge
both freelancers and clients for the services they provide. Freelancing Applications managed
through Smart Phones have excellent contribution towards the project completion and it also
provides better communication. Freelancing platforms store sensitive information of
individuals e.g., project-related conversations, project files, important credentials, payment
methods, financial transaction logs, etc. which can be exploited by the malicious party for
their interests. Information stored by the freelancing application can be used for digital
investigation and this information can also be used to gain access to personal data and
account information for different purposes.
In this study, Freelancing applications are downloaded and installed on the mobile
phone and a set of different activities are performed e.g. account creation, profile setup,
project posting, conversations, project award & completion, and giving review to the
freelancer and then deleting the application from the mobile phone. At each step, the logical
image of the mobile phone was acquired and examination & analysis were performed, after
the thorough examination, we have concluded that Upwork is the best among the other app as
the minimum artifacts were found regarding the Upwork app.
The purpose of the research is identification and classification of digital artifacts to be
found in android mobile phone devices when using freelancing applications. The remnants
gathered from the freelancing applications will be shown in the analysis which will help
investigators to have a better picture and insight into the behavior of freelancing applications.
