In my opinion; you do not own a total stranger your image just because they will promise you a few bucks. If they want their problem solved, just show that you can do the work. Unless for a very specific type of jobs, it is not their bussiness at all if you are bald, black or like to work in slippers.

Some people typically will want to grab as many of your personal information as they can, for undisclosed reasons. Just decline politely and walk away. Profiles and portfolios are designed for showing what you want to show. In the best cases those pressing to go further are other freelancers studying their competitors; in the worst, creepy people trying to impersonate you or selling your info to a third. Is a dog eats dog world and you do not own them anything.

> "in the best cases those pressing to go further are other freelancers studying their competitors"

There are other valid reasons for requesting a video chat. One of those is to weed out agencies and impersonators of which Upwork and freelancing platforms are rife with.

It also builds better relationship to talk with someone face to face.

Of course and very reasonable, but if the people hiring hides their face wereas asking the freelancers to be videotaped, well... is a red flag. Specially if in the end, nobody is hired for this job.

Maybe is because they are shy, that is a perfect valid reason to me.

Another hypothetical explanation could be that in upwork some well stablished freelancers were targetting new fresh and disperate freelancers hiring then and paying in peanuts to do a job that they then would bill (for a higher amount) to the final client.

This was UpWork the entity not a client on UpWork, my account was on some form of a hold until I did this.