After low-price credit scam targets WorkBuddy, I locked down foreign trade data workflows

Honestly, for cheap deals like selling 5,000 credits for 8.88 yuan, I didn't even bother trying. I've been using WorkBuddy for about a month, mainly for organizing client quote sheets, business cards from exhibitions, and WhatsApp export records. My bigger worry is it messing with things it shouldn't touch.

Media reports say these low-cost top-ups cause users to run scripts, modify local hosts or proxy configurations, effectively connecting to third-party models. The interface shows credits arriving, but calls lag or error out. WorkBuddy responded that this does not constitute official credit allocation.

Here, 'hosts' refers to the local domain resolution file on your computer, and 'proxy configuration' is the forwarding entry point software uses when accessing the network. Ordinary foreign trade professionals don't need to touch these. I only use the official client and official credit packs, and I don't randomly enable custom model channels.

Credit numbers can be fake, but client data cannot be messed with. Last week, my clients tried using WorkBuddy to process a batch of post-exhibition emails. The raw emails included inquiries, samples, complaints, and auto-replies. WorkBuddy initially treated "Out of Office" messages as leads—Out of Office is just an automatic vacation reply. The exported list looked busy, but it was all noise.

Later, instead of rushing to switch tools, I changed WorkBuddy's task rules. The path is: open the WorkBuddy PC client, click 'Agents' on the left (my entry is called Agents, yours might be Workflow), create a new task named 'Exhibition Email Lead Cleaning,' and set up two folders in the working directory: D:\WorkBuddy\raw for raw email exports only, and D:\WorkBuddy\output for results.

Drag email export files into raw, or select them in the file picker panel. In the interface, choose 'File Organization' or 'Data Analysis,' paste the rules into the task description: identify quotes, samples, complaints, auto-replies; mark as ignore if containing 'automatic reply', 'out of office', 'auto-reply', 'vacation response' AND lacking specific product quantities; for each lead, retain email time, sender, client country, demand summary, source file.

After clicking Run, expect the status to show 'Running' in the task list. Once complete, enter the preview page to see classification tables and pending confirmation items. Finally, export CSV, naming the file with the date, e.g., Lead_Cleaning_20260910.csv. CSV is a plain text table, suitable for importing into CRM later.

Most WorkBuddy failures happen because boundaries weren't set. I later summarized: configure directories and column names first, then talk about automatic merging. The trickiest part of foreign trade spreadsheets is fields; some call it 'Unit Price,' some 'Price,' some 'FOB Price' (Free On Board price). If you let AI merge directly, it might guess. Now, I fix column names in WorkBuddy task rules: Client, Product, Quantity, Unit, Currency, Unit Price, Total Price, Delivery Date, Remarks, Person in Charge, Status. Missing items are not filled in; they are just highlighted yellow.

Permissions must also be separated. On my end, sales staff only have read access to raw; the WorkBuddy output directory is writable for the Sales Supervisor; final quote sheets are archived after supervisor confirmation. Teams should not share WorkBuddy accounts. If integrated with Feishu (Lark), bots should only be added to designated project groups, without admin privileges. This way, even if a task runs wrong, raw email exports and quote drafts won't be overwritten.

For daily maintenance, I set a small checklist: every Friday, move unconfirmed leads from output to avoid mixing them in next week; update column name templates monthly; record new currencies or trade terms separately; keep prompts and output files for every task to allow tracing errors.

The rise of such gray-market operations indicates people find credits expensive, and also that many treat AI as just a button. The real value of WorkBuddy lies in whether it can stably handle the messy pile of foreign trade data. Whether low-cost credit scams continue is uncertain, but I'm setting up directories, permissions, templates, and logs clearly first. Only then dare I hand over core business to it.