Yup. That's why the only way to really protect yourself from any chance of ever being blackmailed or extorted is to do business only with someone who: (1) lives in a first-world country with a functioning criminal-justice system that aggressively prosecutes those types of crimes, and (2) is willing to provide you with a real name, location, and phone number that can be verified independently to make sure that they're all 100% real.

On the whole, I consider myself very lucky to have managed to get that email ID. In fact, the first time that I tried to register it, around 1998, it was unavailable. When I checked again in 1999 or 2000, it was available, so I grabbed it. For many years, I still got spam addressed, by name, to the woman who apparently used that AOL email address before relinquishing it about 25 years ago. The only downside is that, once in a while, I have to make sure that people know when comments about other websites (and email addresses) here have absolutely nothing to do with me.

This is true. There are no essay companies whose writers are all "unemployed professors" or "nurses" or "lawyers." That's nothing but a deceitful marketing tactic.

In my experience, this is something that simply doesn't exist. As I've mentioned before, in my 25 years of writing academic projects for a living, I've had more nursing clients than students in any other field, and I recently posted a photo of a stack of nursing textbooks representing roughly half of my hard-copy sources. While I don't keep a precise count, I've definitely written more than 1,000 nursing projects for several hundred nursing clients, including everything from 100-pg PhD dissertations for Nurse-Practitioner degree candidates to those dopey series of 150-word class-forum posts and responses to classmates' related posts, which means that, in addition to exposure to the writing abilities of my clients, I've also become quite familiar with the writing abilities and styles of a dozen or more classmates of each nursing client for whom I've written those series of class-forum posts. In fact, their relative inability to write (and/or interpret and comment meaningfully on the assigned articles for those forum assignments) was shocking to me, at first. One of my very first clients (in 1999) was a gym friend who was entirely unable to write any of his own projects in nursing school. He'd never have been able to graduate, otherwise; however, he's now a very respected senior nurse supervisor with a successful 20-year career in the field, thereby (also) proving that there's no correlation between nursing writing assignments and the actual practice of nursing. By far, I've also had many more nurses refer their friends and colleagues to me than clients in any other field, to the extent that I've produced as many as three different versions of the exact same assignment and deadline for three clients all taking the same course together; and at least two of my nursing clients eventually referred their daughters to me for work, roughly a decade after they received their own degrees. If there were such a thing as nurses writing nursing papers for hire, they'd never have become so reliant on and loyal to me, as clients.

In my experience, most nursing-degree candidates don't write very well, at all; and those who might write well are already working grueling shifts that (at least) do pay very well. The last thing that any practicing nurses need to do is take on more of the same writing projects that they (typically) hated having to do for their own degrees, for the comparative pittance that they'd earn per hour writing essays in their free time. If they ever need the extra money, they simply pick up an extra 4-hour or 8-hour or 12-hour shift for much more money than they'd earn working on someone else's academic essay for 2x or 3x or 4x the amount of time investment and less money. Additionally, a very substantial percentage of my nursing clients have always been ESL students who could never have written any of the projects required of them by their nursing programs. Meanwhile, most of the assigned topics (or topic choices) of those required projects are entirely irrelevant to their learning the substantive concepts and clinical skills that actually correspond to being a good nurse. I suppose it's possible that there might be nurses who are good writers and who aren't currently working as nurses, but I doubt that they'd be writing nursing papers for work, except (perhaps) the occasional project for close friends; and I highly doubt that any of them advertises and/or could be found by -- or would be interested in taking work from -- any nursing students they don't already know, personally.

Agreed as far as the risk of using writers who now rely AI instead of writing all of their own content. Most independent writers either still write for essay companies, as well, or they did so for years while they established a sufficiently large and reliable client base to become exclusively independent. More generally, the vast majority of people who provide academic writing, in the first place, only do it on a part-time basis, or while they're in between regular fulltime jobs, rather than for the long term as their chosen profession. That all means that they don't really have much of an investment in their personal reputations as writers. For that reason, students should only do business with academic writers who have very long verifiable histories, both of their abilities and of their honesty with their clients; ideally, they should try to find writers who have actually held fulltime corporate or government positions as writers, and whose prior employment in that capacity can be verified, independently. That's because anybody can call himself a "writer" and start applying to essay companies for work or advertising his services, independently, but comparatively few professional academic writers can prove that they've ever really held fulltime positions as writers, anywhere, let alone at any highly-selective organizations. Even fewer have ever held fulltime positions as writers and also have verifiable online reputations as professional academic writers going back more than 15 years under the same ID and email address.

I wouldn't agree, necessarily, that it's a matter of "pride," per se; it's much more a matter of earning and maintaining a reputation for only providing high-quality original work, because any client who receives an AI-generated essay from a writer will not be coming back as a repeat customer. For independent freelance writers, nothing is more important and/or more determinitive of our ability to maintain our business over the long term than turning all of our first-time clients into long-term repeat customers. Based on many years' of reports on this forum about scam essay companies, it's quite apparent that giant essay companies with aggressive social-media advertising campaigns might be able to afford to operate a "business model" based on an endless supply of very disappointed first-time/last-time customers who never place subsequent orders after receiving one worthless essay. Conversely, independent freelancers could never hope to stay in business or to make a living doing this for many years without an extremely high retention rate very close to 100%. While I do experience some degree of pride and satisfaction from being able to write the way I do and from the appreciation of so many of my clients, I'd say that the main reason that I've never been tempted to plagiarize and the reason that I'd never even consider using AI is simply self-preservation and the unparalleled importance to my business of long-term client retention, above all else.

The way I see it, the fact that so many essay-company writers have obviously been trying to get away with using AI for their projects only increases the demand for experienced legitimate independent writers who (really) write everything themselves and who would never waste their time on AI-generated content. To us, the writing generated by AI programs is laughably bad. I sympathize with essay companies that now have to police their writers' use of AI in addition to always having had to weed out writers who plagiarize the old-fashioned way(s). Most companies use their own proprietary plagiarism scanners, but as I've previously explained several times, it isn't possible to "scan" accurately for AI-generated writing, because, however bad it is, it's still "original" and, therefore, won't match any existing content the way that plagiarized writing can be identified by scanners, often pinpointing exactly what sources were copied to produce it.

I'm always getting unsolicited emails from people who want to "work for" or "work with" me. I usually respond (once) politely letting them know that I work alone but wishing them luck. Most of them are Kenyans and their emails, alone, make it clear that they can't write very well. Even the occasional well-written email from them is always very obvious ESL writing, and I have to say that there's something stylistic in the way Kenyans typically write English that immediately identifies them as not just as ESL writers but as Kenyans, specifically. The writing of other ESL writers is amost always recognizable as ESL English, but without being as immediately obvious as far as particular nationality and/or native language; with Kenyans, it's just that much more obvious.

It seems as though there's a never-ending list of new scam companies always replacing those that eventually close up shop. Students need to be even more careful than ever, with the availability of AI programs; otherwise, they'll end up paying these types of companies for AI-generated garbage that's probably worse than anything they could have produced by themselves for free.

Actually, when it comes to deadlines, I've learned that most non-rush deadlines typically include a substantial cushion on the client's end of things; in fact, sometimes, clients request deadlines that are a week -- and not uncommonly, several weeks -- earlier than their actual submission deadlines. Certainly, unless or until that's confirmed with the client, writers should always be prepared to treat every deadlines as a "hard" deadline rather than as a "soft" deadline. The reason that this sometimes comes up as an issue is that, fairly often, I receive urgent requests that I can only accommodate if another client can afford to give me a deadline extension on a pending project. When that happens, I simply let the client with the new urgent request know that I can only accept the project if someone else gives me a deadline extension that will allow me to fit it in my schedule.

Much more often than not, the response I get from clients with the pending deadline is along the lines of "Sure, how much extra time do you need?" or "I can give you 4 more days if that helps," etc. Obviously, all original deadlines are always treated as hard deadlines with priority over any new project request until the client responds to let me know that the pending deadline can be pushed back. In fact, sometimes, I've had no choice but to decline the urgent project to meet the pending deadline, only to find out, after the fact, that the first client actually had plenty of time to spare, after all, but just didn't see my request in time to respond that later delivery would have been fine, by which time I had no choice but to decline the new rush request to meet the first deadline. That's how responsible writers treat potentially conflicting deadlines.

Perfect. That means there's nothing they could possibly do to you. All the more reason to resist any impulse to read any of their continued nonsense or to respond to them at all. Just block them, forget about them as soon as you file your credit card dispute, and move on with your life. Lesson learned and, hopefully, by others reading this, as well.

There's no such thing as any investigation into student academic conduct by any Department of Education either in the US or UK. Only your academic institution would ever conduct such an investigation, and only if it was one of your professors who notified them, not some stranger online. I continue to be amazed at the gullibility of students who trust these criminals with their sensitive personal information. Definitely pursue the matter directly through your credit card company to recover your money. In that regard, the most important bits of information to share with them are the emails in which you requested to cancel the transaction before they ever actually did anything for you and the blackmail threats, themselves. Also include any emails referring to it being "refundable" and/or screen shots of those types of promises on their website (and preserve those screens ASAP before they can be changed).

Don't respond to any of their messages, at all. Block them on every medium through which they contact you and report them to law enforcement without any fear that LE authorities will have any interest in investigating you or in reporting you to your institution. That's not a thing, no matter who tells you otherwise. Report them to ic3.gov/Home/ComplaintChoice in the US and to actionfraud.police.uk/how-to-report-fraud in the UK. Whatever you do, absolutely do not even consider contacting your institution, either for help (because they can't provide any) or (especially) to confess first, before they "report" you to your school. Don't even bother reading their continued attempts to contact you and don't even continue posting details on this forum, because there's a good chance they're reading this and if they know you're frightened, they'll just continue threatening you.

Ignore and block their messages and don't respond to anything else from them. You already did the most important thing by reporting this and naming the company, to help other students avoid falling into the same trap. Next time, only use a provider who will disclose his complete ID information, because without anonymity, blackmail is impossible, at least in the US and UK.

Exactly. I've never understood why so many questions about the legitimacy of companies come only after customers have already paid for their essays.

This is precisely why your safest bet is only to use essay providers with several decades of online presence under the same S/N and email address, and who will provide you with their real ID information, together with their actual street address and (landline) phone number, and then to confirm that information independently, by verifying it through various online ID-verification services, for free. That only takes a few minutes to do but provides invaluable safety from blackmail and tremendous risk reduction of receiving poor-quality work (or nothing) for your hard-earned money.

I know nothing about this company besides what I've read on this forum. However, it seems either that you have to register an account or that you have the option of registering; and I'd imagine that provides a means of communicating with them. The much more important issue is that you don't need to get very far into their website to encounter atrocious (obviously ESL) writing, even in the paragraphs specifically claiming to provide a rigorous "proofreading" process. If an essay company can't even come up with error-free copy on its own website, they're not going to be able to provide better writing in their projects; in fact, their projects are more likely to be much worse than the copy that they apparently believe is good enough to put up on their website.

I'd never trust any writing company that reached me via any form of social media.

My first paid project was also in the (early) 90s; the company faxed me the project details and I delivered it by hand and got paid in cash at the 24-hour gym on West 17th Street where I was training at the time.

On one hand, it's not technically incorrect to ask "Hey, are you still doing essay writing?" in informal conversation; on the other hand, a good writer probably wouldn't ever use "doing essay writing" in that way, even informally, IMO. While that's more of a stylistic thing than an outright mistake, "in prospective" is completely wrong (in this context) and would only be grammatically correct in a sentence such as "One thing employers like to see in prospective employees is good writing, which includes good word selection." The word he was looking for is "perspective," which would still be incorrect, but for a reason much too boring to bother explaining adequately. It's still probably not a word choice that many good writers would make, again, IMO, even if you tweaked it to resolve the syntax/semantics/logic problem(s) by changing "stuff" to "issues" or "considerations," totally irrespective of whether it's supposed to be formal or informal writing. Most good writers would probably use "respectively" instead of "in perspective"; but that still presents the same problem(s) unless you also change "stuff" to a countable noun from a collective noun.



Here's another way that "prospective" would be entirely grammatically correct: "It's probably not a great idea to start insulting your prospective clients."


So much for the need to argue about whether or not that company really hires only "professors."

True. A legitimate honest writer has no reason ever to conceal his identity from his clients. However, just a name and phone number provided by the writer provide no real assurance, by themselves, that you really know who you're dealing with, because (obviously) anybody can make up a name and everybody has a cell phone. That's why the only real way to be absolutely sure that you know your writer's true identity is to confirm, independently, that the name provided can be searched online AND linked directly to a landline # through typical ID-verification services and online local directories, and that the landline matches the # provided by the writer. Knowing your writer's real identity is invaluable, because it means the writer is accountable and (especially) because blackmail and extortion of any kind are completely impossible without anonymity. For the exact same reason, there's also much more safety dealing only with writers located in first-world countries, where there actually is a functional criminal justice system, as well as with writers whose online presence on forums such as this one is a decade or more long and under the exact same ID or forum S/N.

Based on what I've read in this thread, that company sounds like it was simply a much larger venture built on the same "business model" as that used by countless Nigerian (and other) individual "entrepreneurs" who operate as undisclosed middlemen to rip people off on both sides of the business of academic essays. Over the years, at least a dozen of them have contacted me, pretending to be prospective clients.

The way it works is they advertise themselves and solicit business, either as essay companies or as writers. As soon as they get payments from customers, they start shopping around for real writers, posing as students in need of essays. They look for very cheap ESL "writers" willing to work for the few dollars per page that they pay them to write projects for which they charge customers a premium price of 10x or 20x what they pay any of the totally unqualified "writers" they hire. They usually pay their totally unqualified "writers" peanuts just to maintain them on their staff and continue using them to provide horrible and totally unusable essays to all of their future first-time/last-time customers. When they do manage to dupe any real writer to work for much higher pay that actually is reasonable, they simply ghost the writer when it comes time for payment, or they invent false justifications for refusing to pay what the writer rightfully earned.

There are several variations of this scam, but the most common one -- especially those run by individuals rather than by larger companies -- is probably collecting customer payments and then not paying any of the real writers they can dupe into writing for them (once) by posing as clients. The larger company-sized variations of this scheme involve a longer-term strategy, whereby they actually do pay new their writers for their first few projects, or for their first month of work, just to gain their trust and confidence. Then, after those writers provide a few thousand dollars worth of work, they provide excuses for "delayed" payment, to maximize the amount of unpaid work from them; and then, they either ghost them or they invent endless phony justifications for deducting large portions of their earned pay if/when they do actually pay them, at all. In this larger version of this scam, they actually do get some repeat customers (because a real writer who never got paid wrote their projects), and they get a few thousand dollars worth of work from each real writer they rip off after a month or three of hard work.

This is the most obvious indication that the OP probably had absolutely no experience actually running an essay company, or even working as a freelance writer. Customers who receive poorly written papers, especially on their first project from any provider, aren't likely to return for a second paper. Money back guarantees are usually an obvious red flag of a scam, particularly in conjunction with totally subjective standards, such as "poorly written" vs. obective standards, such as "plagiarized" or "missed deadline." In this case, I don't think the OP was necessarily running a scam, either; I think he was just someone with zero experience in this business expressing what a typical complete outsider might think "sounds" like a good policy, just as part of pretending to have enough experience to know what he was talking about.

Think about it: Who would be deciding that the writing is sufficiently "poor" to justify the refund? If it's the customer, the company is entirely unable to protect itself against fraudulent refund demands; and if it's the company, a "guarantee" that depends on the company deciding that the writing was, in fact, "poor" is unenforceable and amounts to no real "guarantee" of anything.

Agreed.

You don't need to post to see whether or not you're successfully logged on. Just check the upper right side of your screen: if it displays your S/N, it means you're logged in; if it displays a sign-on field, it means you're not.

Scams involving fake US phone numbers have been widespread throughout this industry forever. Your safest bet is always to find a writer who doesn't have any problem sharing his verifiable personal home landline # with his clients, along with his verifiable real name and location.

I don't think it's realistic for most people to avoid sharing their personal information by consent, simply because apps like Facebook and IG (etc.) are just way too integrated into their lives. Agreeing to share your data is just the price of choosing to use their apps. Government can implement certain restrictions to mitigate some of the associated risks, or at least make them less likely to be accepted blindly -- such as by requiring opt-in vs. opt-out terms and conditions -- but, ultimately, those companies offer a service that nobody is obligated to install or use. Beyond that, about all government can do might be something along the lines of requiring them to offer paid versions of any free apps that require consent to share personal information, just to provide the option to refuse to share some of their information that's typically the "price" of using them for free; but even that is hard to imagine for services that aren't necessities the way one could argue, plausibly, that an Internet connection is, nowadays. Obviously, all of the risks associated with sharing personal information are greatly magnified anytime you use any app from (or do business with) companies situated in 2nd or 3rd-World countries with much less effective or non-existent regulatory and criminal justice systems, except as a means to control populations and punish dissent.

Welcome.

I've had several recent "editing" inquiries from students who sent me "drafts" that were obviously AI-generated. Clearly, they were just hoping to save money by using AI first and then asking a real writer to improve it instead of writing it from scratch. The problem is if an essay presents no real ideas or analyses, but only the most general background information (and/or fabricated "AI-hallucinated" material) instead of any real content, it can't be "fixed" through editing. I had to explain to them that "editing" consists substantialy of reorganizing the presentation of the substantive ideas already in the essay and improving the actual writing. It doesn't include adding all of the necessary substantive content to an essay that's completely devoid of any real analyses or original ideas.

No legitimate essay company or freelance writer ever promises any of that nonsense about unlimited free revisions. Legitimate companies and writers will, of course, always provide appropriate revisions whenever owed, such as in the event of a (rare) accidental failure to follow all of the specs and directions associated with a project, but anything along the lines of "unlimited" free revisions should immediately be considered a very obvious red flag (even when it's not also written in atrociously nonsensical "English").

I have no independent knowledge about this specific company; however, to me, obvious red flags that you're dealing with a shady essay company include the following:

1. Any kind of blanket refund or satisfaction "guarantee."
2. Any promise of "unlimited revisions" until the customer is "satisfied."
3. Any representation that projects are "assigned" to subject-matter experts and/or only written by writers with degrees in the exact same field as every project.
4. Any kind of representation that the writing "process" will include regular back-and-forth communication with the writer and/or the incorporation of ongoing customer input throughout the writing process.

No legitimate essay company or freelance writer ever promises any of that nonsense and none that does should ever be trusted.

I agree. These kinds of posts aren't helpful without the details.

If you want to see for yourself exactly what AI "hallucination" is, just ask the program for an essay on any real person you know who doesn't have a common name. I just did that using my own name. For the first essay, I just asked for an essay about myself and it filled a page about how much of a pioneer I was in the field of automotive manufacturing, including how Henry Ford was one of my influences and mentors. For the second essay, I added "NYC" and it filled a page with how much of an innovator I was in the field of architecture. (I know nothing about architecture and don't even know how to change the oil pan on a car.)

No worries. It's just great to see some old regulars back here for a change.

I just tested EditPad with a very simple but specific 4th Amendment question about police traffic stops. It returned an "essay" consisting of 13 sentences, of which exactly ONE sentence actually pertained directly to the simple specific question that I asked. The other 12 sentences were all very general off-topic "padding," such as about what the 4th Amendment is, why it's important, what police can do in situations totally unrelated to my specific question, and how drivers should conduct themselves during traffic stops. It's the perfect tool if you want an essay returned to you by your professor with comments like "What does this have to do with the essay topic?" in red ink.

Yup. Some of us have been doing this longer than many of our current clients have been alive; and the only way we've been able to cultivate and maintain a long-term client base is by reliably providing them with work that they appreciate. In my case, I think my first freelance project (in 1994) was editing a law school essay for a gym friend; and my first essay for an essay company was a review of Stephen Jay Gould's Mismeasure of Man, whose specs I received by fax and that I delivered as a hard copy in person, when the guy who ran that company picked it up from me at a different 24-hour gym and paid me in cash. My second freelance project was a 20-page Nursing thesis about HIV transmission in Sub-Saharan Africa for another gym friend; and my first essay for a modern (Internet) essay company (in 2003) was a 3-page piece of historical fiction, in the form of a first-person narrative of a soldier in a WWI trench, in the style of All Quiet on the Western Front. Back then, most of my sources were books actually on my shelves, and I was regularly shopping the clearance racks (at least once a week) at all the brick-and-mortar bookstore chains that recently went out of business.

In general, companies with these kinds of urls obviously hope that prospective customers will assume that the company's writers are all better educated than writers at other companies. When I first started writing for essay companies back in 2003, the main company for which I did the most work maintained numerous websites, all of which seemed, to customers, to be completely different companies. Gradually, I realized (from project materials sent by customers that included their completed order forms identifying the websites from which they'd placed the orders) that I was actually writing for many different websites that were all owned and operated by a single entity. One of those websites used a url that was very similar to the one being discussed in this thread. The only differences between that website and their other websites were: (1) The price was higher; and (2) The TOS said that the project would never be resold, whereas the TOS of all of their other sites said that projects wouldn't be resold for 3-6 months. However, the most important element was that regardless of which customer-facing website generated the order, they all were simply posted on the same project board, where they were all equally available to be taken by any and all writers employed by the parent company, including orders generated from the website whose url implied that its writers were more advanced than those writing for all of its other websites.

I know nothing about the company, but a quick review of their website reveals that their whole "pay after completion" concept is totally deceptive, particularly in conjunction with its Refund Policy. They require payment in full at the time the order is accepted by a writer, which is standard. The website says that your payment is "held" until you're satisfied with the work and you release the payment to the writer. The obvious implication is that your money is unavailable to them unless or until you're satisfied with the product, the way money (genuinely) held in (real) escrow is unavailable to the payee. But they control the "held" money, unlike real escrow held by a neutral 3rd party.

The "Payment Policy," says that you have 72 hours to request a revision, but provides no details at all about what happens if you're still unsatisfied with the product after that revision, or by when it will be available. It says that payment is held for 3 days until you're satisfied and you release it; but it also says that payments are automatically released on the 4th day if they receive no complaints from you and that this release is deemed to mean that you're satisfied. It's meant to imply that customers are in full control over their money after they place the order, which is absolutely not the case. At best, in effect, all their related legaleze means that once they provide a revision, your money belongs to them.

Meanwhile, it says that any refund request must be made within 72 hours of the project deadline, which (obviously) means it's virtually impossible to request a revision, receive and review that revision, and then request and receive further revisions or a refund within that 72 hours. Perhaps the best part is that their project "delivery" system uploads completed projects to their server instead of emailing them to their customers, and you download your project from their system to review it, as instructed. However, the Refund Policy says that there are no refunds after the product is "used" by you and that.downloading the essay from their system (you, know, just to review the project to see whether it needs a revision, as per their instructions)= "use." So, as soon as you D/L the project to review it to see whether or not it's satisfactory, you may no longer request a refund, because you've "used" the product.

Thanks, Meo; I appreciate that.

I'd agree with this and I'd add that exactly the same goes for any opinions about what kinds of projects any legitimate, highly-experienced writer can or can't produce, or can't produce at a very high level. I've personally been subjected to countless outrageously untrue characterizations about "not" being qualified to write various types of projects by people who have (obviously) never actually seen any of my projects. For just one example, I've had to read comments here about my "not" being capable of writing excellent Nursing, Science, and/or (any) UK projects, when, in fact, I've written (literally) more than 1,000 Nursing projects and many hundreds of Science and UK projects for long-term repeat clients, and at every level from 150-word undergraduate class forum posts to PhD Nursing dissertations and a very wide variety of Science and UK university and postgrad projects.

Exactly. However, prospective customers should also try to find a writer whose history in this business far predates AI programs, because the only thing worse than using AI for your essays would be paying some "writer" to use the same AI programs to generate the essay that you could have used, yourself, for free, if you just wanted an AI-generated essay. As always, you should also be very careful to choose a writer who will disclose his real ID info on request, and that info should always be confirmed independently. While there are plenty of very good reasons for writers not to display or post their names and/or phone numbers publicly, there's no reason that any legitimate writer who knows that his clients are going to be happy with his work would want to conceal his real name and location from his real clients. Writers who are legitimate and honest with their clients have no reason to worry about their clients knowing exactly who and where they are; so if any writer purposely avoids sharing that information, that should be a huge red flag.

Unfortunately, if I posted it publicly, it would probably be more harmful than helpful, because scammers would also learn how to take advantage of those same loopholes. Each student who reads it represents only one person possibly learning how to protect himself; on the other hand, every scammer who reads it represents dozens or hundreds of potential victims against whom he could misuse that same info.

PayPal buyer/seller protection does currently cover virtual services, but there's still quite a bit of room for issues that completely invalidate those protections, as well as for getting ripped off, outright, even on PayPal, both for service providers and for customers, unless you really know what you're doing and exactly how to plug various very specific loopholes in advance.

I'm just happy anytime I hear that some scam site with any formulation of the word "freelance" in it is out of this business, for obvious reasons.