Isn't this business hard enough already?

Providing personal services is one of the most dangerous professions on the planet. Violence, arrest, disease and robbery are among the various risks a working girl or boy has to deal with on a regular basis.

You would think that this would mean that people in the industry would always stick together and support each other. Unfortunately, this doesn't always seem to be the case. Over many, many months we have been in the situation of trying to deal with a vendetta between several individuals who advertise on Massage Republic.

Some of the accusations flying around include the following:

• She reported me to the police as a drug smuggler so I got arrested at the airport
• She is posting fake reviews on your site and others
• She posted my real name and a profile on another site
• She is posting about me all over the Internet and bitching about me everywhere 
• Look what she did to this other girl ...

There is one girl who is so angry with another that she is actively trying to find out where she is so she can report her to the police (in a country where that can have really nasty consequences). We got this, "I know where she is staying the room the lot, I think she is going to be kicked out the country that is if she does not get off your site - simple really" Pretty evil, but who knows? Maybe it's justified revenge? We don't know and we don't want to know. We think all of this kind of behaviour is really, really dumb. No-one will earn any more money and it makes the world a more dangerous place for all people working in the industry.

We are also on the receiving end of some very rude emails with loads of abuse in them. We prefer to use our time to help the people who are very happy with what we are doing and play by our rules, which are:

• Advertisers are not permitted to use the platform to contact other advertisers, post questions/review to others. We will block accounts and refuse future new accounts.
• Advertisers are not permitted to link from a profile to a webpage talking about other advertisers in any way.
• We will not enter into discussion with any advertiser about the rights of any other advertiser to list on the site. We will only consider submissions which report activity which is not permitted on site.

Yes, this might mean that a person who has done something nasty to someone else in the past is allowed to list on the site. However, we are not going to play judge and jury to evaluate an individual's behaviour. Aside from this being completely impossible to do well - it is not our place to do so. If you don't like our rules, it's simple - don't use the site.

To end with some advice: in our experience, you should avoid talking about other girls with clients and never try and get into a fight. Be nice with others, play fair and if you get screwed over - move on. Otherwise, the results seem to be a zero-sum game where everyone involved really gets damaged and put at risk. And, no-one wants that, right?

Getting there...

We've been reviewing all the feedback from you all from the last months. Thank you so much for all of the comments and suggestions.

We know we still have a lot more to do, but just to know that so many people are getting results is a real boost to the team!

When we hear 'independents' tell us we are generating them enough new customers so they don't have to look elsewhere, it's a great result. When we get feedback from users that we have helped them find better providers, we know we are making a small difference. When we hear agencies telling us that they prefer Massage Republic to others, that makes a big difference.

So, thanks to all of you all. We started this a year and a half ago. We didn't expect to get where we are by now. We will carry on working hard to build on the trust you have given to us and bring new improvements to the site.

We are listening! Get in touch if you have comments or suggestions.

Staying safe online

If you regularly reuse the same password in different places, you could be at real risk!

Over the last weeks, we have some pretty nasty people messing up profiles on the site. After working to trace what was happening and talking to the people who were affected, we are pretty sure we know how it is happening.

We have positively identified that the bad guys have access to passwords which have been used to set up accounts on other escort sites (your data at Massage Republic is safe, we encrypt all passwords so we can't even see what you entered and no-one else can either). 

They are then trying these same email/password combinations on Massage Republic until they find ones which are the same. They then steal the profile and change it with their own information, new phone number (mostly in the Philippines) and in several cases pointing the website link to expatescort.com. We don't know whether this activity is coming from that site directly, they have been hacked or it is someone else just causing trouble and looking for phone bookings. We would strongly urge you to be cautious with some of the sites out there! 

Massage Republic recommends:

• Don't reuse the same password online for different services
• If you have done this in the past, go change your Massage Republic password now and think about any other places you want to keep safe as they may be at risk

If you have any doubts about security or questions please get in touch.