It seems either the law or all the newbies are out this time of year! I'm turning down 8 out of 10 for no references! or refs with no website and no reviews!

your not the only one.... things have seemed a little out of the ordinary on my end too... Be safe

Thanks!  Glad we can all watch out for each other.

Aww sorry girl. Hang in there and be safe.

~kisses~ Erika

the first option you list right now.

Stick with first rate screening - do not compromise. Even if its tempting....

Be careful about communication. Let your website and your reviews do the talking for you. Do not say / write / post anything explicit.

Be careful about employment only verification. This is not difficult for our friends in blue to fake.

Unfortunately true!!!  Very odd!!  Stay safe!

Years ago I saw a good movie, it was about how wars were won by intelligence only, never a single shot fired. It was about the cold war.

Lets say these day a lot of intelligence is in the hands of certain groups and they are doing whatever they can to make sure this war is won. Never before this level of intelligence was exposed to anyone from "how" to "who" to "where". As complete as it gets.  

Also one bad thing about intelligence is that it can be shared across multiple cooperating groups. You know how we share intelligence with all of our friends in Europe and elsewhere to get these damn terrorists? well similar things could happen if counties are all ganging up and have the intelligence they need.

The good news for everyone is that intelligence has to be fresh, it is like food, after a while it goes bad! The life span of intelligence is about 3 months or so, unless the groups find out more ways to refresh the intelligence which can be done.

In the cold war days, the winning card was always in the hands of the one who had insiders, the ones with human intelligence. Electronic intelligence is good as well, but not as good as human intelligence.

Beware of double agents. Just because they have posted 15-20 reviews doesn't necessary mean they are legitimate. Look closely at the reviews.

Shouldn't you be pleased to have access to new business? It's a little more work, but if you screen properly, you could gain several long-term clients.  Annoying as you may find it to be, everyone has to start somewhere.

Well stated.  HumInt is always better than CommInt.  A big part of the Cold War was OPSEC (Operational Security), it was amazing how much you could learn about an upcoming Navy Exercise by just hanging around the pay phones by the pier where the carrier was moored.

Another aspect of OPSEC was Operational Deception, we used to put dummy Naval Messages in the trash that was thrown over (the soviet ship trailing us always picked up our trash), putting out disinformation like announcements to the wives club about port visits for places we weren't going, etc.  

Maybe some aspects of Operational Deception might be prudent

angelina, they are all interested in getting a real christmas present instead of ties and shirts LOL..
be safe but have fun