Takedown #53: The Student Helpline (7/7/25)
"Study abroad consultants" & their content marketing, podcast, and ads: all to de-fraud UK universities
Take‘em down:
Don’t forget to add “academic fraud” as the reason.
Join 264 verified subscribers and 8 paid members (membership starts at $50 a year) taking and supporting direct action against Essay Mills + Contract Cheating.
Read about The Student Helpline
A Google Alert this morning pointed me to this “content marketing” article; as a reader you might access it, think it’s legit, and read more about “legitimate” dissertation help and services.
https://vocal.media/education/why-are-students-turning-to-dissertation-help-usa-in-2025
Mostly to drive traffic here: https://www.thestudenthelpline.com/
The article includes a deep dive into ‘Dissertation Help USA’ maybe as an attempt at an SEO hack (using another essay mill’s name to drive traffic/rank higher). Overall, it appears that the goal is to link to one of their essay mill brands (thestudenthelpline.co.in, thestudenthelpline.io or thestudenthelpline.com) which is where the Take Down ad points to.
A red flag here is that the essay mill is also advertising services to help with study abroad placements in the UK, USA, Australia, and elsewhere suggesting that the contract cheating and essay mill firms are engaged in many other ancillary student services.
If you’re working for a university, it’s worth educating students of their options to ensure they don’t fall for one of these scam fly-by-night services instead of using the legitimate study abroad programs sponsored by the university.
While I was disinclined to run an AI checker on it — who has the time in this busy day and age? — the article from vocal.media has many earmarks of having been crafted by AI. Moreover, delving into their home page reveals that its content fairly glistens with the vapid sheen of AI-generated writing. At the risk — and I am nothing if not risk-averse — of overstating my point, I would opine that the credibility of virtually any content they publish is slim to virtually non-existent.