Tips for protecting yourself online
Unfortunately, non-monogamy is still looked down in some countries and the majority of the vanilla society is pretty judgmental regarding people living alternative lifestyles and non-monogamous relationships. Therefore, protecting one's privacy is one of the most important topics for couples that swing. Of that, online privacy plays a major role since we spend most of our time online.
Most of us use either all or a mix of a social media account (Facebook, Instagram), a networking application (Tinder, AdultHub, SDC) or a communication application (WhatsApp, Telegram) to keep in touch with others in the lifestyle. So we thought of writing a small post on the things you can do or keep in mind to keep your most private information, well private.
We cannot cover the complete list in one post, so we will pick the most important tips to get you started with the basic fixes.
Of course, some don't bother about revealing themselves online and openly share images and information publicly. This post is not for you and only for the ones who prefer a little bit of a safety net on their privacy when they go online.
Social Media Platforms (Facebook, Instagram etc.)
- Avoid everything involving your personal social media accounts.
- Keep the lifestyle completely separate from your vanilla world.
- Don't reuse any photos that can be traced back to you via reverse lookup tools. (TinEye, Google Images & Bing Visual Search to name a few)
- If you are creating a separate social media account for your lifestyle, don't use any of your personal information.
- Don't publish the same photos or posts you do on your personal profiles in your lifestyle accounts.
- When using your lifestyle accounts, take extra caution on the community guidelines for each platform. For example, Instagram is quite easy to ban you if you publish any nudity or sexually explicit content. Recovering these accounts can also be a tiring process. (and rarely works out)
- Be cautious of sharing too much.
- Keep control of comments – Be aware of impersonators.
- Know how to block unfriendly followers.
Networking Applications (AdultHub, SDC, Tinder etc.)
- When taking pictures for your profile, do it in a hotel room or at your home with a blank background and without wearing any jewelry; so it doesn't reveal anything identifiable.
- Do not upload your face picture to any site.
- Always use a watermark on your images. There are ways to edit/ remove it, but still, it's better than uploading your photos online without one.
- Don't share any posts with your contact details or personally identifiable information. Even through messaging or chat.
- Review your privacy settings.
- Choose a Profile/ screen name that is unrelated to your actual name.
- Be aware of online scams.
Communicating Applications (WhatsApp, Telegram etc.)
- Does the app have end-to-end encryption (E2E)?.
- Pick an application that provides a Self-destructing messaging feature.
- Choose a Profile/ screen name that is unrelated to your actual name.
- Do not share any photos without a watermark.
- Do not share any images with faces.
- Check if your application supports an automatic self-destruction feature for inactive accounts.
- Some of the most secure messaging apps are Signal, Telegram & WhatsApp. However, there is a whole different discussion on whose the best app is. So it's worth doing some readings first when selecting your messaging application.
- Do not reveal your contact details. Or use a separate number to be used for your lifestyle chats.
- In WhatsApp, your registered number is visible. Making it a bit easy for anyone to do a reverse lookup online. But in telegram, you can use a username instead and not display your number at all.
Some general tips
- Create a separate lifestyle-only email.
- Exercise caution when using public Wi-Fi.
- Be careful of what links you click on when chatting. If someone sends you a shortened URL (tiny URL, bitly etc.), you can use a free online tool like CheckShortURL or Unshorten.It to reveal the actual link behind the URL.
- Protect your phone with security software.
- Use an incognito/ private browser.
- Use a trusted VPN (there are lot of areas to cover in this topic as well. So it is better you do some additional reading to pick out a best option for you)
Keep your guard up as there is no such thing as perfect security. If it seems too good to be true, it is probably a fake person looking to cause trouble or steal naked pictures.
Hope you able to pick some pointers out from the post and please do add your thoughts and suggestions how you can stay safe online.
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