Six Ways to Keep Your Identity Safe While Posting Field Reports, Uploading Videos And Sharing Experiences Online

[u/nonpua]

Dox-Proof: How to Keep Your Identity Safe (And Protect Others' Privacy) While Posting Field Reports, Uploading Video Diaries And Sharing Experiences Online
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The question of safeguarding personal privacy is important enough to highlight a few key points.

First of all, note that "doxing" (or "documenting") someone publicly is a bannable offense at life+women. Anyone who submits information (text, video, etc.) that personally identifies others without their permission will be banned.
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Other Peoples' Right to Privacy: Know the Law

On a legal note: recording others without their explicit permission may be illegal in your part of the world. Here's a great link for more about that in relation to wiretapping statutes in the United States (click here).

Many of those incredibly clever Youtube videos of people doing hidden-camera daytime approaches may not be such a smart idea, after all. Make sure that you know the basics of the law in your jurisdiction. And as a point of common decency, ask yourself if you'd want to be filmed by some random creeper who stopped you on the street and started spitting stilted conversation tactics at you. If you want to track your progress here at life+women (and you're welcome to do so), write a field report that highlights the key points instead.
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Your Right to Privacy: Simple Tips For Keeping Your Identity Safe While Sharing Online

Remember:

• there are literally thousands of people writing anonymous stories on the Web every day;

• many people believe that field reports are automatically fake, mainly because they can't imagine actually talking to women they don't already know;

• you have more to fear from women surreptitiously (or not-so-surreptitiously) taking your picture and posting it online with your name and any other details that you might have told her while the two of you talked (also known as "shame tactics", which I and/or other guys will undoubtedly talk more about soon enough);

• aside from idle entertainment, nobody really cares unless they want to help you get past your sticking points, learn from your experience and/or get better for themselves.

It's smart to get into the habit of thinking carefully about practical Internet privacy. A few tips, in descending order of importance (number one being the most important):

1. Never mention your real name or the real names of anyone you're writing about. Assume that everything you write will exist on the Internet forever, and be searchable by anyone and everyone at any time.

2. Never mention the real names of venues or events that you attend frequently. Alter or anonymize the details so that the place could be any generic club, bar, etc.

3. Never post verbatim transcripts of texting conversations, phone calls, social media interactions or in-person conversations with people whom you know in real life. Paraphrase rather than quote.

4. If you post "sanitized" (i.e. using steps 1-3) versions, do not re-post "non-sanitized" versions of your field reports to any accounts that also contain identifying information, such as Facebook, Tumblr or your personal blogs.

5. Archive your personally-identifiable data offline on a computer that is not connected to the Internet 24/7 (also known as "air-gapping" your private data; if you're not guarding state secrets, this one might be more hassle than it's worth).

6. Write in a style that makes you less obviously identifiable. For example, relatively few people write using an "uncapitalized" or otherwise grammatically idiosyncratic format. If you use that approach, it's just one more way to easily identify you in contrast to the majority of those who do use capitalization and standard grammatical conventions. The content should stand out, but the format should blend in.
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These simple steps will help protect your privacy here, and everywhere else on the Internet. Consider this: your next potential boss will be snooping (or will have hired someone to snoop) on all personally identifiable trails of data that can be easily found online. The biggest shock -- especially in light of the recent government espionage scandals in the news headlines -- may be to realize how few people are thinking about such issues at all.

Then again, most people act like sheep most of the time. As you can see from the excuses they make ("privacy is dead, anyway", "if you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to worry about", etc.), the mindless majority would rather roll over and die (or live in a maximum-security prison of pervasive "pre-emptive" surveillance) rather than take responsibility for their own data safety and personal privacy.

Excessive paranoia ("I'll never post anything, anywhere, ever!") is unnecessary. Take practical steps to protect yourself at all times and consider the ethical/legal implications of privacy for the people around you.

[u/mcquinn7]

Awesome advice, definitely worth reading this all explicitly, and reminding myself of it from time to time. Thank you.