Whether you show your face or not, privacy is important to everyone – especially sexworkers. Doing live cam work, videos or a having a private Snapchat account you can run into some risks. Here are some tips and some things to look out for, if you’re starting out or have been in this industry for a while these may be able to help.

Having a business email is a great way to let customers communicate with you, however, with every email address you need another recovery email and/or phone number. Making sure you do not use your personal email or phone number as recovery is key as anyone who knows your email address may try to recover the password and in doing so can reveal the first few characters of your email or even your area code of your phone number.

Another thing to remember is when you want to takeover for a Snapchat account, there is an extremely high chance that when you log in to the Snapchat account the primary email of the account will be sent a ping of where the person (you) logged in. Sadly it won’t matter if you have ghost mode on or not it can show as close as the city you are currently in. Snapchat takeovers are a great way of promoting yourself but always make sure it is a person or company you trust!

Another way of protecting your identity is always remember to turn off location settings or geo tagging on apps, this is also important on your camera/photo apps as your pictures may become traceable. For an extra and recommend tip you can always try to invest in an online VPN. A VPN or virtual private network can help you with internet anonymity and also help with people trying to track your location.

Last but not least always stand your ground. Never let someone pressure you into telling them where you live, where you work, what your real name is or showing them your face, (that is if you don’t show your face). Just because a customer is paying does not mean they are entitled to know. If you are not comfortable with it you have the option never to divulge anything you don’t want.

This article was written for us by Ava Luna, if you’d like to contribute to the AP Lounge, please get in touch via email.