How public are you online?

[intofur]

Hey guys, I'm new to the forum. I've been interested in zoo since I was a teenager, and have fooled around with the idea but I feel like it's time to do something about it.

I was just wondering how public you are with your own info here on the forum. Do you show faces? Do you post pictures of yourself with identifiable features other than the face, like tattoos, earrings, backgrounds? How worried are you about someone finding out and somehow connecting it to you? I'm really unsure of how much info is "okay" to share without it becoming somewhat dangerous.

Also, is it legal where you live and how much does it affect how comfortable you feel about it? Like, I understand that in Germany it is legal, so if you're german, are you more comfortable with it?
Has anyone ever had any experience of being busted online, and if so how did that go?

I'm currently connecting myself through a VPN, in a private window and I've registered myself with an email created specifically for this, and I feel like sharing pictures of myself, but even without a face showing I feel like it kinda beats the purpose so I'm unsure of how much I'm willing to share and I was hoping for your feedback.

 

[gsdmixg]

I'd much more worried about social 'consequences' than anything legal personally. Bring ostracized socially would be much more damaging than any legal punishment (it's only a misdemeanor here I believe).

Doesn't matter if you've actually done any wrong, people already have their own conclusions drawn about zoos and will immediately demonize you. I keep myself completely anonymous. I'd only share any possible identifying info with someone I've been speaking to a while.

 

[intofur]

I'd much more worried about social 'consequences' than anything legal personally. Bring ostracized socially would be much more damaging than any legal punishment (it's only a misdemeanor here I believe).

Doesn't matter if you've actually done any wrong, people already have their own conclusions drawn about zoos and will immediately demonize you. I keep myself completely anonymous. I'd only share any possible identifying info with someone I've been speaking to a while.

Thanks for your answer. The social stigma is the worst, and I can't even imagine someone knowing, so I feel you.

But at the same time, I'm an out and proud gay, polyamorous guy, so I think I might've been through this dealing with social stigma and still fighting for and managing to be your true self, and I think knowing others who have the same desires and knowing their experiences is the first step to overcoming shame and find acceptance to then be able to be yourself. I'm still rationalizing a lot of this ?

 

[K9GuyinTX]

I agree with gsdmixg. You should be as cautious as possible. Don't connect any of your "real life" accounts to your account here. Get an email address that is privacy oriented (not Gmail, yahoo, etc.) and don't show your face or other identifying items such as scars or tatoos. Sadly, there are many out there that misunderstand this lifestyle and will actively seek to cause participants trouble. There are some great threads here about how to protect your identity. Just do a search on "Security" and follow the rabbit hole. There are some incredibly smart people here who have made some great posts on this subject.

 

[intofur]

I agree with gsdmixg. You should be as cautious as possible. Don't connect any of your "real life" accounts to your account here. Get an email address that is privacy oriented (not Gmail, yahoo, etc.) and don't show your face or other identifying items such as scars or tatoos. Sadly, there are many out there that misunderstand this lifestyle and will actively seek to cause participants trouble. There are some great threads here about how to protect your identity. Just do a search on "Security" and follow the rabbit hole. There are some incredibly smart people here who have made some great posts on this subject.

Going to do that search, thanks a lot! How about you personally, you also don't share contacts or pictures of yourself of any kind? I hope I'm not being invasive while asking this

 

[intofur]

I would say resist the temptation to be public. You don't want this snowballing into your public life.

Oh definitely wouldn't want that ? so you suggest no info at all? I mean, no pictures of yourself (by yourself, face or no face) no names, no locations, no contacts, nothing??

 

[pes]

I'm really unsure of how much info is "okay" to share without it becoming somewhat dangerous.

As little as possible. No faces, no identifiable features (that includes the animal and the surroundings), no metadata in files, use wrong birth date, do not share your location closer than what state/country you are in.

 

[intofur]

As little as possible. No faces, no identifiable features (that includes the animal and the surroundings), no metadata in files, use wrong birth date, do not share your location closer than what state/country you are in.

Oh hadn't thought about the date of birth

 

[pes]

And beware of this:

The personal information database of zooville

Some of these results are only available to zooville admins, some is completely public. Do you trust the security of this server and the admins? Put this together with personal ads that some people post and it becomes quite possible to either identify or come very close to identifying individual...

www.zoovilleforum.net

 

[K9GuyinTX]

Going to do that search, thanks a lot! How about you personally, you also don't share contacts or pictures of yourself of any kind? I hope I'm not being invasive while asking this

I don't share pictures of my face or any pictures where my tatoos are identifiable. I go so far as to ensure that the background of any photo I share is not uniquely identifiable - either by shooting outdoors in a wooded area or by shooting against a blank background.

I don't consider the questions invasive at all and I wish I knew then what I know now as I made some risky mistakes early on. Also, Pes is right. The MetaData (called EXIF data) is a HUGE deal. I can't tell you how many video files I have seen with the exact lattitude and longitude of where the scene was filmed embedded in the file. This is because people leave "GeoTagging" turned on in their phones/tablets/GoPro/modern DSLR when they take pictures and videos and it does a great job of exposing exact filming location (down to the corner of a house in some instances). The forum's posting software seems to remove the EXIF data from pictures, but certainly not videos.

I am not telling you any of this to discourage you from posting as that is a big part of the fun here. Just be smart about what you post and how you interact.

And for all things good and proper - get yourself a unique avatar

 

[hunting1]

First new here so no experience: and honestly don't know how I'd even ever meet any one to discuss this with. Having said that if I were to do so it would only be on a highly secure chat program.

 

[pes]

While the security of the program is important, more often than not the problems are caused by the people you communicate with. If a group is reported the chat company usually just removes the group, they do not want to invest energy into reporting you to the police and so on.
But the way people you communicate with treat the information you give them is almost more important.
For example a few years back a "zoo" in my country was arrested for some reason. He was using a phone as his device of choice for zoo stuff. And the phone is the first thing that gets confiscated when you are arrested.
When you become friends with someone more you may exchange phone numbers and those people may even store your number under the nick you use in the zoo chat with them. (that happened).
People keep old chats and history, they keep photos with timestamps, they keep this stuff unencrypted (in a hidden folder) because they might not be enough tech savvy to know how to do it right. They do not know how to wipe files correctly so even deleted stuff can be recovered sometimes years after deletion.
They use phones with fingerprints or face id which is trivial to bypass or they use short numeric pins which you can crack automatically within hours to days.
Telegram on android used to save images and videos unencrypted and trivially findable and recoverable (maybe it still does that).
If a person like this that you decided to trust turns out to be an idiot and gets themselves into trouble, you are in trouble with them no matter how encrypted your devices are.

 

[intofur]

While the security of the program is important, more often than not the problems are caused by the people you communicate with. If a group is reported the chat company usually just removes the group, they do not want to invest energy into reporting you to the police and so on.
But the way people you communicate with treat the information you give them is almost more important.
For example a few years back a "zoo" in my country was arrested for some reason. He was using a phone as his device of choice for zoo stuff. And the phone is the first thing that gets confiscated when you are arrested.
When you become friends with someone more you may exchange phone numbers and those people may even store your number under the nick you use in the zoo chat with them. (that happened).
People keep old chats and history, they keep photos with timestamps, they keep this stuff unencrypted (in a hidden folder) because they might not be enough tech savvy to know how to do it right. They do not know how to wipe files correctly so even deleted stuff can be recovered sometimes years after deletion.
They use phones with fingerprints or face id which is trivial to bypass or they use short numeric pins which you can crack automatically within hours to days.
Telegram on android used to save images and videos unencrypted and trivially findable and recoverable (maybe it still does that).
If a person like this that you decided to trust turns out to be an idiot and gets themselves into trouble, you are in trouble with them no matter how encrypted your devices are.

It's really hard to be aware of your every move and keep it completely safe. All cases of people caught doing illegal stuff online are discovered because of some tiny silly detail, and the same applies to people: if someone wants to ruin you with enough effort and knowledge, they can
Thankfully, I believe most people don't really care enough about what other people do, but the problem is that there's a small percentage of really shitty people, and it might take only one to do real damage...

I really appreciate all your feedback on the matter, you gave me a lot to think about and there's some research I must do. I'll eventually have to decide how much risk I'm willing to take to what benefit. But ain't it like that in almost every aspect of our lives?

 

[AriesAngyl]

I would say resist the temptation to be public. You don't want this snowballing into your public life.

I don’t share anything person on here. You need to be careful unless you know someone really well