“Making sure that one’s face is obscured, or that identifying features like tattoos, piercings, clothing, and even home furnishings are out of the frame is important because if they are covered or out of frame, they can’t be used to identify you if the image is made public,” Irwin told me. It’s not impossible to recreate blurred portions of images. It’s more secure to leave these details out of the photo in the first place, rather than blur them later. If you expect your partner to delete your photos after looking at them, make sure they know that, and check in with them to make sure they're doing it,” Jacob Hoffman-Andrews, a technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation told me in an email.īefore you send a sext, consider whether you want to include identifying details like your face, tattoos, piercings, birthmarks, decorations (like posters), and furniture. “Clear communication and consent is critical. Make sure to also set clear expectations with your partner, and don’t assume they plan to abide by the same practices as you without asking. “It’s important to remember to set the privacy and security rules before you engage in sharing-discuss how long images can be kept, where they can be stored, how long to retain chat history, and who has access to your devices,” independent cybersecurity expert Jessy Irwin told me in an email. Don’t just agree that you’re both comfortable with swapping nudes, also decide on the digital aspects of the arrangement. Before you start sexting, get explicit consent from your partner. No one in the history of the internet has enjoyed receiving an unsolicited dick pic. It’s possible you or your partner may face legal consequences, even if you send photos or videos of yourself consensually.
If you want a refresher on basics like choosing a secure password, you can check out Motherboard’s comprehensive guide to not getting hacked.Ī quick warning: If you’re a minor, don’t send photos or videos of yourself naked to anyone, under any circumstances. It’s also important, no matter what solution you choose, that you’re practicing good digital security generally. For example, are you most concerned about your nudes being leaked by a hacker, or spread by a former partner? Depending on the answer to questions like these, the apps and solutions you decide on will be different.īefore I get specific, there are a couple of best practices everyone should follow, regardless of your threat model. In order to design a sexting plan, you’ll have to do a little “ threat modeling,” or deciding what data you’re trying to protect and from whom.
What you ultimately choose to do depends on what you’re worried about. Nearly all of the experts I spoke to stressed that there’s not a single application or website that can be relied upon by everyone who wants to sext. There’s also no perfect solution that works for everybody. As long as you’re proactive and take steps to mitigate the risks, it’s perfectly fine to send and receive sexts with partners you trust. There are plenty of people who will rush to say that you should never sext, and blame those who face negative consequences for participating in the behavior in the first place. Sending and receiving explicit messages over the internet is always going to have some level of risk associated with it. Before I get to it, it’s worth saying that there’s no such thing as 100 percent secure sexting.
Thankfully, there are steps you can take to make sexting safer. The majority of US states now have some form of law against revenge porn. Acts of so-called revenge porn-when abusers share explicit photos and videos of their former partners-have serious emotional consequences for victims. It’s often incredibly painful for someone to have their most intimate images and messages made public or shared with people they were never intended for. The infamous hack was reportedly executed by phishing the victims and exploiting a flaw in iCloud. In 2014 for example, hackers stole and then leaked over 500 explicit images of mostly female celebrities. Poor cybersecurity can also cause sexts to end up in the wrong hands. It’s not just shitty significant others passing around nude photos to their friends.
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