Short answer: keep your working life and your private life in separate boxes. Use a working name, a separate phone number and email, social accounts that never touch your personal ones, a domain that isn't registered in your legal name, and photos that don't give away where you live. No single step makes you anonymous, but together they make you much harder to trace.
Most privacy problems don't come from one big mistake. They come from small links between your two lives: a reused username, a phone number that's also on your personal WhatsApp, a view from your window. This guide goes through the usual links and how to close them.
Start with a separate working identity
A working name
Choose a name you'll use for work only, and use the same spelling everywhere. Avoid your real first name if it's unusual, any part of your surname, and nicknames that friends and family use.
A separate phone number
Your work number will be on your website, your profiles and in clients' phones. Use a separate number, either a second SIM or a second phone. Then check what that number reveals:
- Messaging apps show your profile photo and name to anyone who has your number. Set up WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal on the work number with a work photo and your working name.
- Contact-sharing apps can link a number to names other people have saved it under. A new number usually has little or no history.
- Never reuse your personal number, even temporarily.
A separate email address
Create an email address for work only, in your working name. Use it for your website, directories and social accounts. Don't forward it to your personal inbox if that risks replying from the wrong address.
Separate social accounts
Create work accounts from scratch, with the work email and number. Don't follow your personal accounts from them, and don't let the apps suggest your work account to your personal contacts. Many apps offer to sync your contacts, so say no.
Watch for reused usernames, too. If your work handle is the same as an old gaming, forum or shopping account, a quick search can connect them.
Keep your name out of domain records
When anyone registers a domain, the registrar keeps a record of who owns it. Depending on the domain ending and the registrar, some of those details can be public, or available on request. If you register your website's domain yourself, find out exactly what is shown and whether privacy protection is included.
At Bijou Page we buy your domain and register it in our name, so your legal name and home address never appear in public domain records. If you leave, we transfer the domain to you free of charge. There's more on domains in how to choose a domain name for your escort website.
Check your photos for hidden details
Photos can say far more than you intend.
Hidden location data
Photos taken on a phone can contain hidden data, including the exact GPS location where they were taken and the phone model. Some websites and apps remove it when you upload, and some don't. You can also turn off location tagging in your camera settings.
When you upload photos to a Bijou Page site, they're resized and saved again, which removes location and camera data.
What's in the background
Look at every photo as a stranger would:
- A view from a window, a local landmark or a street sign
- Your home's distinctive features, such as a fireplace, artwork or a view that's on an estate agent's listing
- Reflections in mirrors, windows and glossy surfaces
- Letters, parcels, screens or anything with writing on it
- Tattoos or birthmarks you'd rather keep private (you can cover or edit them)
Hotel rooms, a photographer's studio or plain walls are the safest backgrounds.
Photos that exist elsewhere
Reverse image search lets anyone upload a photo and find where else it appears online. If a work photo has ever been on your personal social media, or a similar photo from the same shoot has, the two can be connected. Use photos that have only ever been used for work. See escort website photos: what works, rights and privacy.
Decide what your website shows, and what it never shows
Your website should show:
- Your working name
- A general area, such as a city or district, and whether you travel
- Only your work contact details
- Links to your work social accounts only
It should never show your legal name, your home address or street, your day job, your children or family, or anything that pins down your daily routine. A Bijou Page site shows a general area only, never an address.
Our escort website checklist covers everything else to include and leave out.
Search for yourself regularly
Every few months, search for:
- Your working name, with and without your city
- Your work phone number and email address
- Your legal name, to check nothing work-related appears
Also run a reverse image search on your main photos. If something appears that you didn't put there, such as your photos on another site, contact that site. Many have a reporting process for content used without permission.
If something has already leaked
Don't panic, and act in order:
- Note what you found: take screenshots and note the web address.
- Remove what you control: delete old posts, change usernames, and replace the photos.
- Ask sites to take content down: most have a report option for content posted without consent.
- Change the details that leaked: a new work number is cheap compared with the stress of an old one circulating.
If you feel unsafe, contact a support organisation for sex workers or the police. You don't have to handle it alone.