You want to meet other people to hook up with, but you want to maintain your privacy. But there's lots of flakes and fakes out there? So what's the best way of doing this where you can balance these goals?

If you are serious about making real-life encounters happen in reality, then you need to implement some sort of verification workflow. And other people you're talking to need to be educated about how to comply with verifications people are comfortable with.

If no one is willing (or educated) on how to go about verifying, then people will continue to message online, wasting their time, and never meeting in person.

So please feel free to share this post with others. I'm happy to modify with suggestions. My goal is to get this pinned or in FAQ in a few subreddits. I want to see some sort of standardization everyone buys into.

Messaging App Requirements

You need an app to talk to prospective partners. I consider these to be the requirements to choose which app to use:

• You don't have to share your phone number with strangers (instead, you can share a username)
• You can sign up without a phone number, or you can obtain a "burner" phone number (i.e. Google Voice or paying for 2nd phone number from a VOIP service (I am only familiar with Google Voice, but feel free to recommend other places to get phone numbers easily/cheaply)
• You can video message on the app
• You can use the app on mobile and desktop devices
• You can be signed into multiple accounts on one device and toggle between them easily
  • You do not want to mix your "lifestyle" conversations with your normal day-to-day messaging... you don't want to have your phone open with a family member and get a random dirty message/nude from your extra partner(s) randomly, exposing your extracurricular activities to anyone looking at/with access to your device
• You can have messages disappear
• You can easily share photos
• The app is "easy to use"
• The app should encrypt messages

Recommendation:

• Telegram
  • The only step you really need to take is obtaining a separate phone number (you shouldn't be using your real number), but I believe it meets all the requirements above and is one of the most popular global messaging platforms
• Snapchat
  • This is probably the 2nd best option, but the UX of snapchat isn't really great for long-term conversations. After awhile you're going to forget who's who.
• Session
  • This is probably the most privacy focused messaging app out there. I believe their voice feature is in beta and not sure if it has a video feature. The downside is that its very uncommon, which hurts adoption and familiarity. Also, it's a bit more challenging to sign up (you have to track a secret token or you lose access)
• Kik
  • Terrible. Just God Awful. Stop using it. Seriously, stop. It got sold and its over run with scammers. Who knows what kind of data the new owners are snooping and selling?
• Whatapp
  • Not great as you have to give your number out. Not sure if you can be signed in to multiple accounts at the same time.
• Personal Number (i.e. FaceTime)
  • Obviously, there's no privacy doing this.

Initial Contact

Part of the struggling with messaging people is you want to be careful of your sensitive pictures going out to strangers. If you don't care, well good for you. But most people care and its a HUGE barrier to getting to reality. There are too many fakes and flakes around that it's either a waste or time, or a legit safety concern to send your photos out willy-nilly.

So you should recognize that people may want to follow a "step-by-step" approach.

1. First, if you have an empty profile, don't expect to get any responses.
2. Prepare some photos that keep your identity more anonymous (censor your face, background, commonly recognizable things... see below for more tips)
   1. I'd say most people are looking to confirm you "have an attractive body" or "seem normal", or "are hung". This interpretations differs person to person of course
3. If you're comfortable, you can either share more pics on Reddit or go "off platform" to Telegram
   1. I believe it's a best practice to try to separate your identity platform to platform as much as you can. You never know what data Reddit is collecting. If a hacker accessing any reddit (user) data, or your own account, then congrats you've identified yourself easily. You also open yourself up for someone to exploit your pics connected to your profile, although this might be rare I've never heard of this happening
4. You should be asking the other person to confirm what you/they are looking for, where they are located, etc. Unless you care to chat with people on another continent...

Follow Up Contact

If you've actually found a real, live person off a place like reddit that seems like there might be a chance of meeting, you should then try planning a video call.

1. Everyone is busy, so you should try to just get to a video call sooner than later and make it short
   1. If someone doesn't want to do a video call or do not seem like they will meet in person (i.e. coffee), they are 95% not serious and you should move on
   2. I've found people who won't commit to a video or in person meeting are also usually living in fantasy land, either being afraid or having no intention to make this reality
   3. Feel free to let the person know it's ok they don't need to "dress up to be a 10" for this quick call. It's just a quick vibe check and to see if they are for real
   4. Use Telegram for its video feature
2. If you've done all this, hopefully you've done about everything you can to set yourself up for taking a desire and setting yourself up to make it happen for real, you just need to actually meet in person!
3. I also find it helpful to share a photo in Telegram and ask the person do the same thing as you likely will forget who that random Telegram username is with no profile pic is. That way you can go back to the chat and you'll be reminded

Other Tips/Tricks

• When you take photos with your phone, your phone saves location data and metadata about your device & other stuff. You want to delete this stuff
  • Exif Viewer is an easy app to do this
• Go through and identify some PG, PG-13, and/or X-rated photos that you know you've gone through and removed identifying features, exif data, etc.
  • You might want to keep these photos in a folder, keep them hidden on your phone. I don't know the best solution here that is easy to organize but maintains privacy. Hidden photos on iOS is too basic than I'd wish