sharing intimate photos safely

this is the short version, in the order you'd actually do it. where a step has a longer note, it links there.

before you take the photo

• look at the background, not yourself. mail on a table, a view from a window, a poster, a reflection in a mirror or a screen -- these name a place far more reliably than a face does.
• cover or remove anything permanent about your body you'd rather not be matched on later: distinctive tattoos, scars, jewellery you always wear.
• turn off any "save location" setting in your camera app if you don't want coordinates attached. see how to remove exif and gps data from your photos.

before you send it

• strip the metadata. a photo straight off a phone can carry the exact coordinates it was taken at, plus the device and the timestamp.
• crop, don't blur or scribble.blurring and pixelation can sometimes be reversed. a black box drawn in some apps is a separate layer that can be lifted off. cropping deletes the pixels.
• check what the app does with it.does it re-encode the file, or pass the original through? does "delete" remove it, or hide it? see what "delete" actually does.
• decide who, before you decide what. the audience is the part you can't take back later.

what none of this fixes

anyone who can see a picture can keep it. screenshots exist. a second phone pointed at a screen exists. no app can prevent either -- see screenshots, and the limits of "no save". every step above reduces how much a copy says about you, and how many people get one. none of them make a copy impossible.

so the honest version of this checklist is: assume the person you send it to could keep it forever, and choose accordingly. the technical steps are for everyone other than them.

how sissy-haven handles this

the app does the metadata step for you. every upload is re-encoded on our side and all metadata is discarded, so what other people receive has no coordinates, no device, and no timestamp in it. you choose audience size and distance per post. nothing is public, searchable, or permanent -- how matching works has the details, and the demo lets you try it. signing up needs no email address either, which is its own note: an account without an email address.

the screenshot problem we can't solve, and we don't claim to.

if working through this list was you deciding to share something carefully, this is a place built for exactly that.