Sex Worker Search

The platforms sex workers use for advertising all have terms and conditions pages listing their privacy policies. I have taken a close interest in reading these policies since it seems that many directories give themselves permission to sell our personal details, and even our identity documents, to advertisers and to hand over our identities to the authorities without requiring a subpoena.

Escort directories have been hacked and raided before and will get hacked or raided again. Unfortunately, many directories take copies of our identity documents and selfies and just leave them lying around unencrypted.

Our identities have value in that they can be sold to spammers and used for leverage to make a deal with authorities. I don't see why escort directories need a full non redacted copy of our identity documents and an un-blurred selfie.

My recommendations

• If they need to know your year of birth, fine, send them a copy of your ID with everything except the year of birth hidden.
• If you're "face in" on your ads, why shouldn't you also be "face in" on your verification? Blur your face on your ID that you send in.
• If they get hacked, do you want your identity stolen? Put a cross Through your ID saying "for X Directory verification purposes only." (replacing the "X" with the name of whichever directory you're verifying for.)
  

Example

I sent emails asking about privacy policies to Tryst.link, Eros, Megapersonals, Slixa, Listcrawler, P411, Eroticmonkey, Ourhome2, Humaniplex, Adultsearch, Theeroticreview, Leolist, Terb, Adultwork, Vivastreet, Eurogirlsescort, Scarletblue, Ivysociete, Escortsandbabes, Massagerepublic, Rentmen, Hunqz and Sleepyboy.

These are my findings.

Discovery

Here are the questions I asked:

• Do you require personally identifying information from sex workers for verification?
• Identity documents?
• Selfies?
• Can these be partially obscured or redacted?
• Do you sell our identities and/or personal details to third party advertisers?
• Do you take any steps to secure our identities from hackers or in case your servers were seized?
• Are our identity documents and selfies deleted after verification?
• Stored offline?
• Encrypted?
• If you were told you could protect yourself from prosecution by freely handing over the identities of sex workers to authorities, would you do so?
• Or would you put up a fight and demand that they get a subpoena?
• Do you honour deletion requests?
• In entirety?
• How long does this take?

I sent the emails on September 2nd 2024. Only P411, Hunqz and Rentmen have replied. Tryst said they will respond to my questions in a few weeks time. (They have responded and it is included below.)

Table of platforms and known privacy standards

Note: The data displayed here is based on either responses (if received from my request) or determined by the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policies found on those sites.

Scroll down to the "Details and Responses" section to see responses along with links to their site policies and questions or concerns I have about them.

Platform	Accepts partially obscured or redacted identity documents	Refrains from selling personal details to third parties	Encryption used to secure our identities	Identity documents and selfies are deleted after verification	Withholds identities from authorities unless subpoena provided	Honours deletion requests partially	Deletion requests honoured entirely	Processing time for deletion requests
Tryst	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Instant
Eros	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	18 months?
Megapersonals	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Slixa	No	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Listcrawler	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
P411	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No	No
Eroticmonkey	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Ourhome2	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Humaniplex	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No
Adultsearch	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Theeroticreview	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Leolist	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	No
Terb	No	No	Yes	No	No	Yes	No	No
Adultwork	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Vivastreet	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Eurogirlsescort	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No
Scarletblue	No	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Ivysociete	Yes	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	30 days
Escortsandbabes	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Massagerepublic	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Rentmen	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No	7 days
Hunqz	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	1 day
Sleepyboy	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No

Operating Locations

Where a platform is located can impact the laws and policies of a company.

Eroticmonkey, Ourhome2, Humaniplex only operate in USA.

The USA approach to privacy laws is more fragmented and industry specific than the GDPR in Europe but they do have the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act.

The FTC enforces rules related to consumer protection, including privacy and data security practices. Under the FTC Act, the agency can take action against companies engaging in unfair or deceptive practices concerning the handling of personal data.

Several other states besides California, like Virginia, Colorado, and Connecticut, have introduced comprehensive privacy laws similar to the GDPR. These laws grant consumers certain rights over their data and place obligations on businesses handling personal data.

Leolist and Terb are exclusive to Canada.

Privacy laws in Canada come under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

PIPEDA is the federal law that governs how private-sector organizations collect, use, and disclose personal information in the course of commercial activities across Canada. Key provisions include:

• Consent: Organizations must obtain meaningful consent to collect, use, or disclose personal information.
• Data Access and Correction: Individuals have the right to access their personal data and request corrections if necessary.
• Reasonable Use: Organizations can only collect information necessary for the purpose they have outlined, and they must handle that data responsibly.
• Safeguards: Organizations must protect personal information through appropriate security measures.

Scarletblue, Ivysociete, Escortsandbabes list sex workers based in Australia.

Australia's primary federal privacy law is The Privacy Act 1988. It regulates how personal information is handled by government agencies, organizations with an annual turnover of more than AUD 3 million, and some smaller organizations. Key elements include:

Australian Privacy Principles (APPs): The act is based on 13 Australian Privacy Principles, which outline the standards, rights, and obligations related to the collection, use, disclosure, and storage of personal information. The APPs cover areas such as:

• Open and transparent management of personal information
• Anonymity and pseudonymity
• Collection of solicited personal information
• Use and disclosure of personal information
• Data security and access rights to personal information
• Consent: Organizations must generally obtain consent to collect, use, or disclose personal information, unless exceptions apply (e.g., for law enforcement purposes).

The remaining directories all operate in Europe.

Tryst.link, Eros, Megapersonals, Slixa, Listcrawler, P411, Adultsearch, Theeroticreview, Adultwork, Vivastreet, Eurogirlsescort, Massagerepublic, Rentmen, Hunqz and Sleepyboy all list advertiser profiles based in Europe so they are all required by law to comply with GDPR.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union law that sets guidelines for the collection, processing, and storage of personal data of individuals within the EU. It aims to enhance individuals' control over their personal information and imposes strict penalties on organizations that fail to comply.

Details and Responses

Tryst.link

Tryst's Privacy Policy and Tryst's Terms.

Tryst.link has replied to my email:

Do you require personally identifying information from sex workers for verification?

Identity documents?

Yes, a form of government issued ID is required to advertise on Tryst. This became a requirement as a result of changes made by Payment Processors in 2021.

Selfies?

To sign-up for Tryst, we require two different selfies which is processed internally by our verification team:

1. A selfie where you’re holding up your identification. This helps us to make a match your face to your ID. These photos (and any additional photos of ID) are automatically deleted as soon as possible, for example within 24 hours after approval.
2. A selfie where you’re holding a handwritten sign. This photo is stored until your account is deleted.

Both selfies are processed at the same time, ensuring that the person in the first selfie is the same as in the second. The selfie with the sign is kept for the life of the account to help match future photo uploads and assist in verifying your identity if you lose access to your account.

Can these be partially obscured or redacted?

We can’t accept redacted identification documents as a result of the requirements set out by Payment Processors terms of service for adult sites.

You can read more about these changes and the impact financial discrimination has had on the sex working community via the #AcceptanceMatters campaign and the Free Speech Coalition’s: financial discrimination report. You can also find out more about our verification process in our Age verification on Tryst.link knowledge base article.

https://help.tryst.link/en-gb/14/142

Do you sell our identities to third party advertisers?

No, we do not and will not ever sell any data to third-parties.

Do you take any steps to secure our identities from hackers or in case your servers were seized?

• Tryst is a collective of current and former sex workers and technologists, we know how damaging a data breach is to the community and to our reputation. We take the security of our platform seriously, and commit to notifying our users if there was ever a data breach.
• We tightly control who has access to your information. We think it's important that your sensitive information is only viewed when it needs to be, and only by the person who needs to see it.
• We use multiple layers of encryption when accessing and storing your information, where each layer adds additional protection to the one inside it. These layers include encryption of your data, held on encrypted servers, accessible only via encrypted connections and authenticating with multiple factors. We also log all access and have auditing processes that monitor access to this information.
• We specifically chose to host your sensitive data only on servers in the EU due to the higher level of protections provided through the privacy and international human rights laws that apply there.
• While technological protections are important, they're not a complete solution. We also have strong internal policies and processes that minimise how much of your personal information our team members see. This includes deleting your data as soon as we can, once we are in compliance with the requirements we needed it for. We audit the access logs regularly and make sure that there are no unapproved actions.

Are our identity documents and selfies deleted after verification?

As soon as we can, answered in more detail in the answer to the ‘selfies’ question.

If you were told you could protect yourself from prosecution by freely handing over the identities of sex workers to authorities, would you do so?

From our reading, we take this question as “Would we hand over all of our users data if it meant we’d walk away from prosecution” the answer is no, we have not, do not, and would not.

Or would you put up a fight and demand that they get a subpoena?

As a standard, all websites should require a valid and verifiable subpoena for data requests to ensure its upholding basic legal standards, and most importantly the human rights and privacy of its users.

All data requests must be accompanied by a valid and verifiable subpoena. The subpoena must be issued by a recognised authority and comply with all the relevant legal standards. We will thoroughly verify all legal requests for its authenticity and scope before considering the release of any data, and will only disclose information when legally obligated to do so.

Do you honour deletion requests?

Yes. We try to minimise the data we store on active users, as well as deleting inactive accounts, which you can read more about here. https://help.tryst.link/en-gb/23-profile/174-what-happens-if-i-stop-using-my-account

https://help.tryst.link/en-gb/14/142

In entirety?

For all profile information, including photos, yes. With the caveat that we are required by law (as disclosed in our Terms) to maintain financial records.

How long does this take?

This depends on how the deletion request is initiated, you can delete your account at will (https://help.tryst.link/en-gb/14-faq/142-how-do-i-delete-my-tryst-account) or you can raise a support request (https://app.tryst.link/support/new) with our team who can assist if you’ve lost access to your account, but this will take some additional time as our team will need to verify you to complete your request.

For inactive accounts, see this article on our knowledge base that outlines when we consider your account to be inactive, how long you have to reactivate it, and when each step in the process to deletion happens (https://help.tryst.link/en-gb/23-profile/174-what-happens-if-i-stop-using-my-account).

I also asked Tryst.link some follow up questions.

Tryst.link Privacy Terms state =

"We may disclose personal information to: third party service providers for the purpose of enabling them to provide their services, including (…) marketing or advertising providers, (…) (and to) courts, tribunals, regulatory authorities and law enforcement officers, as required by law, in connection with any actual or prospective legal proceedings, or in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights; "

Why does it say you disclose personal information to advertising providers? and to defend our (tryst's) legal rights without mention of requiring a subpoena?

“Why does it say you disclose personal information to advertising providers?”

This is considered a standard clause because of how the internet works, but when we say “We may disclose personal information to third party services for the purpose of enabling them to provide their services” this means we may share some of your information with other services who are acting on our behalf to run the platform - it doesn’t mean we are selling your data.

For example, let’s consider analytics, we pay a third-party company to license their software to process that we host to process this data internally. In the event we require support from this company, we would be obliged to give them access to our system in order for them to provide us that support, which in turn, may result in the disclosure of information but access to our system and data is covered by confidentiality and licensing agreements.

“and to defend our (tryst's) legal rights without mention of requiring a subpoena?”
There are two parts to this question, both are fairly standard clauses:

1. We have used broad language in this clause such as “as required by law, legal proceedings, regulatory and law enforcement authorities” to ensure that we cover the different type of legal obligations, including subpoenas and their local variants.

To reiterate, we will thoroughly verify all legal requests for its authenticity and scope before considering the release of any data, and will only disclose information when legally obligated to do so.

2. When a policy states “In order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights” it means that if a user of the platform makes a legal claim or accusation of wrong doing against the platform, the platform may be required to use or share information about the user to legal representation or the courts to defend against the claim.

Also Tryst.link terms says "Upon termination of your account, in accordance with our Privacy Policy, the platform will remove your profile and photos but we will keep data required for business operations such as but not limited to; verification information, payment information, support conversations, and audit history."

Does that apply if someone deletes their own account? The verification information you keep according to that quote doesn't include the selfies and pics of identity documents since you said those are deleted within 24 hours of approval?

"Upon termination of your account, in accordance with our Privacy Policy, the platform will remove your profile and photos but we will keep data required for business operations such as but not limited to; verification information, payment information, support conversations, and audit history."

There are two parts to this question, the audit history and the verification information:

Audit history is referring to the actions taken by a team member (such as the outcome of a photo review) but when an account is deleted, the associated user data (any identifying information and the actual photo) is removed, but the audit record is kept to state that this team member performed an action on our platform.

This clause is worded this way to cover instances that fall outside of the platform, specifically our support system. This system falls into its own data retention schedule which is separate from the platform, and depending on the classification of the ticket it will determine how long it’s stored for, such as if it’s business critical that has regulatory requirements, or non-business critical tickets such as account deletion where a user has lost account access and must be verified to action.

To add to that, support tickets that are deleted will include a record that it was deleted, the time it was deleted, the ticket number, and an anonymised user for record integrity.

---

Eros

I didn't get a reply from Eros. Their data processor, based in Switzerland, with this email address: [email protected] ignored my email.

Of all the escort directories, Eros has by far the worst track record regarding privacy and data security.

They've been raided before by Homeland Security , had servers full of unencrypted sex worker identities seized and it's rumoured they continue to operate due to some kind of deal involving continuing to hand over the identities of sex workers.

Their privacy policy makes no mention of allowing people to obscure any part of their identity documents or selfies used for verification.

They do sell our personal data to advertisers. Their terms say:

"We may use your personal information or share your personal information with third parties to: (...) Serve marketing or advertising materials to you; and Provide any other good or service to you with your consent."

They also give themselves permission to hand over our identities to the authorities.

"We may disclose your personal information to third parties, without notice if, in our sole discretion, we believe that it is reasonable to do so to: (...) Protect ourselves."

Their terms are clear about retaining personal information.

"We reserve the right to retain publicly available information and de-identified information for any legitimate business purpose without further notice to you or your consent."

Their terms say they will delete personal data on request.

"Right of erasure/deletion/omission ("right to be forgotten"): You have the right to request that personal data relating to you be deleted immediately and the personal data must be deleted immediately if one of the reasons listed in the Swiss or European legislation applies, for example that the data are no longer necessary for the purpose for which they were collected."

But I have screenshots of emails to prove that when this is requested, they refuse and tell people to just log out and leave their accounts inactive for 18 months and then their data will be deleted automatically. I have screenshots of follow up emails from after the 18 months to show that even this did not happen.

---

Megapersonals

[email protected]

Megapersonals' Privacy Policy says:

"authorized agents may require you to provide additional information as necessary to verify the accuracy of your identity and your information."

Doesn't say whether identity documents and/or selfies are required in all cases or whether these can be partially anonymised.

They do sell personal details to advertisers.

"To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you."

They make no mention of any measures taken to secure our identities or personal details. They do say regarding if they get hacked...

"...we shall not be liable for any recording or release of private information, personal data, or your Posts, and you hereby release us from all liability and claims associated therewith."

The paragraph "We will fully cooperate with law enforcement authorities or orders from courts of competent jurisdiction which request or direct us to disclose the identity or location of any user in breach of these Terms of Use, in accordance with our privacy policies, law enforcement policies, and applicable law or regulation." implies they don't care about subpoenas or court orders and will identify us to any and all authorities who ask.

Regarding deletions:

"Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully, or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request."

So they might delete your personal data. Partially. Maybe.

---

Slixa

[email protected]

Slixa Advertiser Agreement "requires that all advertiser accounts are subject to age verification. Advertisers must supply a true and accurate color copy of a current, valid, government issued ID via the website’s secure verification page."

Doesn't say if the ID can be partially redacted or if it's deleted after verification.

Slixa's Privacy Policy says Slixa does use our personal details to "tailor marketing". Does this mean they sell our identities to advertisers?

A big win for Slixa with their data security statement:

"We use all reasonable measures to protect Your personally identifying information that is stored within our database (including data encryption, SSL, strong password requirements and firewalls), and we restrict access to member information to those employees who need access to perform their job functions, such as our customer service personnel and technical staff."

That's what we like to hear.

Slixa will share our identities with third parties

"6.1.1 To comply with any laws including, but not limited to, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act or any other legal or governmental requests for information;

6.1.2 If disclosure is necessary to identify, contact, or to bring legal action against a person who may be in violation of Slixa Terms and Conditions;

6.1.3 As is reasonably necessary to operate the Website;

6.1.4 To protect Slixa, its Users, its Advertisers, and the general public. Slixa will only disclose a User’s information when it is compelled and /or required to do so by law (for example, in response to a court order or subpoena). Where permitted by law, Slixa will not disclose any information pertaining to any User without first presenting the User with an opportunity to object to said disclosure."

If it was just 6.1.4, that would be perfect.

Doesn't seem to say anything about deletion requests.

---

Listcrawler

[email protected]

Listcvrawler's Privacy Policy says they'll give our identities to anyone who asks for pretty much any reason:

"We may disclose IP addresses, and/or associated email address, telephone numbers, or other information about, if (i) required to do so by law, court order or subpoena, or as requested by other government, law enforcement, or investigative authority, (ii) we in good faith believe that such disclosure is necessary or advisable, including without limitation to protect the rights or properties of the Site, (iii) we have reason to believe that disclosing your personal information is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against someone who may be causing interference with our rights or properties, or has breached an agreement, or if anyone else could be harmed by such activities or interference, (iv) if we determine an ad posted violates our Terms of Use or the rights of a third party, or (v) there is an emergency involving personal danger. We may also share information if we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, or as otherwise required or permitted by law."

Doesn't say anything about data security, selling personal details to advertisers or deletion requests.

---

P411

[email protected]

P411 replied to my email.

"Thanks for taking the time to write.

The only time we would release that information is if a Spanish court (we are in Spain and abide by Spanish law only) issued a subpoena specifically asking for that information. Of course, we would have our legal counsel review the subpoena first before doing anything. To this date, we have never been subpoenaed for any information.

We retain age documentation images to match account holders to other accounts. This is particularly important when it comes to accounts that have suspended or revoked for negative behavior. However, it's much less important when an account has never shown us any indication there are any issues, and those identification images would be deleted by request."

P411's Privacy Policy says:

"COMPANIONS: When you sign up for a companion account, Preferred411 collects some personal information for verification purposes, including and not limited to: full name, e-mail address, telephone number, website url, etc. Preferred411 also requires images of you and your government identification to prove that you are over the age of 21. These images are kept as encrypted data to ensure that companion accounts are not shared with anyone other than the account holder. We also require a username, email address and security questions."

Regarding Deletion of Information 

"Other than your P411 Id, all information found on your profile is wholly within your control and can be updated at your convenience. You can view what other members see about you, by clicking Companion View (admirers) or clicking on your thumbnail (companions). If you would like your information to be completely deleted from our servers, provide us with a detailed written request. This will result in your account and information being permanently removed from Preferred411 and the complete loss of use of member areas of the site. In limited cases, where we suspect unfavorable, fraudulent or criminal activity is taking place, as well as any activity that violates our Terms & Conditions, your information will not be deleted for the protection of Preferred411 and/or its members."

Their data security policy:

"The entire Preferred411 site is secured by using 128 bit SSL technology. Every effort is made to ensure the security of our servers and the data we retain. However, we are unable to make any guarantees that our measures will prevent an illegal hacking, which could result in the data on our servers being compromised. You assume this risk by voluntarily providing your information to Preferred411, with the understanding that such hacking incidents can occur despite reasonable security measures being in place."

---

Eroticmonkey

[email protected]

Eroticmonkey's Privacy Policy doesn't say whether they require ID or selfies or what they do with these.

They talk about personally identifying information (PII) in their terms and say

"We will never sell, rent, or loan your PII without your express written consent. We sometimes use third parties to help with some of the services available through the Site, such as third party software and service vendors, partners and consultants. When we supply PII to these third parties, we require them to use it only for the function they are helping us with. (...) We will disclose PII as required by law, or if in our judgment it is necessary to protect our company or our users from loss or liability."

So they won't sell PII to advertisers but will give PII freely to authorities without requiring a subpoena to protect themselves.

No mention of deletions.

Re data security

"We keep PII you provide on servers that are protected by industry-standard firewalls and other technological means against intrusion or unauthorized access. They are located in a physically secure facility, and only our employees and agents with a need to know the information are given access. While no amount of security can give a perfect guarantee, you can have a high degree of confidence that the personally identifiable information you give us is protected from unauthorized access and use."

---

Ourhome2

[email protected]

Doesn't have a Privacy Policy.

All they say on the subject is:

"Only anonymized registrations are allowed; as far as GDPR/CCPA goes, OH2 follows the protocol outlined below: Anonymous information, as information which does not relate to an identified or identifiable natural person or to personal data rendered anonymous in such a manner that the data subject is not or no longer identifiable'. The GDPR/CCPA do not apply to anonymized information."

This is not very helpful eg if you're a sex worker who wants their personal details deleted from their site.

---

Humaniplex

[email protected]

Humaniplex's Privacy Policy doesn't say whether they require sex workers to send identity documents and/or selfies for verification.

They do say loud and clear:

"Your Information Is NEVER Used for Marketing, Promotion, or Advertising by Third Parties! - We do not sell or lease personal information. Many websites, specifically socials networks such as this one, choose to sell their users' personal information to third parties so that those third parties can advertise to you. Worse yet, many sites profile your browsing habits to try to generate a picture on the things you might buy and then sell that information to third parties. That is not the case here, and never will be."

This is the best statement I've seen on the topic on any of the escort directories. All the directories should have words to this effect in their privacy policies.

Sadly their statement regarding legal requests is a failure.

"If we have a good faith belief that the response is required by law, we may disclose information pursuant to subpoenas, court orders, or other requests (including criminal and civil matters). This may include honoring requests from jurisdictions outside of the United States where we have a good faith belief that the response is required by law under the local laws in that jurisdiction, apply to users from that jurisdiction, and are consistent with generally accepted international standards. We may also share information when we have a good faith belief it is necessary to prevent fraud or other illegal activity, to prevent imminent bodily harm, or to protect ourselves and you from people violating our Terms of Service. This may include sharing information with lawyers, courts or other government entities."

There's no need for this. Just say "We won't give your personal details to any law enforcement, legal or government entity unless we receive a subpoena from a court of law."

They don't say anything about deletions.

---

Adultsearch

[email protected]

Adultsearch's Privacy Policy uses almost the exact same phrase as Eros re:

"We may disclose your personal information to third parties, without notice if, in our sole discretion, we believe that it is reasonable to do so to: (...) Protect ourselves."

The full quote on Adultsearch says:

"we may disclose passively-collected information about Users, (...) for any reason without notice if, in our sole discretion, we believe that it is reasonable to do so, including, but not limited to: To satisfy any laws, such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, regulations, or governmental, or legal requests for such information; To disclose information that is necessary to identify, contact, or bring legal action against someone who may be violating our Terms of Use and other policies and procedures; To operate our Services properly; To protect ourselves, our Users, and the general public. We specifically reserve the right to disclose any and all information to law enforcement in the event that a crime including, but not limited to, fraud-related offenses is committed, is suspected, or if we are compelled to do so by lawful criminal, civil, or administrative process, discovery requests, subpoenas, court orders, writs, or reasonable request of authorities or persons with the reasonable power to obtain such process;"

I don't like that bit about "reasonable request". It's far too ill-defined and open to interpretation. If you require a subpoena, just say you require a subpoena.

In the next paragraph they say:

"We do not intend to cooperate with private-party litigants and others seeking information unless compelled to do so through lawful court or administrative process, such as subpoenas, court orders, or writs."

So why do they need to they need to give themselves permission to give our identities to whomever, to protect their own interests, without requiring a subpoena via that "reasonable requests"?

---

Theeroticreview

[email protected]

TER is primarily a review site aimed at getting clients to register and write reviews about sex workers.

It is possible to register as a provider but I couldn't find anything in their terms saying whether ID or selfies are required, whether they can be partially redacted or whether they're deleted after verification.

TER's Privacy Policy says:

"we will keep your Personal Information private and will not share it with third parties, unless such disclosure is necessary to: (a) comply with a court order or other legal process; (b) satisfy our legal obligations to cooperate with law enforcement or other investigating agencies; (c) satisfy any laws or regulations, or, governmental or legal requests for such information; (d) protect our rights or property, or the rights or property of others; or (d) enforce our Terms of Use Agreement."

Their data security policy says:

"We take measures, including data encryption, to protect the transmission of all sensitive user information. We make every reasonable effort to help ensure the integrity and security of our network and systems, and use commercially reasonable safeguards to preserve the integrity and security of your Personal Information. Nevertheless, we cannot guarantee that our security measures will prevent third-parties from illegally “hacking” into our computers and obtaining this information. You assume the risk of such breaches to the extent that they occur despite our reasonable security measures."

They don't say anything about deletions.

---

Leolist

[email protected]

Leolist's Privacy Policy says they will sell your personal information to advertisers.

"We may use your Data to show you LeoList adverts and other content on other websites. If you do not want us to use your Data to show you LeoList adverts and other content on other websites, please turn off the relevant cookies (please refer to the section headed “Cookies” below). (...) any of our group companies or affiliates - for the purpose of marketing where relevant;"

They say they will hand our data to:

" relevant authorities, such as law enforcement - to facilitate the detection, prevention, or investigation of a crime or offence, or in connection with other lawful requests for your Data;"

They do not say what they consider to constitute a lawful request.

They won't fully delete personal details on request.

"we will only hold your Data on our systems for the period necessary to fulfil the purposes outlined in this privacy policy or until you request that the Data be deleted. 19. Even if we delete your Data, it may persist on backup or archival media for legal, tax or regulatory purposes."

No mention of encryption or any other steps taken for data security.

---

Terb

Doesn't have a contact email on their site. I filled out the contact form but they haven't replied.

Privacy Policy is very brief and basic.

It does say they'll honour deletion requests. (you) "have the right to request the erasure of your personal data. Please contact us if you would like us to remove your personal data."

Re data security "We are committed to ensuring that any information you provide to us is secure. In order to prevent unauthorized access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable measures and procedures to safeguard and secure the information that we collect."

That doesn't really tell us anything about their data security.

Doesn't say anything about not selling info to spammers or giving identities to authorities.

---

Adultwork

[email protected]

Does require identity documents and does not accept anything partially redacted.

They also have quite invasive and weirdly old fashioned verification requirements eg making sex workers get their picture taken next to a phonebox while holding up a copy of that days newspaper.

Their Privacy Policy says they will sell your identity to advertisers "To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you".

Regarding data security they say "We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your Personal Data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your Personal Data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business 'need to know'. They will only process your Personal Data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected Personal Data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so."

They do say you have the "Right to Erasure. Every individual has the right to be forgotten upon request. The Data Controller must remove your Personal Data from its systems and request the same of any third-party systems of that controller." under GDPR.

But "In the event of a law enforcement request involving your account or the data we hold about you on file. We are obliged by law to comply with the request and retain the data until the case has been closed by Law enforcement. Data may be held beyond the deletion request for the basis of complying with law enforcement."

I've heard from multiple UK based sex workers that they are entirely face in and have only ever shown their face in one place = Adultwork verification selfies and identity documents sent to AW, and yet they have been denied entry to USA due to facial recognition detecting a connection to sex work. ie Adultwork has given at least some, possibly all, of the selfies and ID they hold to USA border control.

---

Vivastreet

I sent them a message on twitter where I've spoken to Viva before. They read the message. It's marked as "seen". They haven't replied.

Does require "ID Verification for the purpose of registering as a Registered Escort on the Site".

No mention of partially redacted ID.

Vivastreet's Privacy Policy says they will hand over our identities "Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation. Where we consider it to be in the interests of our Users (Registered Escorts or otherwise) or in the public interest, we may provide Personal Data to law enforcement to assist them with an investigation. If we believe that you are a victim, we may provide your Personal Data without obtaining your prior consent for your protection."

They say "To undertake an Identity Verification Check, you will be asked to upload a ‘selfie’ photograph of yourself and a supporting identity document. These will then be verified by third-party technology"

Doesn't say who the third party is, which country they're in or which data protection laws they are subject to.

"We may also disclose your Personal and Biometric Data if required to do so by law, or if we believe that disclosure is necessary to comply with any applicable law, or to defend our own rights or property, or to safeguard you or others. This may involve discussing the information we hold with law enforcement agencies if we believe or suspect that you are using the Site to engage in criminal and/or illegal activity. Law Enforcement may also choose to disclose this information further to other security services to comply with any applicable law or if they believe doing so will safeguard others."

The "defend our own rights" line could mean they'll give our identities to anyone who asks if they think it is good leverage to protect themselves from prosecution.

Doesn't mention encryption.

You can request data erasure but they might not honour that request.

"Request erasure of your Personal Data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove Personal Data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your Personal Data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your Personal Data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request. "

They will sell your identity to advertisers, possibly even if you specifically ask them not to.

"You also have the right to object where we are processing your Personal Data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms."

---

Eurogirlsescort

[email protected]

Eurogirlescort's Privacy Policy says verification using ID and selfies is optional.

"We as the administrator do verify profiles. These profiles have VERIFIED status (in blue). Each girl who advertise on our site has "verification" option in the account. We require verification pictures or face + ID picture as proof that profile is real. If the girl sends required verification pictures we give "verified" status."

Unless you look underage.

"Our company will manually review each post and pictures before it goes LIVE online. If we determine that age of the model/escort is in question, we may ask for ID and age verification and we reserve the right to refuse to post"

This is good to see "We do not collect personal information to trade, sell or give away in any way. (...) Any and all the information collected on this website will be kept strictly confidential and will not be sold, reused, rented, disclosed, or loaned! We respect the right of users to remain anonymous and will endeavour not to knowingly disclose user identities unless directed by a court of law."

Also good = " several layers of encryption and several layers of security to prevent unauthorised access protect all of the sensitive customer data we collect."

No mention of deletion requests.

---

Scarletblue

[email protected]

Scarletblue's Privacy Policy

says they do collect "results of any identity checks or verifications".

Nothing about partially redacted ID or selfies.

"We do not ask for or collect your identity documents, such as your drivers licence, passport, or any other identity documents, or verify your identity. A third-party service provider may complete identity checks on our behalf from time to time when you provide your identity documents to the service provider through their function on our website. This function is not linked with us, and we do not have access to any information that is entered into the function. The third-party service provider will handle your personal information in accordance with its privacy policy."

Doesn't say who the third party is, where, or what legal requirements they are subject to. When this policy was announced, the announcement went over like a lead balloon on sex work twitter and reddit.

They sell our personal information to advertisers and will give our identities to authorities.

"We may disclose your personal information to the following third parties: (a) our business or commercial partners; (b) our professional advisers, dealers and agents; (c) third parties and contractors who provide services to us, including customer enquiries and support services, IT service providers, data storage, webhosting and server providers, marketing and advertising organisations, payment processing service providers; (d) payment system operators and debt-recovery functions; (e) third parties to collect and process data, such as Google Analytics, Google Display Network, DoubleClick, Yahoo, Adobe, Campaign Manager, and Microsoft; and (f) any third parties authorised by you to receive information held by us. If you are a contractor, we may disclose your information to payment system operators and debt-recovery functions. We may also disclose your personal information if we are required, authorised or permitted by law. We may send information to third parties that are located outside of Australia for the purposes of providing our services. These third parties are located in Cyprus, although this list may change from time to time. Disclosure is made to the extent that it is necessary to perform our functions or activities."

Again with the unnamed third parties =

"We take all reasonable steps to protect personal information under our control from misuse, interference and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We hold your personal information electronically in secure databases operated by our third-party service providers. We protect the personal information we hold through using secure ‘bcrypt’ hashing when storing user passwords, not storing any credit card information in the Scarlet Blue databases, using secure hosting providers, storing data in secured internal databases, firewalls and login password protocols and secure and access-controlled premises."

No mention of right to erasure.

---

Ivysociete

[email protected]

Ivysociete's Privacy Policy

Ivysociete posted on reddit asking for feedback about their site. Here is our conversation =

IS>

Thank you for your feedback. Please note that all advertisers on ivysociete.com are required to submit a verification image to ensure the legitimacy of profiles. However, advertisers have the option to blur their face in the image. The only requirements for this verification are to wear the same outfit, take a full-body photo, hold a sign, and raise three fingers on the other hand. As a "face-in" escort myself, who prefers not to show my face in photos, I completely understand the importance of maintaining privacy.

Regarding ID verification, it's optional for clients and not mandatory. It's simply another way to verify themselves if they feel more comfortable with it.

As for the terms and conditions, we don't share private images with a third party. Including a clause about sharing information with third parties is a common practice in terms and conditions.

IS didn't reply. I tried messaging them as a reply to their tweet about the redesign but they deleted my tweet reply.

---

Escortsandbabes

[email protected]

Escortsandbabes's Privacy Policy doesn't say whether they require identity documents or selfies or if so, how these are handled.

"Unless you object, your personal information may be used to: (...) assist us with our marketing"

Sounds like they do sell personal info to advertisers.

"we may disclose personal information in special situations where we have reason to believe that doing so is necessary to identify, contact or bring legal action against anyone damaging, injuring or interfering (intentionally or unintentionally) with our rights or property, users or anyone else who could be harmed by such activities."

and they'll disclose to authorities. No mention of requiring a subpoena.

No mention of encryption.

Doesn't say they honour deletion requests.

---

Massagerepublic

[email protected]

Massagerepublic's Privacy Policy

GDPR Compliance Policy

"Advertiser registration form – the object and the basis of the data processing Your personal data provided through this form are processed in order to register your account on our server. Providing us with your personal information is necessary, and abstaining results in our inability to register your account."

So they do require identity documents. Doesn't say about selfies.

"your personal data might be disclosed to third parties, including (...) the marketing agencies, the e-commerce agencies"

Translates as they do sell your personal information to advertisers.

No mention of encryption.

Their GDPR page mentions "the right to delete personal data (the right to be forgotten)" but doesn't say how this happens or how long it takes.

---

Rentmen

[email protected]

Privacy Policy

I got a reply from Rentmen responding to my questions as follows:

Do you require personally identifying information from sex workers for verification?

We require personal identifying information from all of our advertisers, aiming to confirm the users’ identity and age.

Identity documents?

The users are requested to present a state-issued document, confirming their date of birth. Any document with a photo of the user and date of birth is sufficient.

Selfies?

In some cases, when the administration needs more information to confirm the user, the so-called photo verification is required. The user needs to take a selfie holding a sign with the website name and the date the selfie is taken.

Can these be partially obscured or redacted?

Yes, the user can partially cover the ID - compulsory information that must
be visible is:

• Face - we need to be sure the person from the ID is the same as the
  person in the profile gallery.
• Data of birth - to confirm the user is over 18.
• Expiration date - we need to be sure the document is valid, not expired.
• Name - KYC (Know Your Customer) requirements by the card operators.

Do you sell our identities and/or personal details to third-party advertisers?

We do not sell or share personal data of our users to third-party advertisers under any circumstances. We believe that apart from the moral and ethical norms that the company follows in this direction, any proposals would be rejected due to the fact that we believe that such an act would have an extremely negative impact on the image of the company and the products that we manage.

Do you take any steps to secure our identities from hackers or in case your servers were seized?

Yes, as I mentioned, we follow the rules and regulations of the GDPR and the highest standards for storing the personal data of our users. We have implemented state-of-the-art security measures to prevent any data breaches. Furthermore, your data is encrypted, meaning that in case of a data breach, it will not be readable for the hackers.

Are our identity documents and selfies deleted after verification?

In order to comply with our legal obligations, photo and ID verifications are stored and are needed regarding ongoing monitoring of profile accuracy. For example, if a user changes entirely the photos of their profile gallery and replaces them with others, we need to be sure the newly uploaded photos match the users' photo verification previously provided.

Stored offline?

For security reasons, such information cannot be provided.

Encrypted?

As I previously mentioned, the personal data of our users is protected and encrypted and only limited and licensed staff members have access.

If you were told you could protect yourself from prosecution by freely handing over the identities of sex workers to authorities, would you do so?

We would share data with authorities only if the request is legally valid and in compliance with GDPR and other applicable privacy regulations.

Or would you put up a fight and demand that they get a subpoena?

As I have already specified, we follow the principles of the GDPR, where the reasons and methods for requesting personal data of a user are regulated. Here I should specify that mass provision of personal data to users is absolutely prohibited and would not be respected for any reason. A request for the provision of personal data may be made to investigative authorities in connection with an active criminal investigation. In such a situation, the investigating authority should identify itself by providing documents containing the reason for the request for personal data, as well as what specific personal data are needed for the relevant investigation. For example, if an investigative body were to contact us and request all available data of our user, their request would be considered unlawful and would not be honored.

Do you honour deletion requests?

Yes, of course. Again, following the GDPR, we accept requests for deletion of personal data. Also, any user can request from us what personal data we collect about them.

In entirety?

In some specific cases, we may retain personal information for a longer period. For example, accounting information such as invoices contain personal information. Under the law, we must retain this information for 10 years.

How long does this take?

The period for consideration of requests for the provision of personal data is processed for a period not longer than 7 days.

---

Hunqz

Hunqz's Privacy Policy

Hunqz replied to my email and responded to each of my questions:

Do you require personally identifying information from sex workers for verification?

No

Identity documents?

No

Selfies?

Only needed if profile gets reported multiple times for being fake

Can these be partially obscured or redacted?

Not, if we need to check a user's identity

Do you sell our identities and/or personal details to third-party advertisers?

Of course not

Do you take any steps to secure our identities from hackers or in case your servers were seized?

Of course

Are our identity documents and selfies deleted after verification?

Users upload their verification picture if needed to a private folder for us to review the user's identity. Afterwards the user can delete the picture.

Stored offline?

N.A

Encrypted?

N.A

If you were told you could protect yourself from prosecution by freely handing over the identities of sex workers to authorities, would you do so?

Or would you put up a fight and demand that they get a subpoena?

It wouldn't be legal in the Netherlands to hand over our user's identities to authorities.

Do you honour deletion requests?

Of course. This is also covered under the GDPR

In entirety?

Yes, see our privacy statement for more information (https://www.romeo.com/en/privacy/)

How long does this take?

These requests are normally processed within one working day.

I replied with a few additional questions, querying the term "legitimate interest" and "if the police demand this" and they kindly replied again:

"By legal terms (GDPR) it wouldn't be a legitimate interest to share user data with advertisers.

In our privacy statement (https://www.romeo.com/en/privacy/) we also list what kind of third party we are sharing data with. In this particular case we share some data with an external Fraud Prevention System to keep "the bad guys" (e.g. commercial profiles created through bots) from our platform. This for instance is a legitimate interest, because Fraud harms both our platform and also potentially our users.

If any local police contacts us, they are sent the following text which clearly defines what's needed to receive any data:

Dear Sir or Madam,

There are two ways in which information can be sought from the Netherlands, either using IP (Interpol/Europol or Liaisons) channels for police to police non evidential requests

• or –

if requiring information evidentially then you will need to engage your prosecutor office for them to send an International Letter of Request to the Netherlands to ask for the information on a formal basis.

It is a requirement in the Netherlands for information that is sought as evidence from a foreign jurisdiction to be requested via an European Investigation Order (EIO), which then provides the Netherlands a legal basis to gather the evidence from the business, institution etc. on your behalf. Your prosecutor will be in a position to provide the necessary EIO and sent by post to the Dutch authorities. (...)

This means that we also never hand out any data directly to local police offices but always go through our contacts at the Dutch police."

---

Sleepyboy

Sleepyboy's Privacy Policy says "Sleepypro SL may disclose your Personal Data in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a legal obligation, to protect and defend the rights or property of Sleepypro SL, to prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with the Service, to protect the personal safety of users of the Service or the public, and to protect against legal liability."

So they can identify you to law enforcement and here's no mention of requiring a subpoena.

"Advertising Cookies. Advertising Cookies are used to serve you with advertisements that may be relevant to you and your interests."

"To provide you with news, special offers and general information about other goods, services and events which we offer that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about unless you have opted not to receive such information"

So they do sell our personal data to advertisers.

No mention of encryption. Only the disclaimer "The security of your data is important to us, but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your Personal Data, we cannot guarantee its absolute security."

They recognise right to deletion "Sleepypro SL aims to take reasonable steps to allow you to correct, amend, delete, or limit the use of your Personal Data." but it doesn't say whether this will be entirety or commit to a timeframe.

I've been researching regarding best business practices for sex work industry websites.

As you may have gathered if you read my previous post on Tech Stacks, the leading escort directories almost all have a terrible track record for customer service, security and privacy.

I very much intend for Sex Worker Search to be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.

VISA does not explicitly ban escort websites from using their products as far as I can tell.

Within VISA's Merchant Data Standards Manual, Escort services are given the Merchant Category Code 7273. Merchants classified with this MCC provide dating and escort services, including online services.

Escort Services under Merchant Category Code 7273 are not prohibited from accepting VISA card payments however they are categorised as high risk.

Merchants categorized under high-risk must register and pay higher fees, which include $950 per year for registration and additional transaction fees. This ensures that Visa can maintain oversight and manage risks associated with high-risk categories​​.

In addition, high risk merchants are subject to audit in order to ensure that they are complying with all relevant rules and regulations.

For example this post on the Xbiz website is about the Visa Integrity Risk Program (VIRP) for maintaining proper controls and oversight to prevent illegal transactions from entering the Visa payment system.

I believe the recommended guidelines for compliance with VIRP are well worth understanding considering I have been working hard to try to find a payment portal provider so I can accept credit card payments for premium listings and because I think following the rules and regulations relevant to our industry is the right thing to do.

The following are examples of rules within VIRP which the owners of websites related to sex work need to adhere to.

Content Compliance

Merchants must ensure that their sites do not host CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material), bestiality, incest, or non-consensual content.

These types of content are all banned from Sex Worker Search. Sites that mention any of these types of content cannot be indexed in search results.

Content Moderation

Merchants are required to have strict content moderation policies in place, which include monitoring user-generated content, blocking inappropriate material, and employing both human and automated tools for these tasks​.

Sex Worker Search is committed to keeping search results clear of any content that is not allowed under our terms. We do have people working to ensure that this is the case.

Proactive Policies Against Exploitation

Merchants need to have detailed policies to prevent human trafficking, sex trafficking, and exploitation, including rigorous age verification, content monitoring, and reporting mechanisms for suspicious activity​​.

I'm in the process of drafting a Terms and Conditions page that will outline in detail what Sex Worker Search is doing to ensure that none of the sites indexed here are involved in prevent human trafficking, sex trafficking, or exploitation.

I have manually read through every site currently indexed and I am confident that none of them are in any way involved in any of the above criminal activities.

There is nothing wrong with consenting adults having sex. There is nothing wrong with sex work.

Sex Work is not inherently exploitative and I will continue to work hard to ensure that any website that does show evidence that someone may have been coerced or exploited in any way is not indexed. I will also alert the relevant authorities.

Marketing

Merchants are prohibited from marketing based on non-compliant search terms or engaging in noncompliant affiliate marketing promotions.

Sex Worker Search is not connected with any affiliate marketing promotions.

Human Trafficking

Merchants must have effective policies in place that prohibit the use of their websites to promote or facilitate human trafficking, sex trafficking, or abuse. Participation in an anti-trafficking organization is highly recommended.

I have contacted National Ugly Mugs to ask how I can support NUM. I asked them for permission to add a banner for NUM to my footer and encourage people to use the NUM checker tool and contact NUM to make incident reports, access information, support and resources when we are victims of crime and to request assistance when dealing with the police.

I also plan to set up a monthly donation via the NUM donations page.

Takedown Requests

Merchants must enable users to report noncompliant content and allow models to request the removal of content depicting them. Additionally, merchants must provide monthly reports to their payment service provider.

Sex Worker Search does not host any images, videos or media of any kind. The Site titles and meta descriptions that appear in search results are the meta data that those websites are telling search engines to index. However, I understand that people may have reasons for wanting their site removed from search results eg if they've retired or are on hiatus, and I am more than happy to do so. As per the FAQ page, welcome to email [email protected] and I will remove your site from search results within 24 hours.

Note from Love Sudo: Thank you for having me add comments to this post. Anything in this colour is our words with the hope to educate readers about the tech mentioned.

In building Sex Worker Search, with significant help from Love Sudo, my goal is to select technology that prioritises privacy and security while being ethical and effective for the workers who list with us and the clients seeking their services.

I’m fascinated by the diverse tech stacks used by sex workers for their websites. Recently, I discovered that I could analyse the tech stacks of other escort directories. To satisfy my curiosity, and hopefully learn how to improve this website, I examined the top 10 escort directories using BuiltWith and Ahrefs. The sites I looked at were: Adultwork, Tryst, Eros, Eurogirlescort, Privatedelights, Megapersonals, The Erotic Review (TER), Rentmen, Eccie, and P411.

Note from Love Sudo: A website comprises many elements: hosting, code, databases, analytics, and more. Many modern websites have evolved into fully-fledged applications designed to function seamlessly within a browser. The term "tech stack" refers to the complete set of platforms and tools used by a domain, including information about email handling as well.

Here are some intriguing insights I've uncovered about these top 10 escort directories, ranked by traffic from most to least visited according to Ahrefs. I’ve included summaries from Ahrefs to explain the traffic each directory receives and used data from BuiltWith to analyse the technology each directory employs. 

My primary goal is to identify common technologies and evaluate their advantages and disadvantages for websites in the sex work industry.

Top 10 Sex Directories

Adultwork

View Tech Stack on BuiltWith

I was completely surprised to discover that Adultwork receives the most traffic among all the sites I analysed. Despite its limited use outside the UK, Adultwork stands out in terms of traffic. In my opinion, it has the most outdated, unattractive, and user-unfriendly interface I’ve ever seen on an escort directory—it looks like a web marketplace from 1995. 

Adultwork is notoriously difficult for sex workers to deal with. Every interaction I’ve had or observed with them has been frustrating, as if they take pleasure in being as uncooperative as possible. Moreover, there are troubling rumours that Adultwork shares the identity documents and selfies used for verification directly with U.S. border control. Accounts from sex workers report being flagged by facial recognition at the U.S. border and sent back to the UK, despite only giving these images to Adultwork for verification. For more details on this, visit the Sexworkersonly subreddit. 

Despite all this, Adultwork remains inexplicably popular. It is, by a significant margin, the most frequented escort directory in the UK. 

Notable insights from their tech stack are the use of Cloudflare (see Stack / Tool Insights section for an explanation of my thoughts, links to the tool, and notes from Love Sudo, about each of the tools used), Google Analytics, US Privacy User Signal Mechanism, ASP.NET, RSS, Atlassian Cloud, DoubleClick.Net, Amazon SES, SendGrid, Azure, and GoDaddy SSL. 

I've spoken to Amazon and SendGrid about using their products and they both told me sex work-related sites are banned according to their terms of service, but Adultwork somehow seems to be using them. 

The site has had more than 10 successful copyright takedown requests since 2011. 

No surprise there. I expect all these directories get thousands of DMCA infringement reports sent via email directly to their site contact email, via their hosting company or via Cloudflare. 

If an escort directory is displaying your images without your consent, find a template online for a legal take down notice and email it to the site contact. If they ignore you, do a whois hosting search and find the contact for their hosting provider if possible and send them the takedown notice. The site will get a warning which is usually enough to get them to remove the images. If they're using Cloudflare so their hosting is hidden, fill out the abuse report form here. 

I'm surprised to see they're able to use Doubleclick. It's a Google product based in USA where sex work is illegal and is explicitly banned according to their terms of use.

Tryst

View Tryst Tech Stack on BuiltWith

Whenever Tryst is mentioned on the Sexworkers subreddit, it's inevitably someone in a state of despair because they're desperate to get started and begin earning money as a sex worker but they've been waiting months for Tryst to verify them so their ad can get approved and become active. 

Recently, Tryst has said that they've gotten their processing times down to an average of ten days but there are still people on reddit saying they've been waiting for months. 

Notable insights from their tech stack are the use of PostHog, Ruby On Rails, AT Protocol DID Placeholder, Sentry, Let’s Encrypt, OVH, Hetzner, and BunnyCDN. 

The site has had more than 10 successful copyright takedown requests since 2011, indicating a history of dealing with copyright issues.

Eros

View Tryst Tech Stack on BuiltWith

Eros is an "interesting" one. They were raided in 2017 and their servers were seized by the feds, but they're still up and running. Rumour has it they're still up and running because they made a deal with the feds to provide an ongoing supply of the identities of all their users. 

There's limited data for Eros. I guess escort directories that are effectively owned and operated by the CIA are more difficult to parse than others. 

Notable insights from their tech stack are the use of Google Analytics, Ionic, SSL, and WAI-ARIA.

Eurogirlescort

View Tryst Tech Stack on BuiltWith

Notable insights from their tech stack are the use of Google Analytics, US Privacy Signal Mechanism, Cloudflare, Nette Framework, DoubleClick.net, FastMail, and SSL. 

The site has had more than 10 successful copyright takedown requests since 2011.

Privatedelights

View Tryst Tech Stack on BuiltWith

I've seen multiple people on reddit complaining that Privatedelights is inconsistent in their approach to verifying accounts. They're said to pick and choose who they want on the platform and are allegedly racist in having an unspoken policy of rejecting African American providers. 

Notable insights from their tech stack are the use of Express, Cloudflare, tawk.to, SSL, DNSSEC, and Amazon AWS EC2.

Megapersonals

View Tryst Tech Stack on BuiltWith

Judging from mentions on reddit, their Fraud Bot tends to be a bit overzealous. One of their admins has a reddit account and is quite quick to respond to username mentions so if you are having trouble with MP, post on reddit and mention /u/megapersonalsreal. 

Notable insights from their tech stack are Cloudflare, Java EE, GStatic Google Static Content, Openads/OpenX, SWFObject, SSL, and WorldStream.

The Erotic Review (TER)

View Tryst Tech Stack on BuiltWith

Like all escort review sites, the denizens do like to write a graphic Penthouse Forum style account of their encounters filled with gratuitous detail. Many sex workers, especially in countries like USA where sex work is illegal, go out of their way not to mention specific sexual services in exchange for payment and very much do not consent to having these details published on review sites. One positive of receiving negative reviews on sites like this is that other reviewers, AKA hobbyists, are less likely to contact you. The hobbyist is distinguished by haggling, boundary pushing and casual misogyny so filtering them out is a good thing. 

Notable insights from their tech stack are Google Analytics, User Privacy User Signal Mechanism, ASP.NET, GStatic Google Static Content, Cloudflare, DoubleClick.Net, and SSL. 

The site has had more than 10 successful copyright takedown requests since 2011.

Rentmen

View Tryst Tech Stack on BuiltWith

A male escort directory. I'm so happy that I don't need to use directories any more since my personal site ranks high enough on google for search terms related to the services I specialise in that I get enough clients from my own site without using any directories. I used to have an ad on rentmen and for every one genuine client, I'd get literally hundreds of timewasters. Ugh. 

Notable insights from their tech stack are Google No Translate, Next.js, React, and Cloudflare.

Eccie

View Tryst Tech Stack on BuiltWith

A toxic hobbyist community. It used to be popular. It's been hacked multiple times. Only ever gets mentioned on reddit as something to avoid like the plague. 

Notable insights from their tech stack are Google Analytics, Cloudflare, US Privacy User Signal Mechanism, vBulletin, DoubleClick.Net, and Webair.

P411

View Tryst Tech Stack on BuiltWith

It's a nice idea in theory. Everyone, sex workers and clients, must get verified. So, it's intended as an advertising platform where all the clients have already been screened. Unfortunately, it's best known for a client base that refuses to screen. The guys there feel that since they've already verified, they're entitled to meet whoever they want without providing any screening info, or references, or deposits. From what I've seen on reddit, a lot of them are blacklisted elsewhere for being difficult or even dangerous. 

Notable insights from their tech stack are Cloudflare, Next.js, React, GStatic Google Static Content, FastMail, AuthSMTP, and SSL.

---

Stack / Tool Insights

Accessibility | Advertising | Analytics | Compliance | Email | Frameworks & Platforms | Hosting Providers | Monitoring | Multiple Feature Tools | SSL | Other

Accessibility

Note from Love Sudo: No matter what you build your website with you should put a heavy focus on accessibility. There are some places in the world that have laws that if your site is not accessible, you can be taken to court for it!

WAI-ARIA

WAI-ARIA is a way to make web content and web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. It especially helps with dynamic content and advanced user interface controls developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript, and related technologies.

---

Advertising

OpenAds/OpenX

Note from Love Sudo - Originally OpenAds, it became OpenX in 2008/2009. Sadly, I have no knowledge about their ability, or willingness, to work with sex workers or their sites.

---

Analytics

Google Analytics 

GA4 offers advanced tracking and analysis of user interactions across websites and apps, providing more comprehensive and detailed insights. It uses an event-based data model, enhanced user privacy features, and AI-driven insights, allowing businesses to better understand user behaviour, track key performance metrics, and make data-driven decisions. GA4 is designed to integrate seamlessly with other Google products and to handle future privacy and technology changes. 

Note from Love Sudo - There are a lot better analytics platforms out there that put a focus on security and privacy and do not share data. They give you control over how data is collected and stored.  

PostHog

I noticed a feature on Posthog which I never knew existed. They call it Replay. It allows sites using Posthog to view exactly what a user is doing on the site.  So, they can watch your cursor moving around the screen as you move your mouse on your desktop or laptop or your thumb on your phone or other touchscreen. They can see if you highlight a word. They can see how long you look at which part of the page. They can keep recordings of all the above. Impressive. But also, very creepy. 

Note from Love Sudo - PostHog does have GDPR EU hosting that stores data in Frankfurt. It’s one of those tools that when used for “Good” can help you ensure your site is user friendly and help you understand if visitors are getting lost, or stuck, but yes, there is something cool and creepy as well!

---

CDN

Note from Love Sudo - Content Delivery Networks are brilliant as they can speed up your website by creating quick access to pictures, and some companies, like Cloudflare, will host your entire website on their CDN meaning that speed is increased substantially!  

BunnyCDN

BunnyCDN is a budget-friendly content delivery network provider that enhances website performance by distributing content globally. 

GStatic Google Static Content

GStatic Google Static Cloud will off-load static content like (JavaScript/Images/CSS) to a different location to reduce bandwidth usage and increase network performance.

---

Compliance 

Note from Love Sudo - There are a lot of interesting tools out there that can be integrated into a website to help ensure that regulations are being met.  

AT Protocol DID Placeholder

DID Placeholder is a cryptographic, strongly consistent, and recoverable DID method created by the AT Protocol by BlueSky, used for secure identity management.

US Privacy User Signal Mechanism

The US Privacy User Signal Mechanism is a lightweight API used to communicate signals represented in the US Privacy String. This mechanism helps ensure compliance with US privacy regulations, which is critical for maintaining user trust and avoiding legal issues in a highly scrutinised industry.

---

Email

Amazon SES

Note from Love Sudo - Amazon SES (Simple Email Service) is Amazon's emailing solution. It basically acts like a mail server and sends emails on behalf of someone.  

AuthSMTP

Note from Love Sudo - AuthSMTP is another email relay. The focus is purely on sending.

FastMail

Note from Love Sudo - FastMail is a fantastic, and affordable, email solution that focuses on privacy, however, be aware their business is based in Australia. That country has some serious issues right now involving encryption.  

SendGrid

Note from Love Sudo - SendGrid can be used as an email relay, but also to handle newsletter campaigns. But as Oz put it, they have stressed they will not work with sex workers.

---

Frameworks and Platforms

ASP.NET

Using ASP.NET can be more expensive due to licensing fees and the need for skilled developers who are proficient in the framework. The framework may be overkill for smaller sites, leading to unnecessary complexity and higher maintenance efforts compared to simpler alternatives like PHP or WordPress. 

Note from Love Sudo - This is a Microsoft product. The .NET framework is free, but you may have licenses you need to pay for if you run IIS.  

Ionic

Ionic Framework is an open-source mobile SDK for developing native and progressive web apps.

Java EE

Note from Love Sudo - This is an enterprise solution for Java and while Minecraft may be built in Java, I’d still recommend avoiding it as Oracle has some shady pricing practices.

Nette Framework

Nette Framework is a tool for creating web applications in PHP.

NextJS/React

Note from Love Sudo - NextJS (built on React) is a common framework for building JavaScript component-based UIs for websites and applications.

Ruby On Rails

Note from Love Sudo - Ruby on Rails can be a complex solution if you’re not used to code.

vBulletin

Note from Love Sudo - vBulletin is more of a forum app than a framework.  

Hosting Providers

Amazon AWS EC2

Note from Love Sudo - AWS EC2 can be an affordable solution for some platforms, but AWS (Amazon Web Services) pricing model can be confusing, and as Oz mentioned they will not allow sex workers to host sites with them.

Azure

Note from Love Sudo - This is Microsoft’s cloud hosting platform.

Hetzner

Hetzner is a hosting provider primarily based in Germany.

OVH

OVH is a hosting provider primarily based in France.

WorldStream

Note from Love Sudo - They offer servers and infrastructure in much of the same as Hetzner and OVH. Though I’ll always recommend reading the T&S of any solution like this as some of them have every explicit “No Adult Content” mentions.  

Monitoring

Sentry

Note from Love Sudo - Sentry is common platform for monitoring performance and errors in code. A bit of an overkill if you’re just doing a simple website for yourself.  

Multiple Feature Tools

Cloudflare

It's not surprising that most escort directories use Cloudflare. As a leading web infrastructure and security company, Cloudflare offers a range of services including content delivery network (CDN) capabilities, DDoS mitigation, Internet security, and distributed domain name server (DNS) services. These features are particularly beneficial for adult industry websites as they enhance performance, accelerate content delivery, protect against DDoS attacks, and ensure user privacy by masking the origin server's IP address, thereby improving both security and user experience.

SSL

GoDaddy

Note from Love Sudo - Avoid GoDaddy like it is diseased. There are a lot better businesses out there to get your domain, SSL certificates, hosting, DNS, and any other service they offer. They have a fantastic advertising department and an absolutely horrid platform and customer service.  

Let's Encrypt

Let’s Encrypt is a free open Certificate Authority. I'm hoping to see this on all the directories. Everyone should be using SSL. Privacy and security are important.

Note from Love Sudo - SSL encrypts traffic between your browser and the server that is serving the web pages to you. In general, you should never add a link to your site or visit a website that does not start with https:// as it can change your ranking and put you, and your visitors, at risk.

Other

Atlassian Cloud

Atlassian Cloud is beneficial for an escort directory site as it improves team collaboration and project management, ensuring high availability and scalability due to its cloud-based nature. The integrated tools support various aspects of development and communication, fostering an efficient workflow. However, the subscription fees can be high, making it costly for budget-conscious projects. Additionally, the range of features might be overwhelming and unnecessary for smaller sites, potentially leading to a steep learning curve and underutilisation of services.

Note from Love Sudo - There are a lot of tools out there that can help with project management, issue tracking, task management, and documentation. Atlassian’s global headquarters are in Australia.

DNSSEC

Note from Love Sudo - To try and put this into remarkably simple terms, DNS is used to take a domain like sexworkersear.ch and point anyone who requests it to the correct IP address for the server. The problem is DNS was designed over 30 years ago and that means that it has some vectors of attack that can allow someone to spoof your DNS records so it will point your domain to another IP address which, in most cases, is a malicious version of your site. There is some setup DNSSEC, but it is possible to investigate this with certain providers.

Google No Translate

Note from Love Sudo - There was once a time where you could tell Google to not try and translate your page by using a meta tag. Those dates are over.

RSS

I love RSS. If I could wave a magic wand, I'd eradicate all the escort directories and all sex worker profiles from social media platforms, and give every sex worker on the planet their own personal website with a blog page set up for RSS. Then clients could use search engines instead of directories to find sex workers and use RSS feeds instead of social media to see blog posts instead of tweets. 

Note from Love Sudo - I’m so with Oz in this. RSS is incredible and I wish more people did this. It seems to be a dying trend and I really wish it wasn’t.

SWFObject

Note from Love Sudo - I sure hope this is not being used on a website. Adobe Flash was horrid for security issues and should not be served to any visitors on a website. It’s not even supported by Adobe anymore.  

tawk.to

Note from Love Sudo - While tawk.to is free, read very carefully their T&S and Privacy Policy. And make sure you read about why it’s free.

Image courtesy of Blazoner.

Cash is king in the sex work business, especially for in person providers.

An envelope with my work name written on it containing my exact fee handed to me at the beginning of the session without me having to ask, is always very welcome.

But there are times when I'd like to be able to receive funds electronically and doing so can be a bit of a mine-field.

I hope the following ideas can be of use in enabling sex workers to engage in e-commerce in a way that's safe and profitable.

Two good reasons why a sex worker may choose to charge via electronic payments rather than cash are for deposits and for content sales.

Deposits

The idea of a deposit is to minimise the risk of setting up an appointment with a prospective client and then having them not show up.

The timewaster is the bane of every sex worker's existence. They will pretend they want to meet and even go so far as agreeing to a day, time and location, just to trick you into entertaining them for free via calls, txt, whatsapp messages, exchanging pictures or whatever variety of pointless communication they can extract from you without paying. They have zero intention of meeting and paying.

Asking for a deposit very early on when contacted by a new client is a highly effective antidote to timewasters.

The problem is, some genuine clients will also look elsewhere rather than pay the deposit.

They might be concerned that you will keep the deposit and ghost them.

This is a legitimate concern. Deposit scams are very common. Especially on directories where the advertised sex worker has just one unverified ad and that's their entire web presence.

A sex worker who has their own website, eg every independent provider indexed in search results here on Sex Worker Search,  is very unlikely to be a deposit scammer.

Another possible deterrent to paying deposits is the clients need for discretion. Many clients are married or have a partner and do not want anything to appear on their bank statement that could raise suspicion.

Whether or not to charge deposits is up to the individual. It's a controversial topic. As you can see from the history of the use of the word "Deposit" in titles of posts on the sexworker subreddit.

Selling Content

There is massive demand for sexually explicit content produced by independent sex workers.

Porn is a multi billion dollar industry. Onlyfans alone had revenue worth $2.5 billion USD in 2022.

The combined revenue of the top 10 content sales sites including the likes of ManyVids, Patreon, Clips4Sale, FanCentro, AVN Stars and JustForFans is in the tens of billions.

And yet, for all those tens of billions of dollars, the industry is remarkably difficult to actually make any money in for individual, independent performers.

Each of the sites listed above take commissions of between 20% and 60% of sales.

OnlyFans  On their terms it says  they take a commission of 20%.

ManyVids: I couldn't find anything on the Manyvids website saying how much their commission is. Googling it didn't bring up an exact figure either as far as I could see. I guess it's a secret? Chat GPT says it's between 20 and 40%

Clips4Sale:  Says you can earn 60% of total clip sales and 80% of your customer tips on their Start Earning page.

FanCentro:  takes 25%. This information is easy to find on their FAQ.

JustForFans: takes a 30% commission according to this.

AdmireMe.VIP: according to their FAQ they take 20%

IsMyGirl:  It says here they take 20%

JustForFans: According to this site they take 20%. I couldn't find this information on the Justforfans site.

Fancentro: This article says they take 20%. Their website doesn't seem to say.

Those commissions listed above are exorbitant. Especially considering how little they actually do for content creators. Most of them don't disclose their commission on their own site as if they are ashamed of how badly they're ripping off sex workers.

None of the sites above generate much, if any, traffic  to the accounts of individual content creators. The only way to actually sell anything on any of these platforms is if you can attract paying customers by yourself from somewhere off platform. eg if you already have a massive social media following.

How to Get Paid

Ideally, it would be great if clients could simply pay deposits and our fees for content sales directly to each independent provider without any third party taking a commission.

Ways to receive payments online include credit card payment portals on our own personal websites, bank transfers, cryptocurrency, gift cards and wishlist sites.

Credit Card Payment Portal

Being able to simply take Visa and Mastercard payments directly on our own personal websites would be perfect.

Actually finding a payment portal provider who is willing to work with in person providers, is seemingly impossible.

If you are a content creator who does not meet clients in person, you might be able to get one of the payment providers to work with you but it will probably be one that specialises in "high risk" industries. Anything to do with porn or sex work is considered to be high risk for chargebacks. ie someone will pay for a video clip, watch it and then report it as an unauthorised transaction to their bank and get a refund.

This is the reason given why payment providers charge much higher fees and commissions to work with anyone in our industry.

For anything non porn related, the average total payment processing fees for Visa and Mastercard transactions typically range from around 1.5% to 3.5% of the transaction amount.

For anything that is porn related the fees are more likely to be between 5% to 15% or more of the transaction amount.

Someone on reddit recommended authorize.net. I've just sent them a message on twitter and I'll update here if they say they are sex work friendly.

Bank Transfers

Another payment method that should be ideal is simply logging into your internet banking as a client and sending money to a sex worker.

One problem is, if it's a personal account, the client is likely to need your real name.

Also, if your bank gets the idea that you're a sex worker, even if you work in a country where sex work is perfectly legal, they can close your account.

I'm based in UK so sex work is legal here. I'm registered as a sole trader. I pay tax. I have a business bank account in my work name with Tide. Even then it would only take one client to ignore my instructions and put something sex work related in the description like "porn video clip" and I could have my account closed.

Cryptocurrency

Receiving payments via cryptocurrency like Bitcoin has the advantage of anonymity. You don't need to give your client your real name. Just a crypto address which is a long string of alphanumeric characters.

The main drawback is that very few clients have a crypto wallet and setting one up and using it is usually viewed as complicated beyond the ability of most clients to achieve.

It's not really that difficult.

Here are step by step instructions for the wallet and exchange I use. It's called OkX.

Visit the OKX Website: Open your web browser and navigate to the official OKX website.

Click on "Sign Up": On the homepage, locate and click on the "Sign Up" button. This will typically be located in the top-right corner of the page.

Fill Out the Registration Form: You'll be directed to the registration page where you'll need to fill out the registration form. Provide the required information, including your email address, password, and any other details requested by OKX.

Verify Email: After filling out the registration form, OKX will send a verification email to the email address you provided during registration. Check your email inbox for this verification email and click on the verification link to verify your email address.

Complete Verification Process: Depending on OKX's requirements, you may need to complete additional verification steps to fully verify your account. This may include providing identity verification documents such as a passport or driver's license and proof of address.

Log In to Your Account: Once your account is verified, log in to your OKX account using the email address and password you provided during registration.

Navigate to Wallet: After logging in, navigate to the wallet section of your OKX account. This is where you can manage your cryptocurrencies and access your OKX wallet.

Set Up Wallet: If you haven't already set up a wallet, you'll be prompted to do so. Follow the on-screen instructions to set up your OKX wallet. This typically involves generating a wallet address for each cryptocurrency supported by OKX.

Secure Your Account: It's important to take steps to secure your OKX account and wallet. This may include enabling two-factor authentication (2FA), setting up strong passwords, and following best practices for online security.

Deposit Funds: Once your wallet is set up, you can deposit funds into your OKX account to start trading. Navigate to the deposit section of your account and follow the instructions to deposit funds via bank transfer, credit/debit card, or cryptocurrency transfer from another wallet.

Start Trading: With funds deposited into your OKX account, you can start trading cryptocurrencies on the OKX exchange. Navigate to the trading section of your account to buy, sell, or trade cryptocurrencies.

Keep Your Information Updated: Make sure to keep your account information up to date, including your contact information and security settings, to ensure the security of your OKX account and wallet.

Their customer service is very good. I needed help to get set up. Again to buy Bitcoin to pay for ads. and again to sell Bitcoin clients sent me and transfer the fiat currency into my bank account. Each time I went on the Okx live chat and they walked me through the process.

Using crypto is a lot more challenging than using a credit card or sending a bank transfer but it is anonymous and you're unlikely to face any discrimination around being a sex worker.

Gift Cards

I often get clients to send me a gift card as a deposit if they don't want to do a bank transfer and have my work name on their bank statement and they feel that crypto is too complicated. John Lewis is a good one here in London, UK, as it can be used for anything in the department store or at any Waitrose supermarket. Selfridges is ok. They're a bit slow. Often takes until the next business day to come through. Amazon often doesn't come through. Clients often find their payments to Amazon for gift cards don't work. Either blocked by Amazon or by their bank.

Paxum and CCbill

I've seen these two recommended on a few different sites for example here and here. I will contact both and update this blog post when I hear back.

Venmo

Venmo isn't available here in the UK but I understand some sex workers use it in USA. Venmo is anti sex work and will blacklist you if they find out you're a sex worker.

Cashapp

Cashapp is available in USA and UK but last year they suddenly decided to limit all UK users to £100 worth of transactions per month rendering it almost completely useless here. Like Venmo, they're anti sex work and will ban you if they find out you're a sex worker.

Paypal

Don't ever use Paypal. They are notorious for being extremely anti-sex work. If they get any idea you're a sex worker, they will ban you and steal any money left in your account. If anyone asks them for a refund, they will always side with the buyer over the seller no matter what so they are the worst for chargebacks.

Wishlists

WishTender and Throne are platforms where clients can purchase gifts listed on the wishlists of sex workers.

Wishtender is supposed to allow clients to send gifts to sex workers and then sex workers can have the gifts sent to their address or they can withdraw the value to their bank account via Stripe.

Unfortunately Stripe dumped Wishtender in February and they still haven't managed to get their payment system working again. Initially they said they had another payment processor and it would be all up and running again in a few weeks but that was months ago and they still can't process payouts.

Throne states that they are privacy oriented and you can list items on your wishlist from any online store. It looks like you can withdraw funds if you have a cash balance on Throne.

Throne also uses Stripe but for now their payment system still seems to work.

SpankPay

This seemed like a really promising idea. It was intended to be an adult-industry-friendly payment solution that would enable adult entertainers and merchants to accept cryptocurrency for their services Unfortunately they had to shut down their operation last year when they lost their payment processor.

Petition to Ensure Sex Workers are Not Excluded From Banking Services in UK

I did my best to promote this petition at the time. I posted about it on the Sexworkers and Sexworkersonly subreddits where I'm a moderator. I posted on twitter and messaged all my contacts asking them to share tweets linking to the petition. I broadcast it to my whatsapp contacts and shared it as my whatsapp status and asked others to do the same. 1 month before the petition ended it didn't look like we would get the requisite 10,000 signatures needed to get a response from the UK government. Then thanks to a final push on reddit, we did reach to 10k signatures. We got the government to respond. All they had to say was "sex work is not illegal in UK so banks cannot discriminate against sex workers and close their accounts for no other reason than the legal industry in which they are employed. The government completely failed to make a statement to this effect.

Their response doesn't even mention the word 'Sex Worker' but does make a point of bringing up sex trafficking and modern slavery. Lists a few wishy washy platitudes about policies that already exist in general terms, for everyone, presumably including sex workers but without mentioning us specifically despite that being the entire point of the petition. Disappointed.

Other Campaigns Against Financial Discrimination

The Free Speech Coalition (FSC) does a lot of excellent work campaigning, mostly in USA, but also internationally, for sex worker rights including our right to use financial services.

More Information

Sex Worker Helpful has an article on payment options. It's from 2018 so double check what's there against more up to date sources but it's a great article.

I recommend reading this article shared on the National Ugly Mugs website about the impacts of financial discrimination against sex workers.

A shadow ban is Twitter's method of reducing an account's visibility without fully suspending it.

It's a sneaky and cowardly way to censor content that advertisers might disapprove of without outright banning accounts in order to keep numbers of active users inflated and use these figures to sell ad space.

When subjected to a shadow ban, tweets and replies from the affected account become less prominent in users' feeds.

Apparently this happens when Twitter suspects an account of being automated or when the user breaches the platform's Terms of Service.

Exactly how this happens is a mystery. There's never any warning or explanation and no recourse to dispute.

How shadowbans are applied is inconsistent. Some accounts seem to post tweets that blatantly breach terms of service for years with zero repercussions. Other entirely innocuous looking accounts get shadowbanned seemingly at random.

Note: I'm never going to refer to Twitter as 'X'. That's just not good branding to have your company named something that's always going to look and sound as awkward as 'X' in a sentence.

Twitter used to deny the existence of shadowbans despite proof that this was happening. Eventually they did admit that it is their policy to shadowban sex workers.

How to check for a shadow ban on Twitter

The only tool I know of that can detect shadowbans on twitter is Yuzurisa.

Types of shadow ban

Search Suggestion Ban

This seems to be the most common type of shadowban whereby your account is omitted from search suggestions and people's search results if they don't follow you or when accessed while logged out. Engagement from existing followers may remain steady as your tweets continue to appear in their feeds. You will notice a decline in new follower acquisition.

Search Bans

These result in the complete concealment of your tweets from search results, irrespective of the quality filter settings. This includes the suppression of hashtags. Consequently, there's a notable decrease in both follower engagement and the acquisition of new followers.

Ghost Ban

This is commonly known as a traditional shadowban or thread banning. It combines a search ban with the complete removal of reply tweets from the affected user in threads. While everything appears normal to the affected user, many others are unable to view their reply tweets. This ban is typically imposed due to behaviours such as excessive tweeting or following. This type of ban appears to be temporary for active accounts.

Reply Deboosting

When Twitter's algorithms detect potential harmful behaviour from an account, it conceals their replies behind a barrier that's only revealed when users click "Show more replies." This action is personalized, meaning tweets from accounts you follow are not hidden. Therefore, we employ an impartial reference account devoid of followers to ascertain if tweets within a thread can be accessed without clicking "Show more replies." Occasionally, Twitter categorizes accounts as offensive, leading to their replies being concealed behind a secondary barrier within the "Show more replies" section.

What to do if you're shadowbanned

Should I pay for twitter blue?

Don't bother paying for twitter blue. Doing so will not remove a shadowban. Only pay for it if you need it for some reason. I use it on my Oz account so I can send messages to people who don't follow me. I use this as a reddit moderator to verify people before approving them for the sexworkersonly subreddit.

Interact with non SW accounts

I've seen this suggested. The idea is that twitter has an algorithm that rates your account for tie strength. ie if you only interact with other SWs, that could increase the chances of shadowbans. It's worth a try but be careful who you interact with and how. If they always ignore you, or worse, they block you or report you, that's not going to work in your favour.

Post text only tweets as well as images

It's likely that if all your tweets are images, especially images which an algorithm detects as nudity or likely to be sexual in nature, that's going to increase the chances of a shadowban.

Some people make a habit of posting multiple innocent text only tweets in between posting images.

You can also try posting images that aren't in any way alluring or enticing in between posting something more designed to appeal to clients.

Comment on other people's tweets

This is good self promotion anyway since it means their followers are more likely to see your comments. It's also possible that if you never comment on anything and never like or retweet anyone, using twitter for the sole purpose of posting pics of yourself, that's going to look more like a bot account to their algorithm.

Don't do anything automated

Using third party apps and sites to post for you or to follow or unfollow is easily detected. Best not to.

Be wary of using engagement groups

Also easily detected and if it looks like you're trying to game their system, that's not going to look good. Maybe ok if the group is located somewhere outside twitter eg reddit or discord.

Don't post links

Some internal code was released a few years ago showing how twitter treats links in tweets. It seems that unless you have a huge following and massive engagement, all links you post will be treated as spam and result in that tweet being hidden in feeds and search.

Don't use hashtags

As above. Using multiple hashtags in a tweet is treated as spam.

Links in Bio

I recommend using linktree, a link aggregator. You can out your links to your website, insta, reddit, email etc on your linktree and then put the linktree link in your twitter bio. If you put your website link, or especially a link to a directory ad or content sales site, directly into your bio, that's a great way to get shadowbanned.

Bots

When you're shadowbanned, the only new followers you'll get are people who find the link to your twitter somewhere else, eg on your website. Also, bots. You'll get very generic looking followers with attractive profile pics, or no profile pic at all, they have made up sounding names, they'll be following 4 or 5 thousand  accounts but have less than 100 followers of their own. These accounts may look like sex workers but will never have a link to a personal site or a linktree in their bio. If there's any link in their bio at all, it will be to some webcam site you've never heard of. Just block them. If you do follow them, you'll immediately get a message trying to scam you.

Change your profile picture and banner

It's very unlikely any human twitter employee will ever look at your profile but their algorithm does know how much skin you're showing. Less skin means less chances of shadowbans. It also means your profile is less appealing to clients. If you can't show anything, what's the point? As I said, it's all wildly inconsistent. You might show an ankle and get a shadowban so you never grow past a few hundreds of followers. Someone else shows hardcore porn and has millions of followers.

Delete all your tweets, retweets, likes, bio and profile pic

I've done this a few times using the Social Erase plugin for chrome. I know I said not to do anything automated but if you're already shadowbanned and it doesn't drop off after a few weeks, you may as well just wipe your account clean, log out, stay off twitter for a week or two, then log back in and see if the shadowban is gone.

Deactivate your twitter temporarily

You'll enjoy the digital detox. You can deactivate your twitter for up to 30 days. Then it gets deleted and your account is gone for good. If deleting all your tweet setc doesn't work, try deactivating, wait a few weeks, then activate it again.

So why bother using twitter at all?

Clients do look at whether you're active on social media or not as an indicator that you're genuine, enthusiastic and invested in your reputation. Having links to socials on your website and putting a certain amount of effort into our social media presence is at this stage something most of us do feel the need to tolerate. It does sting knowing that the work we put into sharing content on twitter converts directly into a dollar value for Elon while his company is openly anti sex work. Hypocrites. I hope this won't always be the case. Honestly, I'd be quite happy if twitter decided tomorrow to outright ban all sex workers. Without us all the clients would leave too thus creating a giant gap in the market which could easily be filled by some other platform that is actually pro sex work.

Work on your own Blog instead

Don't worry about Elon. I'm sure he'll manage without us. Take the time and effort you put into tweets and spend it on your own website. Clients can search for the word "blog" here on Sex Worker Search et voila, just like a twitter feed only instead of supporting a giant, evil, megalomaniac corporation, you're supporting independent providers.

More Information

Twitter told a straight up lie in saying that they do not shadowban.

This reddit post is from 2021 and a lot of the information seems to be outdated now but it's still worth a look.

Revolting Prostitutes is a thought-provoking book that tackles the complex subject of sex work with an impressive blend of scholarship and activism. Written by Juno Mac and Molly Smith, this book offers a fresh perspective on the issues surrounding sex work, challenging societal norms and advocating for the rights and dignity of sex workers.

One of the most commendable aspects of "Revolting Prostitutes" is its unapologetic commitment to centering the voices and experiences of sex workers themselves. The authors give agency to individuals often marginalized and stigmatized, allowing their stories and perspectives to shape the narrative. This approach humanizes sex workers and underscores the importance of listening to their lived experiences.

The book is meticulously researched, drawing from a wide range of academic sources, policy documents, and interviews with sex workers. It provides a comprehensive overview of the legal, social, and economic aspects of sex work, making it an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to understand the nuances of this multifaceted issue.

Furthermore, "Revolting Prostitutes" challenges prevailing moralistic and paternalistic attitudes towards sex work, advocating for the decriminalization of sex work as a means to empower sex workers, improve their working conditions, and reduce the harm they face. The authors make a compelling case for the need to prioritize harm reduction and labour rights over criminalization.

The writing style is engaging and accessible. Anyone can learn from this whether they be academics, activists, policymakers, or the general public.

The book succeeds in presenting complex ideas in a clear and understandable manner, fostering greater public awareness and dialogue on this important topic.

In conclusion, "Revolting Prostitutes" is an enlightening work that challenges societal norms and misconceptions about sex work. By giving a voice to sex workers, it provides a valuable perspective on issues that deserves thoughtful consideration. This book is an essential read for sex workers, clients and anyone interested in social justice, human rights, and the empowerment of marginalized communities.

As of the last few weeks google has started censoring sex worker websites from some search results.

Starting from November 1st it appears google started doing something to suppress search results that point to sex work related websites.

Something unrelated to whether people have safe mode on, or off.

The first I heard about this was on reddit.

Over the following few days multiple people posted   about   this   censorship.

So I went to twitter. "X" whatever. Searched for "google",  filtered by posts from people I follow and sorted by new then scrolled back to November 1st to see what people were saying at the time when this started happening.

If you're following a lot of sex workers on twitter, I recommend repeating the steps above to get a sense of how we feel about the possibility that google could, on a whim, flush all the hard work we've ever done on SEO and self promotion down the toilet.

If clients can't find us, we don't work. Our success, or failure, in our efforts to make a living as sex workers depends on our visibility in search results. Either via clients finding our own personal websites or finding directories and then finding our listings on those directories. If they can't do this, what are we supposed to do?

People are asking about this on google's help page, so far with no solution.

A lot of people are asking about this on the google support reddit megapost for November too.

It's interesting that something as news-worthy as the world's leading search engine suddenly deciding to pretend sex workers don't exist hasn't rated any mention whatsoever in mainstream news.

The solution for those experiencing this is to log into your google account, go to Settings > more settings > privacy and safety > personal results off.

But how many clients will figure that out?

Not everyone is seeing the censored search results so it may be that google is rolling out this new "feature" to only a selected percentage of their users initially with a view to making this universal after a trial phase.

I recommend using Duckduckgo instead of google. It's a privacy oriented search engine that doesn't track it's users and does not censor search results.

And of course, if you're searching for sex workers, that is what Sex Worker Search is for.

I think it's fair to say that without sex workers, and the adult industry, there would be no internet as we know it.

It's pure hypocrisy that giant corporations like google that make hundreds of billions of dollars per year thanks to an internet the adult industry to a great extent built for them, then censor us.

 

Image courtesy of wikimedia.

Sexworkersear.ch now has 2300 web sites indexed.

Each of those 2300 sites is now searchable on the sex worker search engine and will appear in search results with a similar title, tagline and meta description to search results displayed by other search engines like Google and Bing.

The titles are clickable links that will open a new tab taking you to a website belonging to an independent sex worker.

Each site has location tags for city and country so if you search for "London", for example, you'll see all 264 of the sex workers indexed so far with London as a location tag or with London in the name, title, tagline or meta description.

In the interests of transparency, the algorithm I'm using for my search engine is weighted such that each mention of the term you search for is worth 1 point unless it's a location tag. Then the tag is worth 300 points and additional mentions are 1 point each. Premium adds 2000 points and featured adds 1000 points.

I sorted all the sites alphabetically by name just out of curiosity to see what the most popular sex worker name indexed so far is.

And the winner is ....

(*drumroll*)

Chloe!

The name Chloe appears 22 times in the names of the sites indexed so far.

Ava, for a close run second place, appears 21 times.

Other names appearing more than 10 times include Anna, Ashley, Audrey, Emma, Eva, Isabel, Ivy, Lilly, Mia, Natalie, Nicole, Olivia, Scarlett, Sofia, Sophia and Victoria.

There were also 8 Sophies so if you count Sofia, Sophie and Sophia as almost the same name, they combine to overtake Chloe.

Anyway, I'm awarding victory to Chloe.

I think Chloe is an excellent sex worker name. It has origins tracing back to the Greek name Khlóe, signifying 'young green shoot' of a plant, construed to symbolize 'blooming'.

In ancient Greece, Khloe was a nickname for the mythical Demeter, the deity associated with fertility, harvest, and the cyclical seasons.

That's the original Khlóe in the featured image doing the Draw Me Like One of Your French Girls pose for an ancient Greek escort website. Either that or she just took an industrial strength antihistamine.

I asked Google Bard what I thinks about decriminalisation of sex work.

Here's it's response =

Those who argue against criminalisation point out that sex work is a form of work, and that workers should have the same rights and protections as other workers. They also argue that criminalisation does not actually stop sex work, but instead drives it underground, where it is more dangerous for workers.

There is a growing body of evidence that supports the argument that decriminalisation is the best way to protect sex workers. For example, a study by the World Health Organization found that countries with decriminalised sex work had lower rates of HIV infection among sex workers than countries where sex work was criminalised.

Another study, by the International Labour Organization, found that decriminalisation was associated with improved working conditions for sex workers, including increased access to health care and social services.

Of course, there are still risks associated with sex work, even in a decriminalised setting. However, these risks can be mitigated through education, outreach, and regulation.

Overall, the evidence suggests that decriminalisation is the best way to protect sex workers and their rights. It is a complex issue, but one that deserves serious consideration.

Here are some specific reasons why sex work should be decriminalised:

Decriminalisation would protect sex workers from violence and exploitation. When sex work is criminalized, sex workers are less likely to report violence or exploitation to the police, for fear of being arrested themselves. This leaves them vulnerable to abuse from clients, pimps, and other criminals. decriminalisation would allow sex workers to report crimes without fear of reprisal, and would make it easier for law enforcement to investigate and prosecute those who commit violence against sex workers.

Decriminalisation would improve the health and safety of sex workers. When sex work is criminalized, sex workers are less likely to have access to health care and other services. They are also more likely to engage in risky sexual practices, such as unprotected sex, in order to avoid arrest. decriminalisation would allow sex workers to access health care and other services without fear of arrest, and would help to reduce the risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

Decriminalisation would reduce stigma and discrimination against sex workers. When sex work is criminalized, it reinforces the stigma and discrimination that sex workers already face. This can make it difficult for sex workers to access housing, employment, and other essential services. decriminalisation would help to reduce stigma and discrimination against sex workers, and would make it easier for them to live their lives with dignity and respect.

Of course, there are still some who oppose the decriminalisation of sex work. However, the evidence suggests that decriminalisation is the best way to protect sex workers and their rights. It is a complex issue, but one that deserves serious consideration.

Yes!

Almost all sex worker organizations around the world favour the decriminalization of sex work, and have that goal as a primary objective.

Here is a list of sex worker organizations.

For example Global Network of Sex Work Projects, English Collective of Prostitutes and SWARM Collective.

One thing Chat GPT didn't mention was the reasons why legalisation and the so called Nordic Model are inferior to full decriminalisation.

So I asked Bing AI to clarify =

According to Human Rights Watch, full decriminalisation is a more effective approach to protecting sex workers’ rights than the Nordic model because research shows that it is more effective in reducing violence and exploitation against sex workers¹. Decriminalisation of sex work means that sex workers are no longer breaking the law by carrying out sex work. They are not forced to live outside the law and there is better scope for their human rights to be protected². If sex work is legalised, it means that the state makes very specific laws and policies that formally regulate sex work².

That's also pretty good. Simplistic but it has the right idea.

Last but not least, I asked Chat GPT what it thinks about discrimination against sex workers on social media.

Here's it's take =

Discrimination against sex workers on social media is a distressing issue that has garnered significant attention in recent years. Sex workers face stigmatization and prejudice both online and offline, and social media platforms have become an additional battleground where this discrimination often plays out.

One of the key challenges faced by sex workers on social media is the prevalence of policies that explicitly or implicitly target and censor their content. Major platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have implemented strict community guidelines that prohibit the promotion of sexual services, adult content, or anything that may be deemed "sexually explicit." While these policies are intended to prevent exploitation and protect users, they often result in the silencing and exclusion of sex workers from these platforms.

The enforcement of these policies is often inconsistent and arbitrary, with sex workers experiencing disproportionately harsh penalties and content removals compared to other users. Their accounts may be suspended or permanently banned, leading to the loss of their online presence, connections, and income streams. Moreover, these policies drive sex workers to adopt alternative platforms that may have fewer user protections or pose other risks.

Another form of discrimination against sex workers on social media manifests in the negative portrayal and harmful stereotypes perpetuated by users and media outlets. Sex workers are frequently subjected to derogatory comments, harassment, and cyberbullying. They may face personal attacks, threats, and doxing, which can have severe emotional and psychological consequences. Moreover, the public shaming and dehumanization of sex workers perpetuate societal biases and hinder efforts to improve their safety, health, and overall well-being.

Furthermore, algorithms used by social media platforms can amplify existing biases and further marginalize sex workers. These algorithms are designed to prioritize content based on user engagement, often favouring posts that generate more likes, shares, or comments. However, this can lead to a situation where positive and supportive content related to sex work is suppressed, while negative and judgmental content gains more visibility. Consequently, sex workers find it challenging to share their experiences, advocate for their rights, and build supportive communities online.

Addressing discrimination against sex workers on social media requires a multi-faceted approach. It starts with revisiting platform policies and guidelines to ensure they do not disproportionately target sex workers. Platforms should actively engage with sex worker-led organizations and advocacy groups to develop more inclusive and fair policies that consider the diverse experiences and needs of this community.

Education and awareness campaigns are also essential in combating stigma and challenging harmful stereotypes. These efforts should emphasize the human rights and labour rights of sex workers, dispel misconceptions, and encourage empathy and understanding.

Social media platforms must invest in training their content moderators to approach sex work-related content with sensitivity and fairness. They should adopt transparent and accessible appeals processes to rectify content removal mistakes or unfair account suspensions.

Lastly, users themselves need to actively participate in creating a more inclusive and supportive online environment. This involves confronting their own biases, challenging harmful narratives, and standing up against harassment and discrimination targeting sex workers.

By working collectively, we can strive for a more equitable and just digital space that respects the rights and dignity of all individuals, including sex workers.

High five Chat GPT!

For more information re discrimination against sex workers on social media, I recommend reading The ‘Mommy Goddess’ and the Mass Reporting of Sex Workers on Instagram by Olivia Snow for Jezebel.

The Free Speech Coalition does a lot of excellent work protecting the rights and freedoms of adult industry professionals.

I own three twitter accounts and one instagram and they're all shadowbanned.

For example my Sex Worker Search Twitter account, is utterly useless as per the Shadowban test.

Only my own followers can find my accounts and my tweets. Nothing I've posted appears in search or under location tags. Even typing my usernames into the search field doesn't show my accounts. This is all pretty normal for sex workers.

I have resorted in the past to using this chrome plugin to delete all my posts, retweets and likes, then deleted my profile pic, background, bio and everything else leaving a pristine, blank profile with nothing there. The idea is to logout of twitter and not login again for a month or so. I've done this a few times and it has temporarily gotten rid of shadowbans but I just keep getting shadowbanned again and again.

I used to have a twitter account with over 100,000 followers and got banned with no warning, no explanation and no access to a human to consider an appeal.

Fuck social media. The only reason I don't just delete them all is because having the little social media icons on my website leading to accounts where I post reasonably regularly is expected and for some clients is part of the reason they choose to meet me.

Maybe if sex work gets decriminalised in the USA the situation with social media might improve. We'd be less likely to get outright banned then. I suspect shadowbans would still happen since there's still the fact that the companies spending money on ad space don't want their ads to appear next to sex workers.

I hate the idea of compulsory age gating but it seems that's the way things are headed. One side effect could be that these social media giants could know which of their users are adults who want to see adult content and then there would be no need for shadowbans. There's still no way I'm giving my ID documents to them and just hoping they don't sell them to advertisers or hand them over to the feds.

I think the best social media is a blog page on your own personal website and then if people want to experience that like a twitter or instagram feed, they can add your blog and the blogs of all the sex workers they want to follow to a privacy oriented open source rss feed reader so they can view a list of the headlines of all the new blog posts of all the sex workers they like as they are posted with no bans, no shadowbans and complete control of the content in the hands of the sex workers.

On my to do list is to go through all the independent sex worker sites currently indexed here on Sex Worker Search and tag each site that has a blog page with the word "blog" so that people can type in search terms to find sex worker blogs to add to their RSS feeds.

In doing so I'm happy to give the middle finger to Elon Musk and his ilk. I doubt the hegemon of twitter will ever man up and make a clear cut decision regarding who's welcome and who isn't. Why cant twitter just be transparent about their own terms? Why can't they enforce consistently? What's the point of sneaky shadowbanning and banning with no warning, no explanation and no recourse for the consideration of human customer service?

Also, can we just fire all the politicians and replace them with Chat GPT, Bing AI and Google Bard? I for one welcome our new machine overlords.