The Skip The Games Privacy Guide I Give My Friends

The Principle: One Identity, Kept Separate

Almost every privacy problem I've seen started with overlap. The same phone number used for your bank and your dating life. The same profile photo on WhatsApp that's on your LinkedIn. The same email for your work calendar and your classifieds account. Each overlap is a thread somebody can pull.

So the goal is simple: build a small, separate identity for this part of your life and keep it from touching the rest. You don't need special software or a computer science degree. You need about twenty minutes and a little discipline.

Step One: A Second Phone Number

This is the single highest-value thing you can do. A second-line app gives you a working number for calls and texts that isn't tied to your main SIM. Google Voice, Hushed, and similar apps all work; some are free, some cost a few dollars a month. Use it for every classifieds conversation and nothing else.

The benefit isn't just privacy, it's control. If a conversation goes sideways, or you get one of those scam threat texts, you can retire the number and grab a new one in a minute. Your real number, the one your mother and your dentist have, never enters the picture.

Step Two: Clean Up Your Messaging Apps

People forget that messaging apps leak information by default. If you move a conversation to WhatsApp or Telegram using your main number, the other person often sees your profile photo, your display name, and sometimes your "about" line. I've seen someone's full name and the logo of his employer show up that way. Not great.

• Set your profile photo visibility to "My contacts" only.
• Use a first name or initial as your display name, not your full name.
• Turn off "last seen" and read receipts if you don't want them.
• On Telegram, hide your phone number from everyone in privacy settings.
• Better still, register these apps on your second number rather than your main one.

Step Three: A Dedicated Email

Create a fresh email address you use only for classifieds and related sign-ups. Don't use your name in it. Don't forward it to your main inbox, because that's how a notification ends up on your work laptop at the worst possible moment. Check it on its own, when you choose to.

Step Four: Your Browser and Your Devices

Shared devices are where most accidental exposure happens. Not hackers, just a partner borrowing your iPad or a kid picking up your phone. Private browsing windows don't save history or keep you logged in after you close them, which is exactly what you want here. Close the window when you're done, every time.

If you share a computer, use a separate browser profile with its own password. Turn off notifications from any app related to dating on your lock screen. And be thoughtful about photo backups: anything you save to your camera roll can sync to a family cloud album you forgot was shared.

Step Five: Think About Money Trails

Card statements, Venmo feeds and Cash App histories are some of the most common ways private things become public. Venmo in particular defaults to showing transactions publicly unless you change it. If you've never checked yours, go look today; you might be surprised what strangers can see.

Here's what's actually exposed. Venmo's own help pages say that when a payment is set to Public or Friends, the names of the sender and recipient, the payment note and the timestamp are shared. Consumer Reports points out that nearly every digital wallet makes you switch to private manually. Fixing it takes a minute:

1. In the Venmo app, go to the Me tab and tap the Settings gear.
2. Tap Privacy and set your default to Private.
3. In the same menu, use the Past Transactions option to change your history to private as well. New settings don't automatically cover old payments.

This is also one more reason no reputable provider asks for an online deposit. Real arrangements happen in person, and anyone asking you to pay through an app before meeting is a scam risk as well as a privacy risk.

For Providers: The Stakes Are Higher

Clients worry about embarrassment. Providers worry about stalking. The habits above matter twice as much on your side. Strip location data from every photo before you upload it (most phones let you turn off location tagging in the camera settings). Never shoot ad photos in your own home with recognisable windows, art or views. Keep your working name completely separate from any social media that uses your real one.

Stripping location from photos on an iPhone

Apple's Personal Safety guide spells out three ways to keep location data out of your pictures, and they're worth knowing even if you're a client:

• Stop it at the source: Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Location Services, then Camera, and choose Never. New photos won't record where they were taken.
• Remove it from one photo: open the photo in Photos, tap the More button, tap Adjust Location, then No Location.
• Leave it out when sharing: in the Share Sheet, tap Options, turn off Location, and tap Done before sending.

Android camera apps have their own location-tag setting, usually in the camera's settings menu. Whatever phone you use, check before you upload.

We cover this in much more depth, along with screening and advertising safely, in our guide for providers.

What We Do on Our End

On Skip The Games, accounts are free and don't need a credit card, which means there's no billing descriptor sitting on your statement. We never publish your email. I'd still encourage you to follow every step here, because good privacy shouldn't depend on trusting any single website, including ours.

If Something Has Already Leaked

Don't panic and don't negotiate with anyone threatening you. Search your name and number to see what's out there. Most people-search sites have an opt-out form; use it. Change passwords on any account that might be involved and switch on two-factor login. If someone is threatening to expose you for money, our extortion guide walks you through it step by step.

Skip The Games Privacy and People-Search Sites

People-search sites are the part of this most people never think about, and they're where a lot of trouble starts. They're run by data brokers, companies that collect and stitch together public records and other data sources, then sell profiles linking your phone number to your name, address and relatives. It's the same kind of lookup scammers screenshot when they want a threat to feel personal.

The tedious part is that each site needs its own opt-out request, and listings can reappear later. A sensible routine:

1. Search your main number, your second number and your name in quotes, with your city.
2. For every people-search result, find the site's opt-out or "do not sell" page and submit a removal.
3. Keep a simple list of where you've opted out and repeat the search every few months.

If you live in California, there's now a much easier route. Under the state's Delete Act, the California Privacy Protection Agency runs a free tool called DROP (the Delete Request and Opt-out Platform). Since January 1, 2026, residents have been able to send one deletion request to every registered data broker at once, and brokers were required to start processing those requests on August 1, 2026. It doesn't cover everything, but it beats filling in dozens of forms.

Questions People Ask Me About This

"Isn't a second number overkill?"

Honestly, no. It's the cheapest insurance you'll ever buy. I've watched people skip it because it felt dramatic, then spend a month fielding messages from strangers on the number their kids' school uses. Five minutes of setup prevents that entirely.

"Does incognito mode make me anonymous?"

No, and this is a common misunderstanding. Private browsing stops your own device from saving history. It doesn't hide what you do from your internet provider, your employer's network, or the sites you visit. It's a tool for keeping a shared device clean, not a cloak.

"What if I already used my real number?"

Don't panic. Start fresh from today: get the second number, move future conversations to it, and tighten the privacy settings on your messaging apps so your photo and name aren't visible to strangers. Most problems come from ongoing exposure, so stopping it now matters more than what happened before.

"Can someone work out where I live from a photo?"

Sometimes, yes. A photo can carry location data showing where it was taken, which is why Apple's safety guide shows you how to strip it before sharing. Even without that, a view from a window or a recognisable street can give a place away. Turn off location for the camera, and look at the background before you send anything.

"Is my Venmo history really visible to strangers?"

If a payment is set to Public, Venmo says the names, the note and the timestamp are shared. Set your default to Private and change your past transactions to private too. It's one of the quickest fixes in this whole guide.

Sources

• Venmo Help Center: Manage your Venmo privacy settings
• Venmo Help Center: Changing Payment Privacy & Hiding Past Payments
• Consumer Reports: How to Make Your Venmo Information Private
• Apple Support: Manage location metadata in Photos (Personal Safety User Guide)
• California Privacy Protection Agency: Data Broker Registry and DROP (2026)