Personal safety whilst online.





- Trust no one

- Stay anonymous.

- Don't share your home or work address.

https://www.torproject.org/ - Use VPN or [ Tor





People are very clever at finding the real person behind an online identity, and anyone familiar with doxing will know how it works.





Doxing is when someone releases the name, addresses, phones numbers and friends/family details of someone who is anonymous.





They piece together bits from forums, social media, photos, tags, geotags and anything else they can get, and in the end it's not that difficult to find a real name and address. This includes sharing personal information with other LGBTs in your country online. Anyone can claim to be an LGBT.





The Tor/VPN bit is important. Every time you go online you can be identified by a unique IP address. This IP address and your location is stored on logs on blog sites, social media sites, forums and websites.





Some countries, especially authoritarian/Islamic countries

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_surveillance_by_country





Police, authorities and of course security agencies can obtain this IP address in certain circumstances, and working with your ISP or carrier, know exactly who you are. You can hide your IP address by using a proxy or VPN. This will defeat basic lookups.





Avoid official Twitter client on Android as that will expose MEID (unique identifier on your mobile phone) and possibly more.









Coming out as a LGBT





- If you are in a country where it illegal don't do it. No matter how frustrated with life you are.

- If you are not financially independent then don't do it.

- If you are not prepared to not speak or see your family again don't do it.

- Never give up your passport.





We have seen on socmedia like Reddit people who have been made homeless, including in the US and UK, and at a very young age, some are minors. Its often the younger of us most at risk, and those most likely to come out. I don't want to lecture but I am well into middle age, and know I made some rash decisions when I was a teenager and in my early twenties and urge people to think, and ask for advice from LGBT community first.





"The best place to come out to your parents is at a home you own, over a dinner that you paid for yourself"





The CEMB have an in-depth technical guide here called Covering Your Internet Tracks





An extra comment on Government monitoring.





The British government is bringing in a law forcing ISPs to store logs of every single website that the public visit. Of course, visiting LGBT websites isn't a problem for British people, but by bringing in this law, the British government provide an excuse for totalitarian countries to do the same. Please keep up to date with what your own country is doing in regards to internet cenorship and monitoring.



