How to Protect Your Identity as an Adult Creator: A Head of Security's Field Guide

I run security for a platform built for adult creators, which means I spend a lot of my time thinking about a specific, uncomfortable question: what happens when someone with bad intentions decides to find out who you really are?

For most internet users that's a remote, abstract risk. For adult creators it is not. You are a higher-value target than the average person — to obsessive fans, to opportunistic extortionists, to people who object to your work, and occasionally to someone you knew before this chapter of your life. That's not meant to frighten you. It's meant to be honest, because honesty is the starting point of every real security plan.

The good news is that the people who get hurt are almost never the ones who took precautions. Most attacks against creators are not sophisticated. They exploit small, fixable mistakes: a reused password, a photo with the GPS coordinates still embedded, a real name attached to a payment, a moment of trust extended to the wrong person. Close those gaps and you move from "easy target" to "not worth the effort," which is the realistic goal. Perfect anonymity is a myth. Strong, layered defense is not.

This is the field guide I'd give a creator on day one.

Start with a threat model, not a checklist

Before you change a single setting, get clear on what you're actually defending against. Security people call this threat modeling, and it just means answering three questions honestly:

• Who is your adversary? A bored troll, a fixated fan, an ex, a professional extortionist, and a data broker are five very different threats requiring different defenses. Most creators face the first three; plan for those first.
• What are they after? Usually one of: your legal name, your physical location, your "civilian" social accounts, or leverage for extortion.
• What's the cost if they get it? This tells you how much effort to invest. A creator who lives with family, has a day job, or has a safety situation at home needs a higher bar than someone fully public about their work.

Your answers shape everything that follows. A creator whose biggest fear is a coworker recognizing them has a different plan than one worried about a persistent stalker. Write your answers down. Then build defenses for your threats, not a generic list.

Separate your two identities — completely

This is the single most important structural decision you will make, and it is far easier to do at the start than to retrofit later. Treat your creator identity and your real-world identity as two different people who must never be linked.

In practice that means:

• A dedicated email for everything creator-related, never reused from your personal life and never containing your real name.
• A separate phone number for accounts and two-factor authentication — a VoIP number (Google Voice, MySudo, and similar) keeps your real carrier number off creator platforms. Your real number is a powerful pivot point for anyone trying to find you; keep it out of this world entirely.
• A distinct persona name with no overlap with your legal name, old usernames, or handles you've used elsewhere. Attackers love username reuse — they'll search a handle across every platform to stitch your identities together.
• Separate payment rails where possible. Payment and tax information is where many creators are most exposed, because legal names attach to money. Understand exactly what each platform displays publicly versus what it keeps internal, and use a business entity or a service that shields your name on transactions if your situation calls for it.

The principle underneath all of this is compartmentalization: a breach in one compartment shouldn't flood the others. If your creator email leaks, it should lead nowhere near your real life.

Lock down the accounts themselves

Once your identities are separated, harden the accounts. This is the unglamorous core of security, and it's where the highest return on effort lives.

1. Use a password manager and unique passwords everywhere. The most common way creators lose accounts is credential reuse — one old breach somewhere else, and attackers try the same password on your creator accounts. A password manager (Bitwarden, 1Password, and the like) generates and stores a unique password per site so a single leak stays contained. This one change defeats the majority of real-world account takeovers.

2. Turn on two-factor authentication — but not SMS if you can avoid it. SMS codes can be intercepted through SIM-swapping, where an attacker convinces your carrier to move your number to their device. Prefer an authenticator app (Aegis, Authy, or your password manager's built-in tool) or, best of all, a hardware security key. Enable 2FA on the account that matters most first: the email that can reset all the others.

3. Protect the email that controls everything. Your creator email is the master key — whoever controls it can reset every account attached to it. Give it your strongest unique password, your best 2FA, and a recovery setup that doesn't quietly point back at your real identity.

4. Use scoped app passwords, not your main password, for third-party tools. Any time a client, scheduler, or tool asks to connect to one of your platforms, look for an app-password or scoped-token option rather than handing over your primary credentials. On Bluesky, for example, you generate an app password under Settings that you can revoke at any time without changing your real password — so a compromised tool can be cut off instantly and in isolation. The principle generalizes: never give a third party a key that can't be individually revoked.

Scrub your media before it ever goes out

Here is the mistake that has burned more creators than almost any other: posting an image or video that quietly carries your location.

Photos and videos contain metadata — EXIF data — that can include the exact GPS coordinates where the file was captured, the device used, and timestamps. Post an unscrubbed photo taken at home and you may have just published your address to anyone who knows how to read a file's properties. This is not theoretical; it is one of the most common vectors for creators being located.

Defend against it on every single piece of media:

• Strip metadata before posting. Many platforms remove EXIF on upload, but never rely on that — verify it yourself. Use a metadata-removal tool, or on a phone, screenshotting an image and posting the screenshot strips most embedded data as a quick fallback.
• Watch the background. Visible mail, street signs, a window view, a reflection in a mirror or someone's eyes, a distinctive building — these have all located people. Scan every frame before it goes out as if an investigator were studying it, because sometimes one is.
• Watermark your content. A watermark won't stop a determined leaker, but it deters casual reposting and gives you provenance if your work is stolen and spread.
• Be deliberate about recognizable, permanent features. Tattoos, scars, and unique surroundings are how civilian acquaintances connect a creator persona to a real person. You don't necessarily have to hide them, but decide consciously, with your threat model in mind, rather than by accident.

Recognize manipulation — most attacks are social, not technical

The cinematic image of "hacking" is misleading. The overwhelming majority of successful attacks on creators are social engineering: someone manipulates you into giving up access or information, no code required.

The recurring patterns to recognize:

• The "collab" or "agency" that needs access. A flattering offer that requires your login, your personal details, or for you to install something. Verify independently, slow down, and never grant access based on a DM.
• Phishing links to fake login pages that harvest your password. Check URLs carefully, navigate to sites directly rather than through links sent to you, and let your password manager help — it won't autofill credentials on a spoofed domain, which is a quiet, powerful safety check.
• The trust-then-extort fan. Someone who builds rapport over weeks, extracts a personal detail or an off-platform photo, then uses it as leverage. Keep real-life information out of every conversation, no matter how genuine the connection feels. Kindness and caution are not mutually exclusive.

The defense for all of it is the same: introduce friction. Attackers rely on urgency and emotion. "Let me verify this independently and come back to it" defeats most of them, because most will move on to an easier target.

Have a response plan before you need one

Even with strong defenses, things happen. The creators who recover best are the ones who decided what to do before the crisis, when they were calm. Sketch your plan now:

• If content leaks: know in advance that you can issue DMCA takedowns to platforms hosting your stolen work, document everything with screenshots and timestamps, and that specialized services and creator-focused organizations exist to help with mass removals. Acting fast and methodically limits spread.
• If you're extorted: the standard guidance from security and law enforcement is consistent — do not pay, because payment marks you as a target and rarely ends the demands. Preserve all evidence, cease engagement, and report. Extortion of this kind is a crime in most jurisdictions.
• If an account is compromised: use your recovery options immediately, change credentials from a device you trust, revoke connected app passwords and sessions, and check that recovery email and phone settings haven't been altered to lock you out.
• Know your support channels in advance. Identify which platforms have responsive trust-and-safety teams and how to reach them before an emergency, so you're not searching for a contact form while panicking.

A plan turns a catastrophe into an incident. That difference is enormous, and it costs you nothing but an hour of thinking today.

Choose tools that minimize what they hold

A final, structural point. The more of your sensitive data a service stores, the more there is to leak if that service is ever breached. Where you have the choice, favor tools that are designed to hold less.

Client-side architectures are a good example of this principle: software that runs in your browser and talks directly to a network, without maintaining its own central database of your content, simply has less to lose on your behalf. (For the same reason, scoped, revocable credentials beat all-or-nothing logins — the blast radius of a compromise stays small.) When you evaluate any platform or tool, ask what it stores about you, for how long, and what happens to that data if the company is breached or sold. Data that doesn't exist can't be stolen.

The realistic goal

I'll close where I started: perfect anonymity is not the target, and anyone promising it is selling something. The target is to be resilient and unappealing to attack — to have closed the easy gaps so thoroughly that the effort required to harm you exceeds what almost anyone is willing to spend.

You do not need to do all of this in a day. Start with the highest-leverage moves: a password manager with unique passwords, strong 2FA on your master email, separated identities, and metadata scrubbing on every upload. Those four alone put you ahead of the vast majority of creators and defeat the vast majority of attacks. Build the rest over time.

Your work deserves protection, and so do you. Take the hour. Build the habits. Then go create with the confidence that comes from knowing you've made yourself a hard target.

— Wayne, Head of Security, RedSky