How we handle our own accounts on these platforms β what we never type, what we set up before signing up, and why we treat the whole category as leaky by default.
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This is not a claim about any specific platform. It is how we set up our own accounts, and it comes from a simple observation: these are young companies moving fast in a space where the most sensitive thing you own is the thing you type into the box. We would rather assume that content can leak and be wrong than assume it can't and be wrong.
So everything below is a habit, not a warning about a particular company. Nothing here is worth doing only for the platforms we scored low on privacy β we do all of it everywhere, including on the ones we like.
This is the one that actually matters, and it takes two minutes. A separate address means that if anything ever does get out, there is nothing tying it back to the rest of your life β your work account, your real name, the mailing lists you're on.
Pair it with a password you use nowhere else. Not a variation of one you use elsewhere. A different one.
Everything else on this page is a smaller version of this idea: limit what a bad day can connect back to you.
Your full name, employer, address, school, phone number, or financial details. Photographs of yourself or anyone else. The name of anyone real, in any context.
This is the precaution that survives everything. Privacy settings are a promise a company makes to you; not having typed something is a fact about the world. We have never regretted keeping a companion vague about who we are, and the platforms genuinely do not need any of it to work well.
It is also worth being deliberate rather than gradual here. These conversations get comfortable, and comfortable is exactly when people start filling in details they would not have entered on day one.
Whether you can delete your own conversation history without emailing anyone is, in our experience, the sharpest single tell for how a platform thinks about your data. It takes thirty seconds to look for in the account settings, and we now do it before entering a card rather than after.
A platform that has built the button has thought about this. A platform where deletion means writing to support has thought about it differently, or not at all.
If you are in the EU, the EEA or the UK, you have a right to erasure regardless of what the interface offers. But a company that never built the control is a company that will be slow about it.
It hides your IP address from the platform. It does nothing about the content of what you write, which is the part that would actually hurt.
If you have one, fine. If you are deciding where to spend effort, the email address and the habit of not typing identifying details are worth far more.
Most platforms here bill under a deliberately generic descriptor. That works, but note somewhere findable what you actually signed up for β a charge you don't recognise six months later is easy to mistake for fraud, and disputing a payment you genuinely made will usually end the account and everything on it.
We treat the whole category as leaky by default, and we'd suggest you do the same. That isn't an accusation against any particular platform β it's how we set up our own accounts. These are young companies moving quickly, and the most sensitive thing you own here is the thing you type into the box. We use a dedicated email address on every one of them, never enter anything that identifies us, and assume that what we write could one day be read by someone else. We have never regretted any of that.
It depends entirely on the platform, and it is one of the sharpest differentiators between a serious operator and a careless one. If you are in the EU, EEA or UK, the GDPR gives you a right to erasure that applies regardless of what the interface offers, and a platform that ignores a valid deletion request is breaking the law. Before subscribing, check whether deletion is self-service or requires emailing support β the difference predicts a lot.
A dedicated email address costs nothing and limits the blast radius if the platform is breached β it is the single highest-value precaution in this category. A VPN hides your IP from the platform but does nothing about the content of what you type, which is the part that actually leaks. Prioritise the email, a unique password, and a payment method you're comfortable seeing on a statement.
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