Technology is a part of your sex life, whether you like it or not, and probably in ways you don’t even realize. Technology has its grubby little hands all over everything, and this can cause even more problems than it seems it might. You can’t protect yourself completely unless you avoid mixing your social tech and your sex life altogether, and let’s face it: none of us are doing that. There are plenty of things you can do to reduce the risk of becoming the next sex-scandal technology victim.
Learn From Famous (and Infamous) People
Most of the sex scandals in the news these days stem from technology-based proof, so the celebrities involved are excellent examples of what can go wrong.
• Paris Hilton’s Sidekick phone was hacked and the contact information for many of her famous pals was exposed. The lesson: If you have privacy-sensitive contacts, don’t store them on your phone, or at least assign them code names. When you hand your phone over to your boss to let them play with a productivity app and they get lost in your OS, better for them to see a contact you’ve labeled “Stress Relief Hotline” rather than “Phone Sex.”
• Paris Hilton is so socially networked that she makes the list twice: Her famous sex video makes it excruciatingly clear that anything you allow a lover to capture on any kind of media may come back to haunt you. This is not strictly a celebrity issue, either; the sudden interest in amateur porn means that anyone with sex tape and an axe to grind has a place publish and an instant audience.
• There isn’t much I can say about Tiger Woods and text messages that you haven’t already heard, so I’ll highlight a smaller detail: Tiger used many of the same, shall we say, turns of phrase with his various mistresses. Even if your partner knows you spend time with more than one person, using the same phrases with two different people seduces neither of them if they find out.
• Prince Charles was subject to one of the more famous technology-based sex scandals. For those of you who don’t remember, he told Camilla Parker Bowles over a tapped phone that he wished that he could be her tampon—probably something you wouldn’t want your mother to hear, even if she isn’t the Queen. While most of us aren’t royals, plenty of us use monitored technology every day, whether it’s an ISP your university IT department keeps tabs on or a company phone you’re allowed to use off the clock.
• Mark Sanford, the South Carolina Governor, ran off to Argentina to bonk his mistress while claiming he was hiking the Appalachian Trail instead. The takeaway here is that even if you’re involved in a completely “low-tech” sexual endeavor, your travels and activities are often trackable through computer records—those with suspicious minds and a reason to poke around can easily sort out what you’re up to.
Whether it’s a racy photo album on Facebook, a steamy private Twitter account, naughty Meebo chat transcripts hosted on their website, or any of the other hundreds of ways you can store personal media online, there are risks no matter how “private” it looks.
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Privacy policies aren’t set in stone. While you may have thoroughly checked out a site or service before trusting it with your sexy tidbits (you do check the Terms of Service for the company’s policies on explicit content, right?), those policies may change at any time. Facebook’s multiple privacy upheavals this year are a prime example of how little control you have over your content once you hand it over to a service.
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Hacking isn’t just for celebrities. Netizens everywhere are experiencing a pretty high incidence of hacking this year. While it's mostly to use Twitter accounts and e-mail addresses for spamming purposes, it still involves hackers gaining access to your account, which means they could potentially change your password, erase your data, or expose it all. Change your password frequently and be sure to use very strong passwords—there are many sites that will tell you the strength of a proposed password, so you can check before you begin using it.
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Aliases are your friend. There are plenty of services you can subscribe to which are anonymous or nearly so, and using something like this can give you extra layers of protection. A Twitter account with a name and avatar not obviously connected to you, registered to a Gmail account equally uninvolved, will protect you pretty well from online intrusions. However, it won’t do much if someone spies you logging in on your computer or sees that your iPhone social application automatically logs in to that account.
Text messages are in sex-scandal news all the time these days, and no wonder. It's an easy way to get your freak on in those moments of downtime you have on busy days, and it seems like they're always getting released to the press. And now that the iPhone 4 has that nifty front-facing camera for “video chat,” quite a few of us will be toting X-rated videos of ourselves in our pockets. What's a privacy-conscious perv to do?
• Protect your phone. If you're getting your freak on through text messages (“sexting”), snapping naughty cellphone pictures, using the video chat for dirty purposes, or read porny emails or websites on your phone, you might want to make sure that information doesn't go wandering around without you. Password-protect your phone if you can, and make a habit of keeping your phone in your pocket or otherwise on your person rather than leaving it on tables or in bags. Some phones, including iPhones, have a “killswitch” available that will allow you to remotely disable the phone if you realize it's missing.
• Know your “correspondents.” Texting, e-mailing, and video chatting on your phone doesn’t only leave a trail on your phone; it leaves a trail on the phone or computer of the person you’re corresponding with. This is how Tiger Woods’ mistresses and Jesse James’ dalliances end up exposing relationships those guys really would rather have kept secret. (Of course, the other tip for keeping your private life private is not to do things like cheating...)
• Have an exit plan. Since you don’t have control over the copies of your correspondence that inevitably exist, spend a minute thinking about what you’ll do if your partner “goes public,” their cell phone is stolen, or you’re otherwise exposed. This is also a good time to consider whether some of the more left-of-mainstream stuff you’d like to chat about is best kept for when you see your sweetie in person. Assess your risk: a well-respected executive sending their spouse a text about getting head carries less risk than a schoolteacher receiving photos on their cell phone of their lover engaging in age play.
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