How do you best hide from family/friends in terms of hookups?

Hi, so I've been very anxious and paranoid that my family will find out about my activity on some of these online hookup sites. I created a burner gmail account, use incognito mode and I always sign out but this on the home wifi network. Haha I'm worried they'll get a letter or email from the internet services or municipality. it sounds really stupid but this paranoia is very real. Even hear some reaffirmation or tips from others would calm me down.

 

Ya I got(and still get) alot of anxiety to over this.

I think it should be fine though, as long as you are always using incognito mode and a burner gmail. Unless they actually walk in and see you doing it.

 

Thanks for replying! Feels somewhat relieving to know I'm not the only one feeling this even though I realize its probs pretty common. Yeah I'm trying to be super careful not to do something dum like link my burner gmail to my phone number or stay logged in.

Lol I wonder sometimes what it would feel like if we lived in a world where NO ONE cared what about what sex you liked and we could actually have more open, healthy conversations.

 

Be more concerned about your safety with the guys your meeting than your home Wi-Fi. Be diligent and take precautions please before agreeing to meet. And while it goes against your desire for discretion, always try and meet in a public place first.

 

I'm writing this from purely technical perspective and I take no position in actual chances of getting caught.

First of all, generally speaking all wifis are insecure be they password protected or not. It is trivial to intercept your internet traffic and analyze it. If the sites you visit use encryption the actual content of most of your traffic is hidden but anyone can see where the traffic is going and where its coming from.

Also, your ISP will know which sites you visit and will retain a log possibly for a few years depending on locality. Also, certain ISPs sell your data to advertisers which COULD IN FACT OUT you. Me and my room mates regularly get advertisement targeted at each other. For instance, if he searches for a vacation in the Pampas in Argentina, I would invariably get targeted FB ads about holidays and hotels in the Pampas in Argentina. We both have our separate computers we just share the wifi. It is possbile that your family members might get IP based ads targeted at you which could out you.

You can shield yourself from most of such intrusions by using a VPN and using DNS servers other than your ISP. VPN will encrypt your internet traffic making it really hard to see what kind of packages come and go to and from your computer. Using third party DNS servers with VPN will prevent your ISP from knowing which sites you visit. There are free VPNs but if you subscribe to one, most of them are rather cheap, like less than $10/month. Alternatively you can use an proxy server and third party DNS servers. It will help to hide which sites you visit from your ISP if they don't do packet sniffing (they probably do but won't use that information to target ads to you). It will not hide the content of your traffic unless it's an encrypted connection. There are number of free proxy servers.

Hope this helps.