How to Talk to Strangers Online Safely

The one rule that covers most of the others

Assume anything you type could be screenshotted and kept forever. Not because most people will, but because you can't tell in advance which ones would, and the cost of assuming it is close to zero. Every rule below is really a corollary of this one.

What not to share

• Your full name. A first name is usually harmless. A first and last name is a search query.
• Where you live, beyond something vague like a large city or a country. Neighbourhood, street, school, workplace — no.
• Your phone number or email. These are the keys to account recovery on everything you own.
• Photos of yourself, especially any you wouldn't want attached to your name. There is no way to un-send an image.
• Anything financial. No payment details, no crypto wallets, no "just help me with this transfer", ever.
• Your other handles, early on. An Instagram username often exposes your real name, face, school, and friends in one step.

The pattern people get caught by isn't one big disclosure — it's five small ones. Your city, your job title, your gym, your dog's name and your university are individually harmless and collectively identifying.

Leave early, leave often

The single most useful habit in random chat is being willing to disconnect immediately, without explanation and without feeling rude. You owe a stranger nothing. If a conversation is making you uncomfortable, you do not need to justify leaving it, to them or to yourself. Skip and you get someone new in seconds.

Discomfort is information. People often override it because leaving feels impolite — that instinct is well-meaning and, in this specific context, worth ignoring.

The scams you will actually run into

1. 1The redirect. Within two messages, they want you on another platform or a link. Anything urgent about moving the conversation is a red flag by itself.
2. 2The image trade. Escalating requests for photos, often framed as fair or reciprocal. This is the setup for sextortion, and it works on adults just as often as teenagers.
3. 3The investment friend. A long, pleasant, patient conversation that eventually arrives at crypto or trading. The friendliness is the product.
4. 4The emergency. A sudden crisis that a small payment would fix. Never real.
5. 5The bot. Replies that don't quite track what you said, or a perfect opener followed by an immediate link.

Protecting the boring stuff

• Deny camera and microphone permissions to any chat site that doesn't need them. A text chat has no reason to ask.
• Be careful with links. A shortened URL can log your IP and rough location the moment you open it.
• Use a browser you keep reasonably clean, and consider a private window if you share a device.
• Don't reuse a handle you use elsewhere — it's the easiest way to connect an anonymous chat back to your real identity.

What a decent platform should be doing

Some of the responsibility isn't yours. When you're judging a random chat site, these are reasonable things to expect:

• A report button inside the chat, reachable in one tap.
• Automatic filtering of explicit language, applied by default.
• A clear, enforced 18+ policy — not a checkbox nobody reads, but a gate before the first conversation.
• A privacy policy that says specifically what is stored, for how long, and who can see it.
• Human review of reports, with the ability to actually ban someone.

Those are the ones we hold ourselves to: explicit language is filtered automatically, every chat has a one-tap report button, reports are reviewed by a person, and the site is 18+ with an age gate before you can start. Our privacy policy sets out what's kept.

A realistic expectation

Most random conversations are unremarkable. Some are genuinely good. A minority are unpleasant, and the correct response to those is a single tap, not a debate. Go in expecting that distribution and the whole thing is much easier to enjoy.