Selling anonymously: photos, files, address and money

Five things that can identify you

1. You in the picture: a face, a tattoo, a ring, a distinctive manicure.
2. Your home in the picture: a mirror, a window view, a letter with your name on the shelf.
3. The photo file: phones can save where a picture was taken inside the file.
4. The parcel: the return address on the envelope.
5. The payment: some payment types show your legal name to the buyer.

Photos: frame the panties, not you or your home

What to keep out of the frame

Shoot the panties flat on a plain surface: a bedsheet, a towel, a piece of card. Then look at the whole picture before you upload, not just the middle. The usual giveaways are mirrors and glossy surfaces that reflect you or the room, a window with a view someone could place, post or a parcel label lying nearby, and anything you're known for: a tattoo, a ring, nail art, a bag that appears in your other photos. A plain background also makes the lace look better, so discretion and good photos want the same thing.

Your face is optional. Only your nickname is public, and photos of the panties are enough for a listing. How to make a profile picture work without a face is in the photos and profile guide.

Photos you've posted somewhere else

Anything already on another site or on your social media can be found with a reverse image search, which takes a buyer a few seconds. Shoot new pictures for panty.com and use them only here, and don't reuse your panty.com photos on a personal account.

The file itself: location and other data

Phone cameras can save the place a photo was taken inside the file, along with the time and the device, and that data travels with the file when you share it. Don't count on any website to remove it; take it out before you upload.

On an iPhone, Apple's own steps:

• To stop it at the source: Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > Camera > Never.
• To send or save a photo without its location: tap the Share button, then Options, and turn Location off.
• To remove the location from a photo you already took: in Photos, open it, tap the More button, then Adjust Info > Adjust Location > No Location.

On Android, switch off location in your camera app's settings before you shoot; where the switch sits depends on the phone's maker. Google says Photos can remove only an estimated or manually added location, not one the camera wrote. That's why the camera setting comes first.

Name, email and the settings that help

• Nickname: not your name, not your handle on any other site, and nothing that combines your city and your birth year.
• Email: use an address you keep only for panty.com, with its own password. The FBI's IC3, warning about stolen accounts and leaked private content, advises unique passphrases, multi-factor authentication and never sharing log-in details.
• Block: a blocked member can't message you, and you stop seeing each other in lists.
• Contact details: phone numbers and emails in your public texts are hidden from guests automatically. That covers your profile and listings, not the chat: whatever you type into a message reaches the buyer exactly as typed, so keep your number and address out of it until you choose otherwise.
• Members only: a free switch in Settings, under Privacy. While it's on, visitors who are not logged in can't open your profile; members still can.

Address: posting without your home address

A parcel needs a sender. What you can do is make sure the sender address isn't your front door.

• Post it at a counter or a parcel locker rather than handing it to a courier at home.
• In the US, a PO Box can be your return address. Renting one takes two forms of ID at the counter, but the buyer sees only the box number. Where the Post Office offers Street Addressing, the box also gets a street-style address that private carriers can deliver to.
• Receiving, and other countries: pickup services, lockers and what each carrier asks for are in the shipping guide.

Check what your carrier requires on the sender line before you leave it blank or use only an initial.

Money: what a payment shows

• Bank transfer: the buyer needs your account details, and the account is in your legal name. Under EU rules, the payer's bank checks the name against the account before a euro transfer goes and warns the payer if it doesn't match (Verification of Payee); the UK's Confirmation of Payee works the same way. Either way, a buyer who pays by transfer needs your real name.
• Payment apps: what the payer sees differs between apps. Before you share anything, send yourself a small payment from a second account and look at what appears on the sender's side.
• Gift cards, vouchers and crypto: they don't show a name, but they are the payment types scammers ask for, and once sent the money is gone. The safety guide has the details.

Decide which of these you accept before the first buyer writes, and say it in the chat before you agree on anything.

The buyer's details you hold

Once you ship, you know a buyer's name and address. The UK GDPR does not apply to "the processing of personal data by an individual in the course of a purely personal or household activity". Whether regular selling still counts as purely personal is something the rule doesn't settle, so handle the details as if it applied:

• use the address for the parcel and nothing else;
• delete it, and any photo of the label, once the buyer confirms it arrived;
• never pass it on, and never use it in an argument.

Taking a break, or stopping

To stop selling something, delete its listing; you can post it again later. To keep visitors who are not logged in away from your profile, switch on Members only in Settings. Before a longer break, go through your phone's photo library and any cloud backup for pictures of buyers' labels and addresses, and delete them.