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Staying Safe as a Sex Worker

All Sex Workers, those who provide services virtually as well as those who meet clients IRL will encounter clients who attempt to push their boundaries by asking personal questions. Clients love to ask “Is that your real name?” but they may also ask about your home town, current location, education, marital/relationship status and about your personal hobbies and interests.

Most clients who ask boundary pushing questions are motivated by a desire to know us better and seek only to forge a more meaningful relationship with us. Unfortunately, there will always be some clients whose intentions are not so innocent; some clients may be motivated by a desire to control us or have us all to themselves. Obviously it is the clients with bad intentions that we want to protect ourselves from but any client who successfully learns too much about our true selves and our personal lives has the potential to create problems and cause harm.

It is difficult if not impossible to know the true intentions behind a clients probing inquiries and for that reason we must stay diligent in our self protective efforts especially those of us who meet clients IRL. 

Assumed Name and Identity

One of the easiest and most effective ways we have to stay safe is by creating an assumed name and identity that we use while working. An assumed name, also called a stage name, is a fake name that you give yourself and tell others it is your actual name. An assumed identity is the personal history/life story that you create to go with your assumed name. Include the following details in your made up life story:

      • Birthdate/Age
      • Hometown/Where you are from
      • Current location/Where you live now
      • Education level and schools attended
      • Marital/Relationship status

You may even wish to include made up interests and hobbies, past experiences, and family.  

Make sure you keep it simple enough that you don’t forget the details in case they come up again. I also suggest creating a fake name for your assumed name. For example: You use the name ‘Chloe’ for work and your client keeps pressuring you to give your real name. Your real name is ‘Kim’ but you tell the client it’s ‘June’. ‘June’ is the fake name you give as your real name while working as ‘Chloe’; never tell anyone your actual real name is ‘Kim’.

💡 IDEA 💡

Select two new names for yourself! 

One will be for your ads and client interactions. 

The second name could be used to answer the question “What is your *real* name?”

You should create your stage name and life story to go with it before you ever interact with clients. It is best to have your made up life story ready so that when a client asks nosy questions you can answer confidently. Sounding confident will allow the client to believe you are being honest. If you sound unsure of your answers you will only invite additional questions. 

Of course you never have to answer any questions that you don’t want to, especially those that may expose you to harm or just make you feel uncomfortable. However, it is usually easier to present the client with answers from your made up life story, especially when you are worried that telling the client *what he can do with* His nosy questions may send the client into the “arms” of another provider. A sex workers priority, second to her safety, is obtaining and securing her income. 

Protecting Yourself from Legal Problems

Beyond protecting yourself from clients with bad intentions, Sex Workers who primarily operate their businesses IRL have additional concerns. Sex workers who meet with clients in their homes and at hotels must also protect themselves from interactions with law enforcement. Getting arrested while working can have devastating effects on a Sex Workers life. An arrest for solicitation or prostitution, the two most common charges given to sex workers, may result in thousands of dollars in court costs and fines and jail or even prison time, depending on the state you are located in. An arrest record can make it difficult/impossible to obtain housing and employment outside of the adult industry. Every year 70,000 to 80,000 sex workers are arrested in the United States annually. 

To decrease the likelihood of finding yourself in the midst of a law enforcement sting operation, Sex Workers who provide IRL services must screen all new clients before they meet them for the first time. There are many ways to handle client screening and you may want to employ more than one method. 

Screening Techniques:

      • Social Media Verification: This involves obtaining the clients social media account links for the purpose of viewing their pages/feeds on sites such as Facebook, Linked In and Twitter. Because Linked In is a site for professional networking it will provide the most useful information such as where the client is employed.
      • Employment Verification: The Sex Worker may ask the client where he is currently employed. To verify that the client actually works where he says, the sex worker may call the client through his company switchboard and/or ask him to send a photo or scan of his employee identification or badge. The sex worker may also browse the companies website for additional information about the client. 
      • Google Search: Most sex workers, even those who are lax about their screening practices, will at the very least, type their potential clients phone number and name into Google’s Search Bar and scan the results for useful information. A Google search may bring up employment information, community involvement, news articles and criminal history, all of which may assist the Sex Worker with Screening. However, many clients use a throw away phone number obtained from one of the many apps that provide them. Text Now and Text Free are two commonly used apps that provide throw away numbers and allow their users to send and receive calls and texts with those numbers. When a client chooses to use a throw away number in combination with a made up name (yes, clients can and do create alternate identities  to protect themselves from us!) Google will prove useless!
      • Verification Services: There are not many services that provide client screening but they are out there. One such service is Preferred 411. Preferred 411 or P411 for short, is a long established client screening service that uses employment verification as its main method of screening its male members. Guys who are no longer employed due to retirement, disability or job loss, who have spent time with at least two of the sites’ female members may be granted membership dependent upon the female members evaluation. If at least two female members are willing to vouch for the client applicant by stating that he is safe to meet with and that he is not affiliated with law enforcement, he can be granted membership without employment verification. In addition to successfully passing the  P411 screening process new client members must also pay a membership fee of $149 per year. 

It’s worth noting that P411 also screens its female applicants prior to giving them a membership and exclusive access to the sites’ paid client members. One of the ways P411 screens female applicants is by viewing their client written reviews published on established review sites such as The Erotic Review. The Preferred 411 staff also visits personal websites and social media pages. 

      • Indecent Images: The client may be asked to submit a photo of his nether region to serve as evidence that he is not a member or affiliate of law enforcement. To be clear I mean that the client may be asked to send a ‘dick pic’. This method provides no personal information; you may want to use this method in conjunction with one (or more!) of the other screening methods. 
      • Deposits: To demonstrate that the client is serious about seeing you, and is not wasting your time you may request that he supply a portion (10 to 20% is common) of the deposit prior to the actual meeting. The amount of the deposit is deducted from the donation so that when you meet the client he provides the difference. 

For example: The total donation you will request from a client is 500. You want a portion of that upfront before you meet as a deposit. You ask for a deposit equal to 20% of the total donation (500). 20% of 500 is 100. The client sends you 100 via C*SH A**. When you meet the client he gives you the donation minus the deposit which is 400. 

In addition to showing that the client is serious about meeting it is a widely held belief that law enforcement won’t send money to someone they are trying to bust. I have no idea if this is true or not. 

In Arizona, many clients have posted tales of being scammed by girls for the deposit money. This has made asking for a deposit a red flag for many clients and as a result they are often unwilling to send a deposit. In other regions it may still be possible to collect a deposit. 

      • Transportation: for the same reasons that deposits are requested, you may request that your client pay for transportation by Uber or Lyft. Because the client enters his place as the destination it is unlikely that the girl can convince the driver to take her somewhere else. This often makes paying upfront for transportation more acceptable to the client than paying a deposit.
      • References: The final screening method I will mention here involves getting a reference for a potential client from a sex worker that the client has previously met with. You can read more about this screening method by visiting my Reference Request page. If you happen to come across a client that I have previously met with I will gladly provide you with a reference for him. To get a client reference from me you should complete the Reference Request Form located on the Reference Request page. 

If you use a different method than what I have listed I would love to know! If you are willing to share the method that you use please post it to the comments below! 

Thank you!