How to stay anonymous on video chat
A site can promise not to collect your email. It cannot do anything about the university poster behind your head. Almost everything that identifies you on camera is in your room — here is the order to check it in.
- 1
Look at your background before you look at yourself
A framed photo, a poster, a window view, a delivery box with a label on it — any one of these narrows you down further than your face does. Point the camera at a blank wall, or sit so the wall is behind you.
Quick check Take one screenshot of your own feed and read it like a stranger would.
- 2
Check what is reflecting
Glasses, a mirror, a dark TV, a window at night. Reflections give up the rest of the room and sometimes the screen you are looking at. They are the single most common thing people miss.
Quick check Move the light source behind the camera rather than behind you.
- 3
Listen to your own room
Audio identifies location more than people expect: a train line, a church bell, a neighbour, a TV in another language. If you would not want it geotagged, use headphones and keep the mic close.
- 4
Turn off notifications before, not during
A banner sliding across the top of a shared screen shows a real name, a message preview, or an app you would rather not explain. Put the device in do-not-disturb first.
Quick check On a phone this also stops a call interrupting mid-conversation.
- 5
Do not fill in blanks nobody asked for
The site never asks for your email, username, phone number or real name. The person on the other end might. The most common way anonymity ends is that someone volunteers their first name, city and job in the first two minutes.
Quick check If a stranger asks for a name, a handle or another app, that is the moment to skip.
- 6
Assume the frame can be captured
No live-video service anywhere can stop a second device pointing at a screen. This is true of every platform, including this one. Decide what you show on the assumption that a still of it could exist.
- 7
Know where report and block are before you need them
Both sit on the call screen the whole time. Reports go to people around the clock, not only a filter. Using them is faster and more final than trying to reason with someone.
Quick check Skip ends the call instantly and they cannot get back to you.
What "anonymous" means here, precisely
On Skibbel TV it means we never collected an email, a username, a phone number or a real name, so there is no account of yours and no profile for anyone to find you by. It does not mean you are invisible on the internet, and it does not mean a stranger cannot work out where you live from a window. Those two things are different, and only the first one is ours to guarantee.
If you want the rest of how the product works, that is on naughty video chat and video sexting.