Peeps Registering Info

*updated / edited March 22 6:10pm EST

Several people have had questions and concerns about registering in the peeps section. Here is some info about registering an account in the peeps section.

Click here to register in the peeps section and get a profile.

When you register an account in the peeps section, our systems log a few things.
The ip address you are currently using during sign up, and whatever other info you include during the sign up process. This is at minimum a valid email address and username. Some details are always publicly viewable, other details you can choose who can see, such as public, friends only, no one.

By default our system send an email to the address that you signed up with for activation, lost password, and notifications when people send you friend requests, send you private offline messages, and things like that. You can change your email preferences in the edit profile area to not receive these notifications.

How to change your email notifications settings here. (change under what conditions our server sends you an email, like friend requests, messages, etc)

Registration is currently blocked from Russia, China, Ukraine, and Moldova
and – UA,RU,YV,CN,PA,MA,LK,RS,AR,TH,BO,MX,CZ,PK,KE,VN,MY,MK,GY,SI,HR,DZ,NG,YE,SK,

Some people are saying they are not getting the needed activation email when using hotmail or yahoo services. I am not sure if these are just slow delays with their systems, or if they are stuffing the emails from our system in the spam/junk mail folder – or if they are simply sending all email from our server into a “blackhole” which never gets seen. We will look at things we can do in the near future that should make email from our web server handled better by the various email providers out there.

If you do not get an activation email within an hour, and have checked your junk box – message nash and I can manually resend it, or something.

Privacy –

Since you must receive and activate an email in order to use your profile here, there are additional tracking points that others could use to further identify you, and associate what info you put into this system with you, or at least to whatever ip address you used when you accessed the email and the ip address you used when you created that email account.

Most of the moderators do not have access to view backend info for profiles and such here.

Admin Nash does have access to view any and all details of anything that you add to the system, however he follows the same guidelines for private messages and such that we have set for ‘entering private password rooms’. As of this writing I have never tried to access people’s private messages within the peeps section, or pics set to private / friends only, and stuff like that. I would only do so if there was something major going on – allegations of hacking, or “not-yet-18” discussions, those things and similar serious things could make me check things out.

Of course if you message someone they would have the ability to take a screen shot and send it others. Admins / Mods may request such a thing if someone is accusing someone of a major violation.

Someone asked what about a hack thing like the Ashley Madison hack / data dump?

That is an excellent question, glad people are thinking on this level now!
Certainly we need to all be aware that something could happen where some third party gains access to stuff on our server which would include details saved, and they could release that info. Pretty sure I mentioned this in our privacy policy years ago, and tried to explain to people that this kind of thing can happen with virtually any connected system on the planet. For that reason please do not post anything in the peeps section that would ruin your life if it got out. Pics, your sign up email addy, personal details in user to user messages – the stuff that happens in and around the peeps section, much of it becomes data at rest. Settings for our chat systems may store less, or none of certain chat messages, and for certainly 99% of time for less time.,

When people message each other in the mv-chat system, that is separate, and as of this writing, more ephermal. I have turned off logging of messages in the mv-chat system, although there is some logging of users that have connected, and there is a publish of which users are in which rooms.

Of course some hacker could probably find way to intercept these things, and people can take screen shots and share them. Telephone and internet companies, and gov agencies have methods to intercept and copy all things that travel over the interweb wires as well. So don’t send anything through our systems that could land you in jail or being blackmailed or something. Heck your next door neighbor can probably snatch stuff from your local network all day long with a free program if you are using wi-fi.

If you are uber paraoid, have a job or other relationship that could in jeopardy from using our system, there are some things you can do to limit your exposure, and we are working to establish some additional hardening of bits in transit as well.

In the meantime I suggest NOT using your work email addy for anything here, and not using any other email addy that could linked to you. A “porn only” email addy from a place like yahoo mail (although those sometimes bounce our emails, and if you do not log in to your yahoo account for a few months it may be deactivated. Not sure what yahoo is doing these days, and there is a chance they could be bought up by another company which would get that info) – proton mail is something new that may be worth looking into.

If you are super paranoid, when you sign up for your porn only email account, you will not use your home or work internet to do it. You will use a brand new computer, on an open wi-fi from the other side of the city, and a vpn. When you sign up for a new email addy those services generally save info about you as well, and I believe they are quick to hand over that info to third parties that request it.

Using a VPN service will hide / scramble your ip address and will often encrypt your data along some of the wires. Use a porn only email addy and a VPN to sign up, and you have some extra privacy from the start. Also look into browser plugins like ublock origin, lightbeam, ghostery, disconnect, things like that. Other tech places have good articles / discussions on the pros and cons of these types of plugins and services.

Search for info about these things using startpage.com or duckduckgo or something.

Do note that I am exploring some methods that will do some ‘browser fingerprinting’ for registration. If we have some assholes who try to abuse this system and hide behind vpns / proxies to do so, I will turn on the browser fingerprinting system and add additional layers of tracking all sign ups to prevent abusive use of the system, and protect those who are not. We have also acquired some methods pulling extra info from browsers should we need to, including leaking ips outside of VPNs and even Tor. We don’t want to turn these things on, but we are already preparing for possibility if we need to stop some serial abusers who violate our rules.

Not all VPNs will work with our chat system by the way. Many can not provide enough speed to maintain a connection, some won’t even allow the proper ports to open in order to connect or keep a stable connection with our chat services. Some VPN providers are already blocked by our various firewalls, and some we have blocked most of their servers. In some cases we have reached out to a few vpn services and gotten them to block our web servers from being accessible using their service. This is due to abuse by a few people who are ruining it for others. People will run into some of the same issues when trying to use tor or other services.

I strongly suggest people read the entire privacy policy for this site, as there is helpful information for people there. I think people know that I take privacy very seriously and do what I can to make things as non-tracking as possible.

I am working on systems that will encrypt our chats, and trying to find ways to encrypt portions of our databases and such as well.

We use multiple layers of security enhancements to protect our systems here, and log things outside of the basic installs that many others do when they deploy similar systems. Our security is not perfect, but we are several levels above average I do believe. If you find a security or privacy issue please contact me to let me know. We will have some kind of bug bounty program.

If you are considering using our systems for abuse, harassment, hacking, getting around bans or anything like that – be aware that we have very strict terms of service, and there is an addendum to our privacy policy, with details you can read on the permanent ban notice, that in some rare cases we will indeed share information with third parties including your local law enforcement, various ISPs, our lawyers, and others. I absolutely don’t ever want to do that kind of thing, but we have had to do just that twice before.

This information will be updated. Settings are subject to change without notice.

As of this writing I can’t guarantee this info is complete – however I am trying to get some info out there quickly as the oc system has been down for much longer than anticipated.

More info about the mv-chat and how it works, and what doesn’t work here.

How to change your email notifications settings here. (change under what conditions our server sends you an email, like friend requests, messages, etc)