Staying Safe As A Sex Worker

There’s little doubt that this type of work attracts some weird and dangerous people and you need to have your wits about you to filter out the no-hopers with incel tendencies who want to harm and/or take liberties with women they think won’t report them and who they think the police will have little time for. These dregs of society need to know that sex workers are considered vulnerable people, so therefore, crimes against them are taken very seriously. In fact, three counties in the UK are now treating violence against sex workers as a hate crime. If you are a sex worker and have suffered stalking, abuse or harassment of any kind, please contact NUM (National Ugly Mugs) where they can advise you. If a case goes to court, you should be given anonymity and full support.

As most of us know, punters can range from respectful gentlemen to the downright dangerous. It’s weeding out the latter that can be a problem for some. Although, when you’ve been doing this job for a while, you can usually tell if a guy isn’t the type you want to see. Saying that though, you can chance someone you wouldn’t usually entertain and they turn out to be absolutely lovely – and you can book guys who sounded great on the phone but you know within five minutes you’ll be blocking them as soon as they leave.

Here are some tips to protecting yourselves, online and off.

Staying Safe As A Sex Worker – In Person

There’s an app called Client Eye which is really good for getting alerts about bad punters. It’s reasonably cheap at around £30 a year or around £3.00 a month. Lots of escorts use it – although plenty don’t. You can even use it for free but you’ll just get the number of reports on the number that’s calling you and not the actual reports themselves.

However, Client Eye don’t allow you to leave good reports, so if a number flags up and you can’t read them, you’ll know they aren’t raving compliments. Although those reports can vary from, “He turned up 15 minutes late” to “He tried to stab me”! It’s good to see the lower extremes though because there might be a pattern.

Get yourself a cheap rape alarm from Amazon or elsewhere; in fact, get two or three and park them around your workspace.

Hide your purse and ID – don’t leave it in your handbag. Better still, leave it at home.

Keep an eye in your rear view window when driving home after work to make sure no one is following you.

When a punter leaves, make sure you see him walk off down the street.

Keep any private phones hidden.

If you are in a hotel or at an outcall pub meet and feel you are in danger and the danger is near to you, you can ask the staff for “Angela”. This is a way of alerting staff that you need help.

If you are going on an outcall, make sure you leave the address with someone and ask them to call you at a set time. Have a secret code to alert them if you can’t tell them that you are in danger.

Look out for secret recordings through glasses, phones and watches. Ask to put all gadgets under a pile of clothing or similar. Remember, it’s a crime to record you without your permission.

If it’s possible, don’t give your address out until you can see them on your street. This also stops timewasters and address collectors from messing you around by pretending they are close by when they aren’t.

Staying Safe As A Sex Worker – Online

Everything seems to sychronize today so you need to keep everything separate when it comes down to keeping your online sex worker ID anonymous. Some sex workers are open about what they do but if you’re not, just keep everything apart. 

Don’t use any work photographs of yourself on any other website including on Facebook etc.

Instead of blurring your face, hold a fan or some other prop to obscure yourself. Or crop the photo from your neck or mouth up.

If you do show your face on your profile, be aware there are apps and websites that can get certain information from photos. Remember that artificial intelligence is advancing rapidly, so information that might not be available now, could be in the future.

Don’t give out any personal information, not your dog’s name or where you live.

Always keep your work emails, phones, Google accounts etc separate from your non-work life.

Use an unregistered mobile phone for your work and don’t add any non-work socials or accounts to that number. In fact there’s a lot to be said for really basic mobile phones without all the bells and whistles, but you’ll need a smart phone if you want to download Client Eye. You can get a phone (pay cash) at Tesco’s and top up with their cash vouchers. If you must add WhatsApp and other things, use your work email to sign up. (Proton Mail is good and also free). A lot of sex workers will disable anything Google related due to their annoying stalking snooperism.

If you must have a work Twitter account, also sign up with your work email address. Things can still be tied to your other accounts though if you are using the same IP address, but it lessens the risk.