The honest version. If you're cautious about who you trust with your real name, read this — then decide.

Being outed is the thing most people in this community are most afraid of, and they're right to be. So before we ask you to trust us with anything, here's exactly how we handle it. Not a legal disclaimer — the actual machinery.

Your scene name is the only name anyone sees

Across the entire site — the forum, the event calendar, your profile, private messages, class results, the member directory — you appear under your scene name. Your legal name is never displayed to other members, never attached to your posts, and never shown to staff who don't specifically need it. The public-facing "you" and the legal "you" are two different things by default, not by accident.

Your sensitive information is encrypted — and the key isn't in the database

The information that could actually identify you — legal name, date of birth, address, your references' contact details, anything in an incident report — is encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM. The key that unlocks it lives outside the database, in a file only the web server can read. If the database were ever leaked, those fields would be unreadable noise. A copy of the data alone gets an attacker nothing.

Only active vetters can unlock it, and every look is logged

Decrypting your information requires being in the Vetters group — a membership granted on purpose and removed when someone steps back from the role. Being a site administrator is not enough on its own. And every decryption is written to an audit log: who looked, when, and the reason they typed. If you ever want to know whether your file has been opened, you can ask, and we can show you.

You choose how your ID gets verified — including in person, where it never leaves your hands

We confirm you're a real, of-age adult, and you pick how:

• In person — a vetter looks at your ID, records the verified details, and hands it straight back. No photo, no scan, no copy is ever kept or uploaded. It never leaves the room.
• Online — handled by a dedicated identity-verification provider, so you never send a photo of your ID to us directly. Once the check is complete, the verification data is automatically purged.

Either way, we end up with a confirmation that you're you and you're 21+ — not a folder of your documents.

We run one background check, and we tell you what it is

We check your verified legal name against the U.S. National Sex Offender Public Registry (NSOPW.gov). That's the only background check we run. We're telling you it happens because surprise checks are exactly the kind of thing that erodes trust — the opposite of the point.

We keep as little as possible, for as short as possible

• If your application is declined, the encrypted personal details are wiped 90 days later.
• Online ID-verification data is purged automatically after the check.
• We don't sell data. We don't share it with advertisers. There are no tracking pixels, no third-party analytics, no fingerprinting — just the basic cookie that keeps you logged in.
• There are no dues and no payments, which means we never take your card and never store a single byte of financial information.

You stay in control

• No cold messages. Private messaging is connection-based — someone has to be a connection before they can DM you, so strangers can't slide in.
• Your achievements are private by default. Class and Tales badges on your profile are yours to reveal — private unless you choose to show them to members or the public.
• Two-factor login is available on your account whenever you want the extra lock.
• A quick-exit button is on every page — one tap sends you to a neutral site, in case someone walks up at the wrong moment.

When the law is involved

We'll always be straight with you about the limits. A court order (subpoena, warrant) is something no website can refuse, and Idaho's mandatory-reporting law for child abuse isn't something we can contract around. We don't volunteer your information to anyone, and where we're legally allowed to tell you a request was made, we will. The full details — including our cross-venue safety-alert policy — are in the Privacy Policy.

We're not a security company running hardened infrastructure. We're a small community that decided the people most at risk deserve to be designed for, not treated as an afterthought. If you spot a flaw or have a worry, tell us — we'd rather hear it from you.

When you're ready, start your application. Take your time reading first; that's the right instinct, and it's welcome here.