“Sex trafficking” hysteria has given cops and prosecutors a rationale for harassing the screening services sex workers use to protect themselves, often obliterating them in the process, and it won’t end anytime soon; even after the moral panic subsides in another two to three years, the laws and procedures it spawned will continue to exist and will be used to justify pogroms for years to come. So a friend of mine (the escort who wrote “Something in the Milk“) has decided to start a new screening service, not just for escorts but for anyone who wants to meet someone she only knows from the internet. It’s called “Up 2 Date” and it will be just a screening service; it will never carry escort ads or reviews, because those things give official busybodies excuses derived from “pandering” or “trafficking” laws. Up 2 Date doesn’t know or care why anyone needs to check up on somebody else; that’s their business as consenting adults. All we do is monitor members’ reputations to ensure that they are who they claim to be. Yes, I said “we”; I’ll be making a share of the profits, and since my reputation will be affected you can be sure I’ll be keeping a close eye on things. Here’s the explanation I wrote for the site:
The internet has created a revolution in the ability to meet new people for friendship, dating and business. Websites, online forums and other tools allow people to meet up with like-minded others they would previously have had to rely on introductions, chance meetings, conventions and print ads to reach, with a dramatic increase in privacy and convenience. Unfortunately, some of the people who use these resources are not what they pretend to be; they may intentionally deceive others in order to stalk them, harm them, ruin their lives or draw them into other dangerous situations. The key to avoiding this is screening, which is to say examining a potential contact’s reputation before deciding whether to meet him in real life; expert screening consists of piecing together bits of information to view the whole picture that they create. Sometimes just noticing little details can turn out to be what helps you to identify a dangerous situation. There are a number of services which check out their members’ online backgrounds in order to declare them OK; some even maintain a roster of other members who have met each individual and found nothing to cause alarm. But any defense which can be designed, can also be subverted; unscrupulous and unprincipled individuals (such as members of law enforcement agencies looking for people to harass for consensual adult activities) may expend considerable effort to create false profiles and establish false reputations before moving in to harvest anyone who innocently meets up with the false member under the mistaken impression that he is someone looking for a mutually-beneficial arrangement, when actually he is a predator out to inflict harm on anyone he can trick.
Up2Date performs background checks upon members upon joining, just as other reputation services do; what makes us different is that we periodically re-check as long as they remain members to ensure that no new information has cropped up to tarnish that reputation. When faced with difficult situations, some people might succumb to pressure and wind up doing desperate things to improve their immediate circumstances; for example, a person who has been arrested may be inclined to inform on others or even cooperate in a scheme to entrap people who trust them. It is our mission to allow our members to maintain their privacy by providing a secure background check and screening system to help them protect themselves from potentially embarrassing or even dangerous situations; our unique series of screening techniques provide the safest, most up to date and reliable estimation of safety when taking online interactions to the next level with real-life meetings. Up2Date is ideal for MeetUp groups, swingers, escorts, clients, online dating or any other situation; simply message admin privately, or reply here for help.
So, there you are. The site should be fully active by the time you read this, and ready to enroll members; we hope it becomes a staple in the toolkits sex workers, clients, kinksters and even vanilla daters use to keep themselves safe.
Umm, that’s a bit Orwellian isn’t it?
Helping people to ‘maintain their privacy’ by looking into their past personal relationships and publishing the data on the internet? Even if it is only available to currently paid up members – who could very well be cops or worse (though I’m having a hard time thinking of what could be worse than a cop).
They’re not publishing anything that isn’t already in the public domain.
It sounds like a data “harvesting” operation … completely from public sources.
But there’s no way it can help guys out if the girl is not a member and going by a “stage name”.
Yeah, but cross-matched data is more than the sum of it’s parts.
It’s pretty hard to see how mining very personal information from diverse public domain sources and making it available all in one convenient package to paying customers is maintaining the privacy of the target – even if she did enter into a commercial agreement allowing it.
And surely if members were to report on other members that would all go into the mix as well. So I’d guess there will be more than just public domain data there. In fact it’s hard to see how it will avoid descending into a mess of libelous BS once a few members have slagged a few others. Then your wife hears about it and pays to access your data …
Still, the business model is good. Every time my profile gets trashed I’d have to sign up again with a new alias. Ka-ching!
Lol – they aren’t “mining” data – that would be too work intensive. You get the background check from one source like “verify me” and the rest is stuff that is reported by members. You could do this yourself.
We are working with a private investigation firm that has access to information outside the private domain.
As to female members, their private information remains private and their screening is just as thorough as with current screening sites, the difference is that we take action when reports are made to investigate diligently rather than just going through the motions of keeping a community safe while ignoring arrests, and reports that could have prevented those arrests.
It is not impossible to maintain this type of reputation control, it is really quite simple. My colleagues and I have learned to use this system to screen more extensively than you may imagine possible. It has kept us safe and even put us in a position of knowing information that the screening sites did not.
It is time to bring screening back to a serious matter of safety controlled by Sex Workers that are active in the Sex Worker Rights movement and have loyalty to the community at large.
So you protect members’ privacy?
Except from PIs, other members, people who maintain the database, anyone who can hack, steal or subpoena data from any of those sources …
Probably the benefits outweigh the risks for many sex workers, but IMHO any ‘swingers’ or other amateurs who’d sign up for something like this would either have to be idiots or have nothing whatsoever to hide.
No information is kept in any database on the site making it impossible for anyone to “hack the site” to steal the data.
We really covered all the bases.
Im sure you understand the benefits of not being an “escort” site but rather a community site when it comes to federal matters.
It makes no difference to me if other groups such as swingers find it beneficial, the fact is that we are open and available to other groups which makes us less of a target for the hysteria.
Our goal is to keep advertising and discussion of what we do to a minimum. Obviously our biggest concern is the need for safety in sex work, but if we made it our stated sole purpose, the federal bullseye would shift to our url much more quickly.
I’m not quite “getting” what’s going on here. If I’m not a member – and a chick who is a member wants to date me … you’ll perform a background check on me?
Maggie – you have been arrested – so if you’re a member and I look at your profile, it’s going to reflect that arrest?
See, when it comes to hookers – I have never discriminated against those who got busted – because that’s kind of an operational hazard of the profession. It may not reflect on the integrity of the girl. Anybody can “slip” up. I know girls who were arrested in hotel parking lots by cops without a shard of evidence.
An arrest is only one piece of a larger puzzle. It isn’t wise to discuss the entire process, as other sites do not discuss their entire process. The very important part of Up2date is staying in tune with the community, and detecting dishonesty before it becomes a problem. One huge difference that we have is an alternate password that when entered alerts us that an account has been compromised.
The use of a “panic password” will alert Up2date that an account has been compromised and limit its permissions so that it will not be used to harm other members. It is a way to give the police what they want when you are being harassed, and also protect the community as a whole.
Exchanging personal information through encrypted off site connections are another way that we protect our members privacy.
Most of all however, it is a matter of devoting personal attention to the safety of all, in the same way that each of us have devoted personal attention to our own screening, and quite successfully.
It’s an intriguing concept, certainly.
One question (because I don’t have the luxury of running through the full signup process myself, at the moment) is if effort was made to make the site trans-inclusive? Because something like this would certainly be valuable for dating safely for trans women (if it’s not too cost prohibitive).
I am also a bit curious about the process used to check one’s background, and guard against aliases. It’s a great concept – now, how effective can it be expected to be? What is checked?
Yah, as the police state harasses more and more of us, the percentage of those with spurious domestic violence or regret rape or statuatory rape sex offender records will keep going up. This feels like a an idea that is great on the face of it, but I do not see how anyone will be able to keep the power of any Executive branch from eventually owning the whole thing. Feels like the NRA saying “we’ll set up a registry” although I think they never would as they have a better vision of the slippery slope that would be. Just don’t do it(r).
I think this is a perfect option for the trans community.
Sadly, revealing too many specifics regarding the components of the screening process is like writing a handbook of how to circumvent it.
That being said this service is comparable to the screening services that have been around for years. The difference is that Up2Date has applied knowledge obtained during the last several years of harassment as the War on Whores has been taken to the level of hysteria as we have all seen. Simple interventions like the panic password have been necessary for a long time but the screening industry has remained stagnant despite the lessons that we have been taught along the way.
Initially a member is verified to be who they say they are, and in the occupation that they state that they are in. From there, reputation is monitored and controlled through individual experiences.
Members can assign positive or negative reputation points to other members indicating positive or negative experiences. It allows us to continually monitor the reputation of our members as we expect only the most exceptional behavior during offline interactions.
As for specific steps taken to include the trans community, I am open to what you think that should be. We are open to any member, without discrimination.
Will be interesting to see how well this works. Reputation systems are notoriously hard to get right and the human race has a lot of experience on how to subvert them and some particularly self-centered and egoistic groups do not even notice what huge damage that causes. Still, no reason to give up.
Up2Date has collaborated with a private investigation firm that does the initial screening to verify the identity of the individual applying, as well as to confirm the occupation and contact information provided.
The main difference between Up2Date and other services that are currently providing screening is that it takes the position that protecting the safety of our community comes before insuring members stay paying members.
For one reason or another there have been too many mistakes with our current screening solutions. Too many arrests. Too many times that these problems could have been prevented and yet concerns that were brought to the attention of administration were ignored, often with the person making the reports labeled as paranoid and worse.
This is not about paranoia, this is about being responsible for the safety of all involved and taking reports of breaches in security seriously.
That is the Up2Date difference. We continue to monitor members experiences with other members, and when “something in the milk ain’t clean”, we remove that member until the situation can be verified.
This is a service that is operated by sex workers that have utilized many different screening methods and have been able to identify and avoid problems.
While the service is not exclusively provided to the Sex Work community, we feel that this only further protects the community at large.
There are protections built in within our system to allow members to discretely alert the system when they are forced to surrender their password, as well as a discreet exchange of information during the sign up process.
When P411 began, I was it’s biggest supporter, but it certainly looks as though they’ve fallen down on the job. It is time for someone that actually cares about protecting the community to take over.
This service is for those that can’t afford to make mistakes. At Up2Date we are your single source for screening. You can count on it.
I “roger” the need for sites that offer genuine screening services. An urgent need for escorts’ safety of course, but escorts aren’t the only people who can benefit from them.
If I had simply stumbled across this on my own, I would have figured it had been created by a scammer who wanted people to volunteer their personal information in order to steal their identities.
Thanks for explaining your connection with this, Maggie, and for explaining who’s behind it. (In general terms of course, but that’s good enough of course.) For me, that makes a big difference.
This was a collaborative effort as activists to stand up and say enough is enough with providers being arrested, warnings being ignored and a generalized sense that money was more important than our safety in this community.
It is time for those closest to the Sex Worker Rights movement to step in to protect our own, as well as their clients from danger.
The current leader in the screening industry has dropped the ball more than once and has failed to take seriously the need to protect the safety of all involved.
Lives have been ruined. Arrests have been made. It is time to say enough is enough and return the responsibility for our safety to those that care for it the most. Activists like Maggie McNeil.
Well, “industry leaders” do usually not get into that position because they have a good product, but because they can sell it well or can outmaneuver the competition. Greed is also an important factor in becoming an “industry leader”. The advantage of people like Maggie is that you can find out with high reliability and low effort what motivates them to provide such services and that gives you a good estimation of the quality-level a service aims for.
The only way to get good products or services is if somebody really cares.