Recently a number of people in clearnet CL and adjacent fiction communities have been harassed or doxxed by malicious actors. This is always an ongoing threat and we have always encouraged people to stay safe, but we have not seen this much anti activity in many years. Some people may have grown complacent, or be too young to have seen that these dangers are real. The people who think "this cannot happen to me" are the people it is most likely to happen to.
While GATB itself has not been specifically targeted yet, some of these malicious actors have made accounts here, and it is reasonable to believe it is only a matter of time. We always encourage everyone to assume this is happening whether there is specific evidence or not. While we monitor them and try to contain what damage they can do, at the end of the day this is a website that anybody can join and staff time is volunteer time. We do our best, but the cold fact of reality is that the person who is most invested in your safety is you.
Note: These people do not care that you've never done anything illegal or harmful, all that matters to them is that you are a socially-acceptable target for them to get off on harassing.
Here are some tips to stay safe:
Never use a real personal email address when signing up for CL sites or for CL-related correspondence. Create a new, free, anonymous, private email somewhere like https://proton.me/mail or https://tuta.com/
Never re-use usernames, passwords, or anything else across sites, especially across CL sites and real life sites. If you have already done this, use the "Report" feature or contact staff with /staff in chat and we can rename your account here.
Generate a random username with something like https://jimpix.co.uk/words/rando...me-generator.php
The most important thing you can do to make your passwords more secure is to make them longer (https://xkcd.com/936/).
Ideally, use a personal, offline password manager like https://keepassxc.org/ and generate a long, random, unique passphrase for every site. If you're worried about the password manager itself being compromised, use "peppers" - combine the stored passphrase with a traditional password that you keep only in your memory.
Never put personal information in a password assuming nobody will ever see it. It can trivially be logged by the site you are connecting to, most sites store them insecurely, and breaches happen constantly.
Do not "nick link" other people by asking publicly if a different username on another site is them.
Never link to or post screenshots or information about accounts on other services that have ever been in any way linked to your real identity. Databases are breached constantly, services introduce leaks you can't possibly monitor, and everything you can possibly delete has a site dedicated to archiving it forever. Examples include: Twitter accounts (a 2022 breach exposes associated email addresses and phone numbers), YouTube or Google drive links (tools exist to look up the associated Google account), Reddit or other social media, gamer tags, Minecraft accounts, etc.
Use a completely separate browser for any CL-related browsing activity. We recommend Tor Browser (https://www.torproject.org/) and Mullvad Browser (https://mullvad.net/en/browser) - in fact, these are the only officially supported browsers here. Even better, use Tails (https://tails.net/) with no persistence. Check a site like https://fingerprint.com/ to verify that you have a completely different fingerprint from your real browsing activity.
Always use Tor or a VPN for CL-related browsing activity. Even if you trust the site you are visiting, they may get hacked, or be fronted by CDN, or any number of other things that are beyond your and their control and would expose your IP address. If you use a VPN, choose a reputable provider that has third-party audits and has proven they don't have logs to give up. Mullvad (https://mullvad.net/) is the only provider I personally recommend.
Never reveal personally identifying information such as your exact age or birthday. Your DOB can be even more identifying than your full real name. Consider "accidentally" revealing personal information that is false.
Don't talk about local events, weather, power or internet outages, etc. If you disappear from chat and come back saying "sorry, storm knocked the power out", this is often enough information to narrow your location down to a specific neighborhood.
Don't talk about major family events that other family members might post about on public social media - the death of a loved one, the birth of a niece or nephew, etc.
Don't share any social media links, blog posts, etc that you have commented on or otherwise interacted with using your real identity.
Consider changing how you type for your CL identities. Use different spellings and expressions than you normally would, or adopt quirky affects.
Don't mention very niche or obscure hobbies or interests that you participate in under your real identity.
Search your own usernames and emails using the same tools they do:
For your peace of mind, here are some things we do to help you stay safe:
we don't collect any personal information or email addresses
we force you to use a much longer passphrase than most sites
we actively monitor known threat actors and notify people affected when something happens
staff remove and warn when anyone posts something too identifying
staff edit links to remove tracking ids
all logs and scrolled-off chat messages are wiped from the server within 24h
chat messages are only visible to the people you see in the channel member list when you send the chat; anyone joining later cannot see them
All that said, we still advise you to ALWAYS assume every message posted on the forum or in chat has been saved by someone who intends to do you harm.
We are deliberately not giving the people responsible for these acts attention, and ask that you do not name them or share their links here. They are narcissists who feed on your reaction. Do not give them the time of day. Keep yourself safe and ignore them.