Do you need to share that on social media?

Do you have to check in at an event on social media?

Do you need to take that photo?

Do you need to post that photo?

Do you need to tag others in that photo?

Are you aware of where to find basic privacy settings on your platform?

Do you need to repost that?

Do you need to friend that person or join that group?

Do you need to like that post?

Do you know how to vet people?

Do you know the muting/blocking options on your platform and the difference between them?

The first question is the best question:

Do you have a funny feeling about this person? If you do, LISTEN. BLOCK. Don't just unfollow. Let trusted others know.

Is this a person you met in real life?

How do you know them?

Do any of your friends know them?

What have your interactions been like?

Do they have content on their account?

Does that content look real?

What people/groups/tags do they follow?

Do they have a profile image?

Is that profile image of a person or a symbol?

If it's a symbol, has that symbol been co-opted by hate groups?

Does that person's posts talk about violence, even against awful people?

Does that person's content encourage others towards violent speech or action?

Does that person talk about protests/actions?

Does that person ask people if they're going to XYZ protest or action?

Does that person want to "burn it all down"?

Currency

When was it originally published?

• Has it been updated or revised since then?

Reliability

• Did the author use any evidence, and show their sources with citations and references, or list of sources?

• Can you verify the information through other sources?

Author

• Who is the author, and what are their credentials?

• Who is the publisher or sponsor?

• What does the URL end with? (.gov, .org, .edu, .com?)

Purpose/Point of View

• What is the author's motivation for publishing the resource?

• Is the author trying to inform, persuade, sell to, or entertain you?

• Are there advertisements or links to buy things? If so, are they marked clearly or sponsored by the resource?

Stop using Chrome. Use Brave, Firefox or Duck Duck Go. Understand that everything you do on your phone can be tracked.

Just be aware that most of what we are doing and saying is being tracked by someone

-@catzmeow.bsky.social

• Facebook and Google’s pervasive surveillance poses an unprecedented danger to human rights (2019)

• Why You should Delete Google Chrome (from 2021)

• Google Starts Tracking All Your Devices in 6 Weeks (2025)

• Calling women ‘household objects’ now permitted on Facebook after Meta updated its guidelines (2025)

Look at the years of these articles...look how fast we got to "household objects".

Everything you are doing online, especially in Chrome or on Facebook/Instagram, is tracked, logged, and easily searched by someone working for very large, very rich, very politically connected corporations. Other than going completely offline, there is no "safe" option. Learn about this, become aware, learn some safer use rules, and share them with others.

Dia Kayyali, writing for the Center for Media Justice, explains that a threat modeling or risk assessment requires asking yourself the following five questions and recommends taking out pen and paper, brainstorming and consider discussing these questions along with the people you work closely with, since security is a collective effort:

• What do I need to protect?

• Who do I need to protect it from?

• How much do they want that information, and how easy is it for them to get it?

• What happens if they do get it?

• What am I willing to do to stop that from happening?

^{he history of antagonism towards witchcraft, Wicca, Neopaganism (at least in the US) goes back pretty far. We are not on any big radars yet, but we probably will be. Also, if you are reading this, the odds that you are also in one or more marginalized identities is pretty high. Some of those identities are definitely on big radars.}

^{Whoever you are, you are here because you're at least curious about this padlet. If you have been in the community a while, you have picked up on some tips/tricks and best practices for safety as a witch and/or pagan. If you have been in a long time, you are well aware that only a few decades ago people could AND DID get into legal trouble for their beliefs. If you are young or new to the community, you may not know this.}

^{I do not judge you if this is news to you. I don't meant to scare you, but please know that people can weaponize Witchcraft, Wicca/other Neopagan beliefs (W&P for short) against people they don't like, just like they can weaponize sexuality, disability, gender, class, race, etc. etc. Do not take my word. Please search and learn about that. I will of course provide some sources to get you started.}

^{This is not "The Burning Times". There are no marauding witchfinders on your main street. Until there are. So please be aware of the risks that being openly W&P online can being not just you but also your community. Please use this entire padlet as a jump-off point to learn about how social media works, how digital safety works, and spread that knowledge.}

^{The purpose of this guide is to educate anyone in this community who is a) not very politically involved and b) not very aware of the risks involved in being out of the broom closet. What I have here are my own thoughts as well as resources from others about digital safety. My main focus is social media. Although this would probably scandalize community elders, a lot of W&P life takes place on social media.}

^{Social media can be very fun, it can be educational, and it has certainly bought benefits to the W&P community. It's free, it's convenient, and you don't have to know a lot of tech skills to use it.}

^{Over the years it has become so slick, so simple, so easy that its benefits are now its dangers. If it's easy for you as a pagan to find pagan interest groups on FB for instance, it's also easy for bad actors to find the same groups and harass people for being pagan. I genuinely don't know if this is a conversation "we" are having in the "community" right now, but it bears looking at.}

^{I'm not here to tell you to get off social media. I'm not even doing that myself. I'm here to compile basic digital safety resources for a community that doesn't always stay grounded in the mundane world. I was not always careful online and I'm neither an expert or a model of "proper" digital safety. But we can learn together and protect ourselves the best we can.}

^{In this padlet, you will see some resources here that use heavy terms like "threat modeling", "risk assessment", or "surveillance". I'm not trying to scare you here, but I want you to be aware of what these terms are referring to. In the "Thoughts" section, there are posts that explain these terms. Please read those first to help you understand what's going on here.}

^{Blessed Be,}

^Liz

If you've never heard "harm reduction", it is a term often used in public health and the larger medical field to indicate practices professionals can use to reduce the harm done by problems like drug addiction. Harm reduction's aim for addiction is not so much ending the addiction but instead keeping people safe while they use and reducing various forms of danger they face due to their addictions. It is a very effective approach that can be applied to a multitude of fields. Here, it implies that when someone teaches you about digital safety, their focus should be not on scaring you or making you completely change your computers or digital life, but instead help you understand tech and empower you to make yourself safer online.

Some people cautiously hide their beliefs and never tell others about their involvement in Wicca — not their families, not their friends, and certainly not their employers. They hide their altars, keep their books hidden in drawers instead of displayed on shelves, and find an excuse to leave in a hurry when people start talking about religion. They only share their beliefs with like-minded Wiccans, and sometimes with no one at all.

Other people, from the moment they encounter Wicca, begin telling everyone they know about the wonderful new world that they have discovered. They heap books on their friends, they hang pentacles in their cubicles at work, and they wear bold T-shirts proudly displaying their devotion to Wicca. They're proud, and they want the world to know it.

People who keep silent aren't just being paranoid. Most Wiccans are well versed in the long and brutal history of persecution against real and alleged Witches. Discrimination and persecution continue today around the world. In the United States, Wiccans are fired from jobs, lose custody of their children, are discriminated against in housing, or are forced to make other painful sacrifices because of their religion.

Some people want to keep silent because they worry about being put in a position where they are forced to divulge the names of fellow Wiccans. In addition, some Wiccans are alarmed by the escalating use of technology to collect and reveal very private information about individuals.

Threat modeling is a process by which potential threats, such as structural vulnerabilities or the absence of appropriate safeguards, can be identified and enumerated, and countermeasures prioritized.^[1]

Ed note: In plain English, this is going over something, like a building, a business, a process, etc. and seeing where potential weak spots are. It also attempts to come up with an educated guess about who/what may try to do harm and what that harm wold be like, so you can be better prepared.

The purpose of threat modeling is to provide defenders with a systematic analysis of what controls or defenses need to be included, given the nature of the system, the probable attacker's profile, the most likely attack vectors, and the assets most desired by an attacker. Threat modeling answers questions like "Where am I most vulnerable to attack?", "What are the most relevant threats?", and "What do I need to do to safeguard against these threats?".

Conceptually, most people incorporate some form of threat modeling in their daily life and don't even realize it.^{[citation needed]} Commuters use threat modeling to consider what might go wrong during the morning journey to work and to take preemptive action to avoid possible accidents. Children engage in threat modeling when determining the best path toward an intended goal while avoiding the playground bully. In a more formal sense, threat modeling has been used to prioritize military defensive preparations since antiquity.

Also, I have included a lengthy quote from the RACK wikipedia entry - I am not linking because in the entry, you will see a photo of a man who has just engaged in some heavy impact play and he has superficial injuries. This is to make you aware that this is something you may not want to view or are not mature enough to view. If you accept that risk, you can go to Wikipedia yourself, but I ain't serving it up to you.

Some of the concepts from the Kink community are helpful here, specifically RACK. I had RACK in mind when I made that long list of "Daily Life on Social Media" questions to ask yourself. RACK stands for "Risk Aware Consensual Kink". It's not a license to do whatever in a kink encounter. It's actually quite the opposite: it invites you and your partner(s) to consider the risks inherent in BDSM and make sure all involved parties are aware and consenting to those risks. Ethical BDSM is almost exhaustively communicative as well it should be. Please read on to learn about RACK:

The philosophy for RACK consists of the following components:

• Risk-aware: The partners involved are well-informed of the risks involved in the proposed activity.

• Consensual: In light of those risks, both or all partners have, of sound mind, offered preliminary consent to engage in said activity.

• Kink: Said activity can be classified as alternative sex.^[5]

While "Safe, sane and consensual" (SSC) attempts to describe and differentiate BDSM from abuse in ways that are easy for the non-BDSM public to comprehend, RACK differs from it in that it acknowledges that nothing is ever 100% inherently safe. By acknowledging that what may be safe or sane to one person may not be considered the same to another, the RACK philosophy tends to be more inclusive of activities that others may consider as edgeplay.^[6] There is no "safe" or "not safe" within RACK, only "safer" and "less safe."^[7]

This highlighted portion is why I included material on RACK in this padlet. If you are practicing witchcraft and/or espousing Pagan beliefs, you need to know that being out about these identities is not without risk. In the US alone, there are still anti-witchcraft laws on the books. There are still many places where being ANY religion other than Christian can result in discrimination socially, professionally, and legally. Unless you literally never breathe a word about your beliefs, never buy a single item, never interact with another W&P, never so much as put crescent moon emoji on your profile, there is no "safe". There is only "safer" and "less safe" on social media. It's up to you to become aware of risks and be considerate with that awareness and your own actions.

In engineering and systems theory, redundancy is the intentional duplication of critical components or functions of a system with the goal of increasing reliability of the system, usually in the form of a backup or fail-safe, or to improve actual system performance (source: Wiki)

Why on earth is this here? I'm including redundancy in this discussion of digital safety to encourage to you back up your data in multiple places, not just a single social media platform. This includes contact info, files, photos/videos, etc. Imagine if Facebook went down. Gone. Kaput. What would that do to your social life? Imagine if Google Docs or MS Word disappeared. How would that impact you? These last 2 are not social media, but it's worth mentioning. Back up your digital footprint!

Please practice redundancy: be on multiple platforms. Have your stuff backed up onto an external hard drive or at least flash drive. Make sure you know where and how to contact your friends and community if it is no longer safe to use the normal app you always use.