Anonymous Chat

Anonymous chat means the person you talk to never learns your name, your email or where to find you afterwards. It does not mean nobody knows anything. Three parties see different parts of every chat: the stranger, the site and your internet provider. Once you know who sees what, staying anonymous is mostly a matter of not handing over the rest yourself.

Who sees what in an anonymous video chat

Text chat and video chat are not equally anonymous. In a text chat you are a nickname and whatever you type. On camera you also show a face, a voice and a room, and none of that can be taken back once someone has seen it.

The table uses LemonChat as the worked example, because we can say exactly what our own system does instead of guessing about someone else's.

What a stranger can do with one chat

The real risk in anonymous chat rarely comes from hackers. It comes from the person on the other side, who has a screen recorder and plenty of time.

• Record you. No website can stop a screen recording running on someone else's computer. Treat every video chat as something that could be saved.
• Search your face. Face search engines such as PimEyes compare a face with photos already published online. One clear screenshot can lead back to your Instagram if your face is on it.
• Read your room. A school hoodie, a parcel with a delivery label, the view from your window. People have been found from less.
• Look up your IP. Random video chats connect the two browsers directly, so each browser receives the other side's public IP address. Omegle worked the same way, which is why browser extensions that showed an Omegle partner's location were around for years. An IP usually points to an internet provider and a city, not a street, but it is still more than a stranger needs.

None of this takes skill. It takes a screenshot, a free search and a bit of patience.

What the site keeps, and for how long

Every chat service keeps something, because a site that kept nothing could not ban anyone. The useful question is what it keeps and for how long. This is LemonChat's list, taken from our privacy policy.

• Your account. With anonymous sign-in, a nickname and a password hash. With Google sign-in, also your email, profile name and avatar link.
• One camera frame. During a call, a frame is checked by our own moderation system for banned content and estimated age. Each new frame overwrites the previous one, and nothing is sent to outside services.
• Session records. Who was matched with whom, from which IP addresses and when, for up to 30 days. What was said or shown is never logged.
• Bans, reports and payments. Kept even if you delete your account, so a banned user cannot simply start over.

Video and audio streams are not recorded. Chat messages are not stored with your account: a filter reads them in memory, and a few may be kept with no link to who wrote them, to tune that filter.

Anonymous sign-in or Google sign-in?

Both keep you anonymous to the people you meet. Strangers never see your email or your profile name either way. The difference is what the site holds and what happens if you lose access.

• Anonymous sign-in. You choose a nickname and a password. We never learn your email, so nothing on the account points to your real name. There is also no password reset: forget the password and the account is gone.
• Google sign-in. One tap, and you can get back in from any device. In exchange we store your email, profile name and avatar link, which no other user ever sees.

If you plan to buy coins or Boost, use Google sign-in so you can always get back to them. If you just want to talk tonight, anonymous sign-in gives the site the least.

Your internet provider, and whether a VPN helps

Your provider cannot see inside the video or the messages, because both travel encrypted. It can see that you connected to LemonChat, when, and for how long.

A VPN moves that knowledge from your provider to the VPN company, and it swaps the IP address the stranger receives for one of the VPN's servers. That is the whole of what it does here.

Two caveats. A VPN does nothing about your face, your voice or your room, which is how most people actually get identified. And some VPN setups still let the browser announce your real address over WebRTC, the technology video chats use. A WebRTC leak test shows which address your browser gives out while the VPN is on.

The scam built around anonymous video chat

The most common real harm in random video chat is not stalking. It is sextortion, and it is run as a business. The UK's National Crime Agency says men aged 18 to 30 are among those most at risk, and that the gangs behind it usually work from overseas. It follows the same script almost every time:

1. A flirty match. An attractive stranger, usually a woman, who turns sexual within minutes. The woman on screen can be a looped recording.
2. A move to another app. They ask to continue on Instagram, Snapchat or WhatsApp, where the chat site's moderation cannot follow.
3. Something explicit. They send an image first, then ask you to undress on camera.
4. The threat. A recording, a list of your followers or contacts, and a demand: pay, often in gift cards, or the video goes to your family and friends.

Notice what step four needs: your real name or profile. That is why keeping your accounts out of the conversation protects you more than any setting.

If it happens anyway, the NCA's advice is to stop replying, block them on every platform and not pay, or not pay any more. Paying shows you can pay, and the demands usually grow. Keep the messages as evidence instead of deleting them, and report it to the police and to the platform. If you are an adult worried that an intimate image will be posted, StopNCII.org creates a digital fingerprint of it so participating platforms can block uploads, and the image itself never leaves your phone.

Set it up once before you press Start

Ten minutes of preparation covers most of what the sections above describe.

Is LemonChat an anonymous chat?

To the people you meet, yes. They see your face if you show it, your voice, the gender you picked and a country flag, and nothing that leads to your accounts. To us, not completely, and we would rather say so than promise otherwise: we keep what we need to ban people who break the rules, for as long as our privacy policy says. Sign in anonymously with a nickname, keep your socials out of the conversation, and the strangers you meet will know exactly as much as you decide to tell them.