How to Safely Send Your Pics How To Safely Send Your Nudes A guide to sexting best practices for you and your favorite taker-of-nudes. BuzzFeed News Reporter Twitter Link If you've ever sent or received a sext, you're not alone. That number may even be higher now, as the study came out just as Snapchat, then an ephemeral multimedia messaging platform built around disappearing photos and video, was taking off. In a 2013 study, about 27% of all smartphone users said they receive sexts on a regular basis, and 12% admitted to sending nudes (though the people polled may have been being coy). This is a judgment-free zone. If you want to send a nude (and have a willing participant), then send a nude. Human bodies are beautiful! There’s nothing wrong with nudity! But it's also totally normal to want to maintain control of the way your nudes are seen and distributed. The only way to truly control your nude distribution is to do it yourself. Just follow these simple steps: Take a pic of your goods, download the pic to an encrypted hard drive, drop in a password-protected folder, confiscate your partner’s phone, show them the image, close the file, return their phone, and proceed. But that’s deeply unsexy! And also not how sexting works. If you decide to send nudes, you assume the risk of those nudes ending up in a public forum, and should prepare yourself for the worst case scenario - but you can significantly lower that risk by following this guide to best practices for ~sensual~ electronic communication. These tips don’t offer a complete guarantee that your nudes won’t be leaked, but they are a good First Line of Defense Against the Dark Interwebs. One note: If you’re under 18, never, ever, under any circumstances, share a photo of yourself naked. You can be prosecuted as a sex offender, even for sending a picture of yourself consensually.