I'm getting ready for my first security clearance process. I've read official docs, but a lot of online advice conflicts.

For anyone who's been through a security clearance recently, what helped the most and what surprised you?

Is Signal private and confidential?
Can someone find out your phone numbers if you use it?

Anyone else concerned with baby's privacy? We're all kind of numb to the regular announcements of privacy breaches from almost every company we've ever interacted with. You never know who your messages are shared with via screencapture or otherwise. Then, there came the rumors of children's school photos being circulated among the Epstein class for picking victims. Whether or not the latter is true, I've been supremely concerned with any information about my pregnancy and my child being circulated online. So I instituted a rule - I'm not texting or WhatsApping, not using Social Media to talk about my baby.

It sounds crazy and sometimes I feel like I'm doing a disservice to myself. I live 1200 miles from my family and so many of them don't even know I'm pregnant. I can't have a baby shower because the cost and the travel is prohibitively expensive, not to mention stressful to plan even without this added communication limitation.

But I just can't bring myself to trust that what I share on social media, on text and on WhatsApp, is actually secure. So, I've got my closest people on board with using Signal to talk about baby stuff, and even some people who use it exclusively to communicate with me.

I've slipped here and there, and there are of course people who find out through the grape vine and congratulate me "You're pregnant!" via text. I'm responding selectively and advocating for Signal.

There doesn't seem to be any movement from other expecting parents about baby's privacy in this way. I'm shocked that in 2026, I still see parents sharing photos of their children online, not knowing where in the dark web those will end up. In my case, I've taken it to more extreme levels trying to scrape any evidence that I'm expecting at all.

Has anyone else been thinking of this? What are you doing to protect baby's privacy online?