Dream week -- and a warning

The week before last was a dream week for me. My reluctantly-tolerant wife went out of town, and I'm working from home. The only need to interact with anyone as myself was on that Tuesday, when I needed to go into the office and we were scheduled to have a housekeeper visit. All in all, it was a great time. I dressed up and put on makeup and wig every morning except Tuesday, and on Tuesday evening, I painted my fingernails and kept them that way for the rest of the week. I made a couple of grocery trips at night and had dinner one night at a restaurant/bar that is popular with local crossdressers. I was sad when the week came to an end.

My wife knew, of course, that I was dressing up, and she received confirmation of it on that Wednesday when she called me for a video chat without giving me advance notice so I could clean up out of respect for our DADT detente. (I spared her the wig, but I didn't see any need to turn down her call otherwise.)

The punchline (and warning) came this weekend. On the last night before she was to come home, I took a selfie and ordered a print for a souvenir, to be kept in my journal. I deleted the photo from my Google Photos account as soon as the notice came saying that the order was ready for pickup. The hardcopy is safely put away. Yesterday, however, my wife said that the photo had turned up in her Google Photos account. Apparently, the facts that I had unshared that specific photo with my wife and deleted it from my account had not prevented it from remaining accessible to her a full week afterward. We had a good laugh, and I've filed a complaint with Google, but the bottom line remains: if you are trying hard to keep a secret, don't take a photo with anything connected to the Internet (I didn't), and don't upload it to the Internet. Privacy settings are not necessarily bug-free.

So glad you and your wife had a good laugh over it.That made me smile :)
Sounds like you had a fabulous week.

Nancy, thanks for sharing the good and bad! Sounds similar to the long weekend I had in August, wife knew but didn't really say much. I won't ever start video chatting with her or anyone for just the possibility of getting caught, same for tracking. I would also caution all about faces on google or other platforms, AI and Facial recognition is making leaps and bounds so any pic out there could be quite problematic for some, if you absolutely cannot deal with being outed I'd recommend never putting a face pic here or anywhere for that matter.

How was the dinner out? I've only managed to go to a Panera, can order from the machine and other than the pickup will not have to make eye contact, so far so good though one of the staff giggled when I picked up my order (guy name). I did get a CC with just J to avoid this situation but just goofed.

I also learned about cleaning, really cleaning, makeup off before bed, was quite a mess in the morning!

Thanks for sharing!

That is a good warning to share Nancy58. Sometimes the pink fog hits so hard that we don?t think straight so I?m sure there could be a nasty surprise waiting for someone if they?re trying to keep this secret. What if your google account was linked to your work account. That could lead to an unpleasant work environment or a ruined marriage.

Nancy, I'm glad you got a week to dress. At least your wife had a sense of humor about the photo.

So bad, I hate all the tracking.
I bought an All In One Girdle three years ago and paid with PayPal and there's no way to delete the transaction.
No more PayPal for me.
When I bought my Breast forms I paid with a money order!

Your wife is a keeper, look after her.

On another thread on this forum, Aunt Kelly from Houston observes that placing photos on a medium designed to share stuff is reckless. I wish I had written that because it is absolutely true. Placing information where Google and their peers have easy access to it is foolish.

The best way that I have heard is to view and organize photos and data is on an older computer that has no access to the internet. Then store the information on portable media, backed up, all without internet access. The surest way to preserve photos is hard copy, but that has its own set of issues.

Google shares photos and data with everyone on the same routers, with similar names, similar usage patterns, etc. Anything their algorithms indicates may overlap. Read about it in their user agreement. If Google is bad, Facebook is worse. Both corporations claim ownership of every photo that appears on their sites. And all documents, too. They sell anything that can make them a buck. Yep, it is in that agreement. Therefore, I strictly limit my digital presence. This forum has only one photo of Abby. There is only one other forum, password protected, that has two other photos.

Though I avoid those tech companies like the plague they are, I am screwed because my wife is a Google/Facebook junkie. And I have three sisters-in-law who are even more junkies than my wife. I get ads for stuff my wife looks at, for what the sisters-in-law look at, and more. I suspect it works in reverse the same way also. Therefore, I am careful what I look at. I use a vpn for work and my company, one of the state?s largest companies, has the best firewall and IT staff they can get. That cuts down on the ads on my work computer for her stuff that she watches at home and mine as well.

NjJamie, this last dinner out was at a place that I knew to be completely safe. Otherwise, when I go out for dinner, I look for a booth. I've only done it three or four times. I live in an area where LGBTQ people are pretty well accepted.

Google in particular has me paranoid, this sort of thing seems to happen :straightface: I'm going to go double check my privacy settings lol

One of my old smartphones had face recognition AI to tag and group the pictures in the gallery. It seems that I did my make up pretty well because I never told the app to link people with contacts, and TamT pictures were not mixed with my male ones... except once that I found one of TamT's picture inside my sister's group.

Great to read of your week of girl fun at home. I know what you mean about the interweb. I very seldom let any thing near the web. Far too easy to click on the wrong button. I did it today. Hopefully you won't all get a photo of me in a bra and pants though. At 60 I hope to keep such pictures between me and my wife.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zoey0897

Google in particular has me paranoid, this sort of thing seems to happen :straightface: I'm going to go double check my privacy settings lol

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Be careful; they will sometimes just change your settings on their own, and stuff you want private somehow winds up all over the place. It took me a while to figure out that I had to delete photos from the web, then the phone, then the email. And even then, sometimes they would re-appear from out of nowhere. All in Google's attempt to make sure that I always had all of my photos with me all the time. So far, I've managed to keep a few pics on my phone by changing the file name extension to something non picture related, and when I want to see it I have to use a file manager program to rename it. Then of course it becomes 'fair game' for google to seize it and plaster it all over the place again.
Google: 'OOOO, you have a picture! Now I'll have to copy it to your google account online and your other phone, too!'
At least google plus photo galleries are gone now. I think......

Judy, Once I realized that Paypal transactions were there in perpetuity, I deleted my account. A few weeks later I signed up again under my same email address and it is like a clean slate, everything from the past is no longer accessible to me.

@1958Candi

Insightful!

There's another current thread about a photo on the Internet and my advice is the same, never put anything on the Internet that you wouldn't want anybody to see. Once you upload it, you have lost all control of it.

If you realy want a hard copy of a photo, put it on an SD card, take it to Walmart (or another photo place) and have them print it.

Sounds like you had a wonderful time as your girly self.
I always like when I can get out too while the wife explores her independance.
Being outed by the internet can be a problem for me too.
My wife isn't in the know, per say (DADT)...but she isn't naive and has never asked questions about my feminine side.
She sees my bra trained breasts and epulated skin, painted gloss clear long fingernails.
I do have a laptop I do not share with anyone and a debit card from a separate bank for my personal use.
But being I a close floating IP address as the one she uses, I worry some thing will put 2 and 2 together.
Facebook was notorious for suggesting friends! Be careful there!
Yes, the risk is real the internet will out you.
And God knows how visible I am on Google search engines.
But as long as I don't link any of my male side to my female side, I look so different that putting 2 and 2 together for anyone won't be easy.
Never share an internet account, address or cell phone number with ANYONE you want to keep a secret from!!!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Krisi

There's another current thread about a photo on the Internet and my advice is the same, never put anything on the Internet that you wouldn't want anybody to see. Once you upload it, you have lost all control of it.

If you realy want a hard copy of a photo, put it on an SD card, take it to Walmart (or another photo place) and have them print it.

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Yup. In it I recalled the panic I felt when the pictures of my first outing were automatically uploaded to a google docs account.

Since then, I invested in a cheap point & shoot Canon ($5 at Goodwill, IIRC). No more problems.

Glad you survived the fallout.

I am NOT on any social media. My wife is addicted to Facebook and totally spends too much time reading crap. My wife and I are in a deep DADT. I'm sure she encounters hints of my world because, no matter what I may do to conceal my purchases, if she wanted to snoop she going to find out more than I care to share. But, to be outed by a social media company, that's something I do not want to happen. Due to being a "tech dummy" there is nothing on our computer that we have uploaded. When we do want something to be seen I have to ask my son or granddaughter to take a picture and send it to us. It seems as if those looking to make money will eventually find someway to get around privacy settings.

Several years ago I had to discuss with the parents of my granddaughter her postings on social media. She is very pretty/attractive. Her name is out there. The back drops in her pictures clearly show what cit she lives in. I ask them how many people does she really know because she had over five hundred followers. How many of them may be dangerous? She eventually changed her privacy settings.

I see pictures posted on this forum posted elsewhere on the internet with the source ascribed as this forum. So, it is beware all the time.