Technical Support
If you have any technical issues or questions, feel free to ask by either posting with the "Board Information" → "Questions" tag, or by private messaging me if you're shy (or for sensitive matters). If you are unable to do that for whatever reason, you can email BlackVanAdmin@protonmail.com. (Non-technical, community-oriented queries should go to @Enchantress first.)
Security
I also want to outline the security measures we have in place on this site. One of the key concepts in Information Security is the CIA triad:
- Confidentiality: Keeping secrets, protecting privacy
- Integrity: Ensuring everyone can trust information
- Availability: Ensuring the system is online and reliable when needed
Given the nature of this site, confidentiality is the most important for this site, but so is integrity. You want to be sure you are talking to who you think you are.
Only @Enchantress and I have full access to the server, and our own access is protected by long passwords and strong cryptographic keys. Moderators have only very limited additional privileges above regular users and can not see even full member information. This site is also hosted on its own virtual server, instead of using shared web hosting, which means our site cannot be hacked via another website on the same host, because there are no others. The server is also set up to apply security updates automatically almost as soon as they become available, keeping the site safe from known security holes in the software it runs.
The website is proxied through CloudFlare, which provides protection against DDoS attacks, and hides the IP address of the server from attackers, making it much harder for anyone to attack us directly. We also do not retain the IP addresses of visitors, but you should still use the Tor Browser, or at the very least a VPN, to hide your traffic from your ISP if this is a concern for you. All connections to theblackvan.com are forced to go through HTTPS, using a Let's Encrypt certificate.
Your Part
Sadly, security is never fire and forget. Both parties must be proactive in maintaining security, which means that you, the visitor, must take precautions to ensure your safety here.
Do not use your real name anywhere on the site. Do not sign up with an email address associated with your real identity. Do not use a password you use anywhere else. (You should do this for all sites, anyway.) Use a long password.
Ideally, only ever visit this site from the Tor Browser, which will ensure that you leave no traces of having visited this site behind on your computer. If you opt not to do this, be aware that anyone else using your computer, or anyone servicing your computer may be able to see that you regularly visit this site, and you will have to take extra care to ensure this does not happen. Remember that you could be outed by notification emails sent from us to you, so make sure that the email account you use isolated from the rest of your life.
If you want to only hide your network traffic from eavesdroppers, you could use a VPN service instead of Tor Browser, but be aware that not all VPN providers are equal, and some may compromise your privacy in other ways. (See Are VPNs Safe from TechRadar and How Secure is a VPN? from Fortinet.)
If someone messages you privately with file attachments or links off this website, only download the file or follow the link if you trust this person. Someone you that you barely know or do not know at all private messaging you with files or links should be considered suspicious at best.
Have fun and stay save, kinksters!
