Provide routes to anonymity

Be clear what you can and cannot provide when striving for confidentiality. Provide users with options about how visible they are across their journey and allow them to choose who they provide information to.

Further description

Give options for anonymity

Let people choose how they want to be anonymous. It should always be possible to use an alias or decide to remain anonymous. 

Provide guidance on not giving away identifiable information

Guidance around not giving away where you live on your profile picture or who you are when choosing an alias can help young people remain anonymous.

Disable screenshots on pages showing users personal information

Although it won’t prevent users from being able to take pictures with another device, it can signal that this information shouldn’t be shared.

Safeguarding service users

The limit to anonymity should be safeguarding in a crisis situation or urgent need for support. You can put mechanisms in place to respect your users' wishes and right for anonymity while safeguarding them.

Examples

Share your patterns

We’re constantly on the look out for new patterns. If you have a service/product which you think could be used as a new pattern, we’d love to hear about it.