About Us

Verified Ottawa is a peer-led project created and run entirely by local workers, with no ties to advertising platforms, agencies, local brothels/spas or other organizations.

There is already a serious power imbalance between workers and potential clients. Workers are often expected to prove themselves by sending private photos, identification or personal information to people they have never met, while receiving very little- if any!- assurance about who is on the other side. Online anonymity makes that imbalance even more dangerous, particularly as online spaces increasingly normalize hostility and violence toward women and sex workers.

So, we believe verification shouldn't require repeatedly making yourself vulnerable just to go to work. You shouldn’t be pressured or exploited into sending repeated, identifying information so the man on the other side can decide whether or not he wants to pay you, or show up in your yard with a gun.

Verified Ottawa is one small attempt to shift that balance. Workers verify privately with established local peers, then have one place they can direct anyone who wants to confirm they're legitimate. The person checking gets that reassurance without receiving the worker's private verification material.

We are not an advertising service, review board or authority over anyone's work. We check in annually that the workers we list are real, and remove workers that are inactive or otherwise do not respond, on that annual check.

We don't rate workers or make decisions on their listing based on client preferences. We simply provide a peer-run way for local workers to verify that they're real while keeping control of their privacy and safety. We list one photo for identification purposes, and their active website or ads. We update on request and do not keep tabs on these workers in any way, outside of the annual email ensuring they are still active and wanting to be listed with us.

We are not the john police.

Verified Ottawa does one thing: we verify that a worker is real, then check in annually to confirm their verification.

We do not investigate workers.

We will not follow up on complaints about theft, services, appearance, photos or private interactions. Verification from us is not an endorsement or a guarantee of anyone’s conduct. We verify the same worker runs their own advertisements, and that is it.

Our purpose is worker safety.

We verify workers so they have a safer way to establish that they are real without repeatedly handing private information to strangers.

That is the beginning and end of our role.

We are low barrier by design.

Verified Ottawa is deliberately low-barrier. Sex workers are already pushed out of traditional systems of verification (especially survival workers that often cannot meet the high barrier entry of local collectives or other advertising bodies) and often asked to “verify” themselves by handing sensitive photos or personal information to unknown and malicious third parties, where it can be misused or exploited, leading to harm against the worker.

We want to remove that exploitative dynamic forced on sex workers. Verification should be simple, private and built around the safety of the worker.

Online radicalization of dangerous misogynistic viewpoints has led to a horrifying increase in femicide, and we want to do our small part in fighting back against the normalized exploitation of sex workers and women.