Community Security & PERSEC

Candidate preparation communities carry a real security risk. A single date shared in isolation looks harmless, but aggregated across hundreds of people it maps candidate flow, training throughput and recruitment timelines — information that should never sit in an unverified space. This community is run on three principles that hold even when they cost us reach.

• PERSEC first. Your personal and operational security outranks growth, engagement and convenience. Every feature is judged against it.
• Minimise, don’t collect. The safest community is one that holds nothing worth aggregating. We keep as little as possible and delete quickly.
• Pseudonymity by default. You take part under a handle. We deliberately do not verify real identities — doing so would centralise the very data we protect.

These are off-limits in every channel, in public or in direct messages. Posting them is not treated as a punishable offence — it is a mistake we help you correct — but the post will be removed.

• Specific dates — CPC, interview boards, filter interviews, medicals, start dates, or the exact day of any test sitting.
• Real identity — full name, service or candidate number, date of birth, or a photo that identifies you.
• Location & posting — your AFCO, home town, unit or base tied to your real identity. (Your branch and chosen role are welcome — see below.)
• Official correspondence — screenshots of emails, portals, letters, or messages from Defence Recruitment or your AFCO.
• Contact details — phone numbers, personal email, home address, or social profiles that link back to the real you.
• Anything that maps the pipeline — “everyone with an X date, reply here”, tallies of who is at which stage, or throughput counts.

None of the above stops this being a genuinely useful place to prepare. The test dynamics, the strategy and the support are exactly what the community is for.

• Your branch & chosen job — e.g. “Army, going for 68W” — so members can point you to the right preparation. You take part under a handle, so this does not identify you.
• Test dynamics & strategy — how a battery works, pacing, scoring, what to practise and how.
• Preparation questions — “how do I get faster at the numerical section” is perfect; no dates or personal details are needed to answer it.
• General encouragement — nerves, motivation and peer support, shared under your handle.
• Publicly available information — anything already published on official sites, discussed without tying it to your own timeline.

These controls run whether or not you ever notice them. They exist so that the failure of any one member’s caution does not expose the rest.

• Entry screening — a rules-acceptance gate and membership screening on join, with the server’s verification level raised so throwaway and unverified accounts cannot post straight away.
• Automated filtering — messages that look like dates, phone numbers, postcodes or service numbers are held back automatically before they are ever visible.
• Enforced pseudonymity — participation is under a handle. We do not ask for, or verify, real service identities — by design, so there is no identity store to breach.
• Nothing leaves the server — message content is never read, stored or republished. The SIFT Ready website shows only that “a candidate just posted in the community” — no message, no channel, no timeline.
• Short retention — any activity signal used off-server is aggregate and short-lived, pruned automatically. We keep nothing we do not need.
• Restricted surface — direct messages between members are limited, invite creation is controlled, and there is no public “introduce yourself with your timeline” channel.

Candidates are often under real pressure. We owe them more than a rulebook. Where a member is struggling, the community’s job is to be kind, to protect their privacy, and to point them toward people qualified to help — not to act as those people.

• Signpost, don’t diagnose. We offer support and direct members to official welfare, their AFCO, GP, or recognised helplines. We do not give medical, mental-health or legal advice.
• Handle disclosures with care. If someone discloses distress or risk of harm, it is taken seriously and handled calmly and privately, and escalated to appropriate services rather than debated in public.
• Protect the vulnerable. Members who appear young or vulnerable are given extra care; nobody is pressured to share more than they wish, and unwanted contact is stopped.
• A respectful space. Harassment, discrimination, doxxing and pile-ons have no place here and are removed. Disagreement is fine; targeting a person is not.

Anyone can raise a concern, and doing so is welcomed rather than penalised. If you suspect any concern — a security or PERSEC risk, someone sharing personal data, unwanted contact, hostile lurking, or a member in distress — message the server owner directly.

• The offending post is removed at once. If personal data was exposed, we act to limit its spread before anything else.
• The member affected is contacted privately, told what happened, and helped to protect themselves.
• The incident is recorded, any action decided, and the rules or filters adjusted so it is less likely to recur.

Contact the server owner on the community server, or by email at corri.jones@hamiltontechnologies.co.uk. Suspected coordinated data-gathering or social engineering is escalated and, where appropriate, reported onward.

This charter is owned by Hamilton Technologies, operator of SIFT Ready. It is reviewed at least every six months, and immediately after any incident, so that the controls keep pace with how the community is actually used. Material changes are announced in the server, and the “last updated” date at the top of this page reflects the current version.

This is an independent preparation community. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a channel of the Ministry of Defence or Defence Recruitment. For anything about your specific application or training pipeline, always use official Defence Recruitment channels, your AFCO, or the official candidate portals.