Recon Review

Recon is the largest fetish app for men looking for kink with other men. There is no dance around the nature of this site or obfuscation of fetish beneath a veneer of social networking. Recon just kind of struts out there in full leathers with a whip and says, “”I yam what I yam, want a piece of me?”” This site is dedicated to anything kink between consenting (or begging) male adults.

Some of the options are a real education for the uninitiated. A fetish is the sexual arousal brought about by non-human objects which provide sexual stimuli (feet, gas masks, nylon stockings…) while kink is more of something that you’re into like spanking/bondage, etc.

Just in case all you vanilla folks out there are not in the know, these are some of the options for a Recon user in their online search for a like-minded partner:

BDSM is bondage/domination/discipline submission/sadism and masochism or sometimes just a blanket term for kink. You get your Doms, your subs, and your switch (who like a bit of both).

CBT is cock and ball torture ball stretching by weight and other devices or ball bashing with paddles and similar instruments. Now, doesn’t that sound fun?

This list goes on — Watersport involves urination and drinking of urine, and, lastly, mummification is a sort of bondage where the whole body is wrapped in some kind of material, usually plastic wrap. Now that you are up to speed, let us explore further.

Recon’s tagline is “”Find your fetish. Show your fetish. Find fetish men.”” If fetish is what you are after, this is the place to be. They aim to provide a safe place to explore and express sexual fantasies that are frowned upon by the general public. They also aim to provide a community for their members by providing a “”Home Feed”” of articles, news, interviews, and events centered around the Gay fetish community.

When Was Recon Founded?

Recon hails from the faraway days of 1999, which is amazing for such a taboo niche site. So, this place has seen some changes in the world, that is for sure.

Who Owns Recon?

The London based company T101 Ltd has owned Recon since its inception. This company specializes in creating sites & apps and creative solutions for their evolving brands.

Registration And Profile

Registration is a breeze on Recon app. You merely have to provide your age, (strictly no under 18s), your password, and link your email for verification purposes. At this stage, you need to click on “”I am not a robot”” box, and reCaptcha sends Google information about cookies, plugins, browsers, and language used, as well as a section of your IP address (don’t worry this can’t identify you). Google uses that information to verify the likelihood that you might be a scammer or a bot. This is one of the safety features of this site that claims to be fiercely protective of its user’s privacy.

You will be asked to give basic information like your height, hair color, body hair, and sexual role. This role is a bit confusing as it is on a sliding scale where your % preferred dominance increases moving right, and submissive left. This is quite important on a site where roles are sometimes clearly defined, i.e., master/slave of handler/pup. Ahem. With our test profile, we decided to use the middle option, which made us a Switch. Come on guys, pay attention, we have been through this!

Users then get to choose from a lovely list of interests quite unlike the EliteSingles list of art, sunsets, and theatre. One can choose any five interests, from Boots to fisting and everything in between. Users can choose hoods and masks, bondage, leather, and Chastity. Because some people on this site are just so chaste.

Then there was another little option list about how you felt about safe sex all the way from never to pretty much never. We felt that it was rather scary, but then again, this is not an audition to play Mary in a school Nativity play, but? Anyway, then you get to upload a photo, and you are in play!

Communication/Matches

Recon is pretty much a hands-on affair when it comes to making matches. They have no real matching tools or algorithm-based systems to present users with compatible folk, but the general feel of this site is not one of gentlemen seeking lifelong commitments. (Although there is a number of guys with wedding rings). Generally, your matches are location-based, so how lucky users get on this rate totally depends on their location.

After uploading a picture, users can start browsing men profiles nearby. Our first suggestions were a lovely fellow looking for a man with a dirty arse to fart in his face, and another seeking a partner with an uncut and unwashed willy. Guys nearby are displayed on a scroll to the left of the screen with their short bios displayed. Even newcomers get instant access to other users’ galleries and friends.

You have options for an advanced search filter under premium membership where you can really start being particular about just who you want to play with.

When you tap on a profile, it gives you a full mobile screen photo and a scrolling tab with user info, like roles, interests, body hair, and safe sex policies. Of all six profiles we read, only one chose the “”safe sex always”” option; the rest were “”Needs Discussion.””

You can search further afield under the travel plans feature, which is nifty if you need an FF sub Pig into watersports for your dentistry convention.

How To Search For People On Recon?

Recon automatically lists you any men closest to your phone’s location. They are in a grid one per block, neatly situated on the left side of the page. You may search further afield as well. We did not purchase a membership with advanced filters for this field test. Still, paid users can unlock even more features searching for their dirtiest kinks. Besides, it’s possible to indicate a larger geographic area with advanced search filters.

How To Delete My Recon Account?

To cancel your Recon account login to the app, go into “”Settings”” in the main menu. Tap the Accounts tab and go to “”Manage My Account”” section. From there, click “”Delete My Account.”” Please be aware that if you are a premium member, you will lose any remaining credit. You should provide a reason for your cancellation with a password to confirm.

Members Structure

Recon has been helping gay fetish folk find satisfaction since 1999. That is 21 years of rubber and whips. They do remain a niche community with a smaller user base than other non-niche gay sites like Grindr, but they still boast of 200 thousand active members and over 11 million messages sent every calendar month.

Recon’s Demographics are, of course, 99.999 percent male (because no one verifies user gender, so women are allowed to join). The greatest number of users is found in the USA (32%), UK (20%), and France (10%). Germany and Australia have 5% each. This same network is also available in Africa, Canada, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Sexual Orientation

This site deserves some kind of award for embracing all the back alleys of mainstream sexual expression (and maybe some subterranean chambers, too). The list of sexual proclivities will definitely be exhaustive and somewhat confusing for vanillas.

Race And Ethnicity

There are all ethnicities in Recon profiles. Besides, this site asks newly joined users about their ethnicity quite early during their registration process. So, you can definitely find any nationalities on Recon, but to set this kind of filter, you will need an advanced search.

Religious Orientation

Religious orientation does not seem to be of any real importance on this site.

Pricing Policies

Although standard members can access basic profile search and features such as galleries and Recon Magazine, they are pretty limited when it comes to sending and receiving messages from other members. The price structure is in the middle field compared to similar dating sites.

Free Membership

• User profile with one uploaded photo
• Search profiles of members nearby and further afield
• Access the Recon Magazine, Calendar, and galleries
• Choice of 5 top fetish interests

Paid Membership

• Have access to all public galleries of other members
• View unlimited numbers of profiles
• Add Friends and get updates about them in the Home feed
• Advanced filtering options
• Get to see other galleries as well as the main galleries

Membership prices go as follows:

• 30 DAYS USD 12.99 (Recurs every 30 days)
• Fixed-term membership
• 30 DAYS USD 12.99
• 90 DAYS USD 29.99
• 180 DAYS USD 49.99
• 365 DAYS USD 89.99

Is Recon Safe?

There has been a lot of media attention regarding dating apps that use their users’ location to find nearby members. There has been an increasing number of scammers and blackmailers triangulating users’ device locations to pinpoint subscribers of sensitive sites such as Grindr, Romeo, and 3Fun.

Recon was one of the sites on this hotlist for such triangulation strategies to pinpoint exact user locations. Will Geddes, Security Specialist, said that any app using its user’s precise location opens up possibilities of attack (not just cyber ones), extortion, and plenty of other hazards. As a response, Recon implemented the snap-to-grid method, which prevents triangulation of location and thus protects its users’ privacy.

Using reCaptcha technology on registration is another proactive move that Recon has taken to prevent scammers and bots from threatening its members’ privacy. Recon is incredibly involved in making their site a place where people can feel safe to express their sexuality without fear of being “”outed.””

Quality Of Profiles

User profiles are not the most elaborate out there. It stands to reason that hobbies, and interests, such as your favorite music, will take a back burner to whether you like to be a rope bunny or a switch. Still, most profiles are clear and easy to navigate with a star icon to keep a particular user as a favorite; a letter icon is a message. Clicking on the top of a user profile gives options to view this member’s gallery and see who his friends on this site are.

There is enough on the member profile to ascertain just what kink he is into, and that’s the point of the site really. You can see from the get-go what the users’ 5 top fetishes are, and the bios are more like a list of BDSM instructions than the generic “”I love beaches and spending time with my friends.””

For a niche site like this, there really is no need to understand more about your future Pup/Sub/Slave than what turns him on. Leave the elaborate profiles to EliteSingles and The League. These guys are out for another style of matches altogether.

Website Design And Usability

For a site dedicated to the kind of kinks these guys are into, the website looks deceptively ordinary. There are no XXX shots out front, only a couple of lads in rubber and cuffs. The site is easy to navigate except when you opt in to the magazine section. We felt like it took us days to get out.

The ads are on the far right and are minimal enough not to distract attention and generally showcase clothing and other fetish items from the Recon store. There was one ad depicting a burly guy getting his nipples twisted, but he seemed to be liking it, so all was well.

After spending time on another gay site called hornet, it is very obvious that Recon is pretty old-fashioned and one-dimensional. That kind of functional but not stylish design is very much a step back in time to the early 2000s.

How Does Recon Work?

Recon is a gay male fetish site that connects users by location and offers them rudimentary filters to explore the more taboo aspects of mainstream sexuality. This is a niche site dedicated to BDSM and sexual fetishes in an all-male gay platform.

Recon App

With the same black and red motif, the app has all of the website functions, but in a much slicker design. The interface is uncluttered and easy to navigate. App Store gives Recon a 2.7 rating out of five, out of 142 ratings. Google Plays follows the trend and gives this site a 2.8 with 10,000 installs.

Your potential matches align nicely on the left-hand side of the screen and are easy to scroll and view. Even though the app will not win awards for design, it does its job with minimal fuss and without looking like a train smash.

Alternatives Of Recon

FetLife is a social network site that caters to people interested in BDSM, kink, and fetishes. With 6 million users, it is quite a giant in the niche field of BDSM.

SubsAndMasters has a user base of over a million members and contains fetish personals, videos, and photos.

Everyone knows Grinder, the Goliath of the gay dating community. If kink/BDSM is what you after, you will find it here in spades. Or should we say rubber?

Conclusion

What surprised us about the site, more than some of the scatological desires, was the fact that the home pages don’t look hardcore at all. There was not one cock or butthole shot, and most of the images have regular profile shots.

Some alternative sites we had a peep at, had stuff happening on their homepage that looked like Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings of the torments of hell. Recon is keeping it clean, at least on the outside. If you go further, you will find it worse (or better, depending on your perspective). It just makes sense to appeal to the curious by letting them get to know the lifestyle without scaring them off with really hardcore stuff.

Recon has been around for a while and will be around for a while longer. Their focus on the security of their members is admirable and ardent, while the app functions well and is easy to navigate. People should be able to explore their sexuality as long as no one gets hurt. Unless that’s what they are into and if you are so inclined, Recon might just be your new playground.

Contact Information

Company: T101 Ltd

Address: 89 Shepperton Road

London N1 3DF

Phone: n/a

Email: [email protected]

[email protected]

Isabelle Mason

MS, RD & Writer

I feel like my calling is to help people. For many years I have been improving skills as a professional coach and all of my clients has taken a step forward and changed their life for the better. 19 happy married couples are proof of this!

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