Online Safety & Illegal Content

Under the Online Safety Act 2023 we are a user-to-user service: adults create listings and communicate with one another here, and that content is generated by users rather than by us. Because the site also allows pornographic material, we additionally hold ourselves to the Act's standard for services that publish or allow that content, which is highly effective age assurance.

We are a small service operated from the United Kingdom. The Act is proportionate: the measures expected of us are those reasonable for our size and risk. That is not a lower standard for the things that matter most, and nothing on this page is scaled down for illegal content involving children or coercion.

Messaging, and every paid or explicit feature, sit behind a real check: a person reviewing a government identity document against a live photograph of the same person, so a borrowed or downloaded document does not pass. We are precise about where that applies, below, rather than describe the whole site as one gate.

• The public part of the site, the directory, profiles and their public photographs, is reached after an entry notice asking a visitor to confirm they are 18 or over. That is a self-declaration. We say so plainly: it is not a verified age check, and we have never meant to claim it is.
• Messaging, sexting, phone chat, live cam, private galleries and video sit behind the real check described above.
• We do not use self-declared age, an unticked box, or a card check alone as the gate for anything behind that stronger check.
• We close any account we believe belongs to a child, preserve what the authorities would need, and do not restore it.
• Public photographs are held to their own rule regardless of the gate: nothing sexually explicit is ever shown in the public part of the site. See Photo moderation.

How the check works, what happens to the document afterwards, and what a verified badge does and does not mean are set out in Identity verification.

We remove illegal content when we become aware of it, we make it easy to report, and we act on reports quickly. The Act names certain categories as priority illegal content. This is how each is handled here.

Child sexual exploitation and abuse. Zero tolerance and no appeal. Any sexual image of a person under 18, in any circumstances, is removed immediately, the account is closed and preserved, and we report to the police and the National Crime Agency and refer to the Internet Watch Foundation. We never negotiate this.

• Terrorism content, or content encouraging or assisting it: removed, account closed, reported to the police.
• Human trafficking, and controlling or coercing another person into selling sexual services (including holding a person's earnings, documents or account): removed, account closed, reported, and a safeguarding referral made for the person at risk.
• Intimate images shared without the consent of the person shown, and threats to share them: removed, evidence preserved, reported. This is a criminal offence under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 as amended and the Online Safety Act 2023.
• Extreme pornography, and cyberflashing (sending an unwanted sexual image): removed, account restricted or closed.
• Harassment, stalking, and threats to a person's life or of serious harm: removed, account restricted or closed, reported where there is a risk to someone.
• Fraud and financial services offences, including advance-fee and romance fraud: removed, account closed.
• Offering to supply controlled drugs or offensive weapons: removed, account closed, reported.
• Content that encourages or assists serious self-harm or suicide: removed, and the person signposted to support.

The full rules, the reasons behind them, and what happens step by step when one is broken are in Acceptable use.

Every photograph and every video is reviewed by a person before it is published, not by a filter. A listing goes live straight away with a template photo, and each photograph waits for that review. What we look for and what gets refused is set out in Photo moderation.

• Every profile and every conversation has a report control. Use it, and tell us what is wrong and where.
• For anything else, email [email protected].
• If someone is in immediate danger, call 999.
• Child sexual abuse material can also be reported directly to the Internet Watch Foundation at iwf.org.uk and to CEOP at ceop.police.uk.
• If you are being controlled or coerced, the Modern Slavery Helpline is 08000 121 700.

We acknowledge a report, tell you the outcome where we can, and never tell the person reported who reported them. A person who reports something and a person who is reported can both ask us to look again: see Complaints.

We have prepared a written assessment of the risk of illegal content on the service and of children accessing it, covering how the service works, who uses it, and the measures against each priority kind of illegal content. It becomes our adopted record once our accountable person (clause 7) has read and adopted it; until then it is a draft, and we say so here rather than describe it as finished. We review it, adopted or not, on a regular schedule and whenever we make a significant change to how the site works.

We use no proactive technology, automated scanning or hash-matching, to detect illegal content. Every check described in this document and in Photo moderation is made by a person.

The Act treats age assurance as an evidence question, not only a gate: it is not enough to have a check, we have to be able to show how we decided it is effective. Section 81(5) of the Act requires a public summary of which kind of age verification or age estimation we use and how -- this paragraph is that summary, not a document we hold back and describe from a distance.

What we use.A photograph of a government-issued identity document, showing the holder's face and date of birth, checked by a person on our team -- the same document and the same human check Identity describes for proving who somebody is. The tick-box on our own front door (“I am 18 or over”) is self-declaration only: Ofcom's own guidance names self-declaration as not highly effective on its own, and we do not rely on it as our real check.

Where we use it. At the point somebody tries to open content that is actually explicit -- a private gallery, a cam room, Sexting -- rather than as a gate across the whole site. Nothing on a public page here is pornographic, so that is where the duty actually bites; checking every visitor before they can read an ordinary profile would not make anyone safer.

Privacy.We keep the decision permanently (the outcome, when it was made, and which member of staff made it) but not the document image itself: it is kept encrypted and deleted 12 months after a decision is made, or after 90 days if it was never reviewed at all. What we would need to show how a given member's age was assured survives; the photograph that made them identifiable does not sit in storage indefinitely.

One named senior person, our founder, is personally accountable for online safety on this service. That is not a committee and it is not outsourced. Questions about our online safety duties, and correspondence from a regulator, go to [email protected] marked for the attention of the online safety lead, and are escalated to that person the same day.

Ofcom regulates online safety in the United Kingdom. We cooperate with it. If Ofcom sends us a statutory information notice we treat answering it, in full and on time, as a priority above ordinary work, and we keep the records needed to do that.

You can raise a concern about online safety on this service with Ofcom at ofcom.org.uk. A concern about how we handle personal data goes to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or 0303 123 1113.

Ofcom's codes of practice under the Act are being brought in over time. We track them and update our measures and this page as duties take effect. The date at the top of this document is when it was last reviewed.