Child Safety Standards

NearYou has a zero-tolerance policy for child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE). Children are not permitted on NearYou, and content or behaviour that sexually exploits, abuses or endangers a child is prohibited without exception, in every language, in every country where NearYou is available.

NearYou is an 18+ service. You must be at least 18 years old to create an account or use any part of NearYou, and you must meet any higher minimum age set by the law that applies to you. Accounts we determine to belong to a minor are removed.

These standards sit alongside our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy and form part of the agreement you accept when you use NearYou. Where anything here conflicts with another NearYou document, the stricter child-safety reading applies.

The following are prohibited on NearYou. Each is grounds for immediate, permanent removal of the account, with no warning step:

• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) — any visual depiction involving a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct, including drawn, animated, computer-generated and AI-generated depictions. Creating, requesting, sending, storing, linking to or advertising it is prohibited.
• Grooming — befriending or building trust with a child online in order to facilitate sexual contact, online or offline, now or later.
• Sexualisation of a minor — describing, depicting or discussing a child in a sexual manner, including sexual comments about a real child and sexual roleplay involving a minor.
• Sextortion — threatening or blackmailing a child using real or claimed access to that child's intimate images.
• Child trafficking — advertising, soliciting or arranging a child for commercial sexual exploitation.
• Any other content or behaviour that sexually exploits, abuses or endangers a child, including off-platform conduct that we become aware of.
• Using NearYou while under 18, or creating a NearYou account for someone under 18.

You can report a child-safety concern from inside the NearYou app, without leaving it. On any profile, chat message, Confession, Hidden Signal or mood, open the ⋯ menu and choose Report, then select the "Child safety" reason and tell us what you can in the note field. All five surfaces carry the same control on the web app at nearyou.dating and in the Android app. You do not have to pay to reveal a Hidden Signal before you can report it.

The Android app also has a dedicated Child safety screen at Me → Help & Safety → Child safety. It restates these standards inside the app, shows the reporting steps, and is reachable from the sign-in screen as well, so you can read it and act on it without an account.

You do not have to be the victim, and you do not have to be certain. Report anything that worries you. We would far rather review a report that turns out to be nothing than miss one that was not.

If you cannot use the in-app report — the account has already been deleted, you are a parent or guardian without a NearYou account, or the concern is not tied to one specific post — email us at support@nearyou.dating with the subject line "CHILD SAFETY". Include usernames, approximate dates and times, and anything else that helps us find the account. Please do not attach, forward or re-share suspected child sexual abuse material: describe it instead. Forwarding it is itself unlawful in most jurisdictions and we do not need it in order to act.

If a child is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services first. In Vietnam you can also call the National Child Protection Hotline on 111 — free, three digits, staffed 24 hours a day. Reporting to us is not a substitute for reporting to the authorities.

Child-safety reports are the highest-priority category in our moderation queue and are reviewed ahead of everything else. We aim to make a first review within 24 hours of the report arriving.

A reviewer confirms what is in the report, removes the reported content from view, and suspends the reported account while the review continues. A suspended account cannot post, message, send a Signal or be matched with anyone. Where we confirm CSAE, the account is terminated permanently: it is closed, everything it posted across every surface is removed, its profile photo and chat media are deleted from our storage, and the person cannot register again with the same sign-in.

When we obtain actual knowledge of apparent child sexual abuse material on NearYou, we remove it: the content is taken out of view everywhere it appears and the stored file is deleted. One limit, stated plainly — chat media is served through temporary links that last about a minute, and a link someone already holds keeps working until it expires. We preserve the minimum record needed for a lawful referral, and we report the material to the appropriate authorities — including the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) through its CyberTipline and, for reports concerning Vietnam, the National Child Protection Hotline 111 and local law enforcement. Every step and its date is recorded against the report.

Terminating an account does not erase its records. Where we have referred a case to NCMEC, to hotline 111 or to the police, we keep what that referral relies on — otherwise we would be unable to answer a lawful request about a case we ourselves reported. This is enforcement, not data deletion; anyone can still delete their own account and data at nearyou.dating/delete-account, and doing so does not lift a termination or a ban.

We do not tell the reported person who reported them. Reporters are never identified to the account they report, on any surface of NearYou.

We respond to valid legal requests from law enforcement, and we may preserve or disclose account records where we are legally required to do so, or where we believe in good faith that it is necessary to prevent harm to a child.

The measures we currently rely on are:

• An 18+ age requirement at sign-up, restated in the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy.
• A report control on every surface that can carry user content — profiles, chat messages, Confessions, Hidden Signals and moods — with a dedicated child-safety reason.
• Blocking, which is immediate, applies in both directions, and hides two accounts from each other across the whole product.
• A moderation console where every report is triaged, actioned and recorded, child-safety reports are shown ahead of everything else however long the queue is, and the action taken survives the reported account deleting itself.
• Removal of accounts we determine to belong to a minor, whether we learn it from a report or from the account itself.
• Permanent termination that the person cannot undo by leaving and coming back: a terminated or suspended account cannot post, message, send a Signal or be matched, and registering again with the same sign-in restores the ban rather than clearing it.

We comply with the child safety laws that apply to NearYou. In Vietnam, our primary market, these include the Law on Children No. 102/2016/QH13 and Decree 56/2017/ND-CP, which govern the protection of children in the network environment; Decree 147/2024/ND-CP, which requires online service providers to operate a mechanism for receiving and handling user reports and to remove violating content on request from the competent authority; and the Penal Code 2015 (as amended 2017), under which offences involving the sexual exploitation of children — including Article 147 — are criminal.

We maintain a process for reporting confirmed child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) via its CyberTipline, and for reporting to Vietnamese authorities via the National Child Protection Hotline 111 and local law enforcement. We do not wait for a legal demand before acting: removal and referral follow from our own standards.

Our designated child safety point of contact — the named individual who can speak to how NearYou prevents, detects and responds to CSAE, and who receives notifications from Google Play about CSAE content — is [OWNER_TODO — full legal name of the NearYou child safety point of contact].

You can reach that person at support@nearyou.dating with the subject line "CHILD SAFETY". Law enforcement, regulators, child-protection organisations and Google Play may use the same address; please say who you are and what you need, and we will respond as quickly as we can.

This contact is for child-safety matters. For anything else, use the general channels on our Support page.

These organisations can help whether or not NearYou is involved:

• Vietnam — National Child Protection Hotline 111 (Tổng đài quốc gia bảo vệ trẻ em 111). Free, 24/7, receives information and reports about risks and acts of child abuse.
• Vietnam — your local police, for anything criminal or urgent.
• International — the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) CyberTipline at report.cybertip.org, which accepts reports from anywhere in the world.
• Your local emergency number, if a child is in immediate danger. Please call them before you contact us.

We may update these Child Safety Standards. When we do, we update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. This page will remain publicly reachable at nearyou.dating/child-safety without an account.