Safety
How to report someone, how to block them, what happens after you do, and the habits worth setting up before you meet anyone.
In immediate danger, call 911. You can also reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. If you report something inside the app that looks dangerous, we show you the same numbers and flag it to our safety team right away.
Reporting and blocking
Any user can report any other user, and any user can block any other user. Both controls are on every profile and inside every chat. You never have to explain yourself, the other person is never told you did it, and neither one costs anything or requires a match.
Blocking takes effect immediately and both ways: they can’t see you and you can’t see them. Your blocked list is in the app under Safety, and you can unblock from there. Separately, you can turn on contact blocking, which hides everyone in your phone’s address book from you and you from them. Your contacts go to our server once, where each number is hashed with a secret salt and the number itself is thrown away. We keep only the hashes.
Reporting walks you through a few questions: whether you only talked online or actually met, and what happened. That answer decides what happens next, on our servers, so nothing a reported person does can downgrade a report.
What happens to a report
- It lands in a review queue that a person works through. We act on valid reports promptly, typically within 24 hours.
- Threats, harassment, anything involving someone underage, unwanted physical contact, being threatened or harmed, or being pressured go straight to high priority. So does a report where you say you felt unsafe, or that you were asked for money.
- When several different people report the same account, that account is flagged for high-priority review and their open reports are bumped up with it.
- Every report is closed with an action and a written reason: dismissed, a warning, content removed, the account hidden, or the account banned. Bans and hides take effect immediately.
- We also remove content and accounts on our own initiative when they break the Terms. Some things are caught automatically. A phone number or a Snap handle in a profile trips a filter on the spot, an abusive first message is held before it reaches you, and a message asking you for money is reported as it’s sent.
If you were the one reported and you think we got it wrong, there is an appeal, and a person reads it.
Reporting a catfish, with proof
Catfish photos are too perfect, too few, or all from the same day and the same angle. They’ll dodge a live video, always have an excuse for a bad connection, and push to text off the app fast. Ask for a video message or a quick video call before you meet. Thirty seconds of live face settles it.
If they still turn up as a different person, or years off, report them and pick Catfish. You can attach a photo you took when you met. Only our safety team can open it, through a link that expires, and the file is deleted when the report is closed. It is not shown to the person you reported and it never appears anywhere in the app.
Dating and safety tips
The app has the full set, in sections, under Profile › Dating & safety tips, including a section for men. These are the ones that matter most.
Before you meet
Video call before the first date
Five minutes on FaceTime or Google Meet tells you they’re real and whether there’s anything there. Use it to set expectations too: where you’re going, how long, and who’s paying. If there’s always a reason they can’t get on camera, that’s your answer.
Search their photos, and get their full name
Search a profile photo with Google Lens or TinEye. If it shows up under another name, it’s a fake. Get their full name before the first date and pass it to a friend. The sex offender registries are public: NSOPW.gov nationally, and Texas DPS for Texas. A name search can miss someone or mix people up, so a hit is a reason to ask questions and to report, never to go after anyone.
Send a friend the plan
In a chat, Actions › Plan a date sends a friend where and when, with their photos and a code word, and the app asks “Home safe?” when the date should be over. Share for safety on a profile does the same.
On the date
Public, busy and well lit, and your own ride
Not your place, not theirs, not a parking lot. Don’t let a first date pick you up, because then they know where you live. Keep a second rideshare app in case the first one fails.
Let your phone check on you
iPhone has Check In in Messages: if you don’t get home when you said, your friend gets your location, battery and signal. Pixel phones have Safety Check.
iPhone: Messages › your friend’s chat › + › Check In (it may be under More) › Edit. You both need iOS 17 or later. Pixel: Personal Safety app › Safety Check. Samsung has no timed check-in; Settings › Safety and emergency › Emergency sharing sends your location.
Cover your drink, and know the signs
Only take drinks handed to you by the bartender or server. If you feel way drunker than you should, get to a safe place and get help now, and get to an ER fast: some of these drugs leave your body in 12 to 72 hours. Try not to pee, shower or change first, and ask them to test your urine.
Double-tap the back of your phone to call a friend
Set your iPhone so a double-tap on the back instantly calls a trusted friend, and a triple-tap blasts a loud alarm.
iPhone: Settings › Accessibility › Touch › Back Tap › Double Tap (or Triple Tap) → pick a Shortcut.
Android has no back tap that calls someone. Use Emergency SOS and put your friend on it as an emergency contact: press the power button 5 times and it calls 911 and sends them your location. Settings › Safety & emergency › Emergency SOS. On Samsung: Settings › Safety and emergency › Emergency SOS.
Your phone can find a hidden tracker
If your phone warns that an AirTag or other tracker is moving with you, play its sound to find it and follow the steps to turn it off. If you feel unsafe, go somewhere public and call the police.
Android scans on demand: Settings › Safety & emergency › Unknown tracker alerts › Scan now.
Money
Never send money to a match, and never pay to meet
Not for a plane ticket, a fee, a sick relative, a deposit, gas money, or a “safety verification” site. Not by gift card, wire, crypto or a payment app. If a match offers to show you how they trade crypto, walk away. Someone you met here asking for money is a scam, every time.
Guys, protect yourself
Don’t go to an address they send you
Police in Chicago have warned about fake dates used to rob men, and it’s happened in Texas too. Meet somewhere public and busy, take your own car, leave the valuables at home, and leave if the place isn’t what they said. A match who pushes to meet tonight is a warning sign.
Look up the place before you go
Pull up the venue and the menu online before the date, look at the prices, and make sure the night fits your budget whatever gets ordered. Overseas, men have been steered by a date to a bar that runs up a huge tab, and then she’s gone. If a date insists on one particular bar or club you can’t find anything about, pick somewhere else.
Video calls can be recorded
Sextortion goes after men on dating apps: she moves you to another app, gets sexual fast, gets you on camera, then threatens to send it to your family unless you pay. Don’t get naked on camera with someone you haven’t met. If a “detective” or her “dad” calls later saying she’s underage, hang up. Real police don’t call to collect money. Report it at ic3.gov.
If something goes wrong
You’re not on your own
RAINN: 800-656-4673, or text HOPE to 64673, free and confidential, 24/7. Stalking: VictimConnect, call or text 855-484-2846, 24/7. Threats to share your photos: don’t pay, screenshot, report, and call the CCRI helpline at 844-878-2274. Already sent money: call your bank or the card company right away, then report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and ic3.gov. If you’re in danger, call 911.
What the app does on its side
The short version is below. The full list, including an honest account of what we haven’t built, is on how we protect women.
- Nobody can send you a message until they have passed selfie verification.
- Photos are screened before they are stored. Every photo has to contain exactly one face, so pets, objects, memes and group shots are rejected. Caption text banded across a photo is rejected. Every photo in a set has to be a different photo, by fingerprint. And a re-upload of a banned account’s photo is caught by that same fingerprint, so a banned person can’t start over with the same pictures.
- Pushing people off the app with a handle, a number or “add me” in a profile is caught on the spot. A clear one bans. An ambiguous one gets you one warning and the text removed. In chat, a number, an email or another app’s name gets a heads-up before it sends.
- A chat message that asks for money, gift cards, crypto or a payment app is reported to our safety team as it’s sent, and the person it was sent to sees a warning under it with a Report button.
- Likes and messages are rate-limited, harder for brand-new and unverified accounts, to cut down spam and bots.
- Sign-up and sign-in from a VPN, proxy or datacenter address are blocked, because that is where scam-farm signups come from. It is not a ban. Turn the VPN off and continue.
Reach a person
dev@pappasproductions.com. More on what to include on the support page.