Child safety

These are forbidden on Soulmates, and lead to the account being closed and the person behind it banned:

• Joining, or letting anyone join, when under 18.
• Any image, video, message or link that sexualises a child, including child sexual abuse material of any kind.
• Grooming: building trust with a child, or with an adult to reach a child, for sexual purposes.
• Sextortion, trafficking, or offering or asking for any child for any purpose.
• Looking for a partner for, or arranging the marriage of, anyone below the legal age of marriage. In India that is 18 for a woman and 21 for a man, under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006.
• Sharing a child’s photo or personal details.

• Everyone gives their date of birth when they join, and anyone under 18 is refused.
• Before anything else, everyone confirms they are 18 or over and here to find a Life Partner.
• There are no public profiles and no search: a member is shown only to the people they are introduced to, one at a time, and two people can write to each other only once both say yes.
• Members can verify a selfie against their photos, and every member can report anyone who seems under age.
• We close any account we find belongs to a child, and keep the person from joining again.

If a child is in immediate danger, call the police first: 112 in India, 911 in the United States, 999 in the United Kingdom, or your local emergency number. In India, Childline answers on 1098.

• In the app: open the menu on the person’s card or in your conversation, choose Report, then “Under 18, or a risk to a child”. It reaches us at once, marked as a child-safety report, and you stop seeing each other.
• By email: write to our child-safety contact at support@joinsoulmates.com, with the person’s name as the app shows it and what happened. Do not attach or forward any image of a child.
• To the authorities: in India, on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal at cybercrime.gov.in; anywhere, child sexual abuse material can be reported to the NCMEC CyberTipline at report.cybertip.org or the Internet Watch Foundation at report.iwf.org.uk.

• A person reads every child-safety report first, ahead of every other report.
• We remove the content, close the account at once, and ban the person behind it from joining again.
• We keep what the report concerns, so that it can be handed to the police.
• We report child sexual abuse material, and any child we believe is at risk, to the police and to the other authorities the law names in the country concerned.

We comply with the child-safety laws that apply to us, including India’s Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, the Information Technology Act, 2000 and its rules, and the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, and we cooperate with law enforcement in every country our members live in.

Our designated child-safety contact is responsible for how Soulmates prevents and acts on child sexual abuse and exploitation, and reads every message sent to support@joinsoulmates.com.