Child Safety Standards

What is prohibited

The following are banned on Beacon — in profiles, photos, videos, beacons, chat, and anywhere else content can be posted or sent:

• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM), in any form, including drawn, written, or computer-generated material.
• Sexualizing a minor, or any sexual content or conversation involving someone under 18.
• Grooming, sextortion, solicitation, or trying to arrange to meet a minor for a sexual purpose.
• Trafficking a minor, or advertising, trading, or linking to any of the above.
• Using Beacon to reach, contact, or make plans with a minor for any of these purposes.

These rules are part of our Terms & Conditions, and breaking them ends your access to Beacon.

Beacon is for adults only

You must be 18 or older to use Beacon. Signing up asks for your date of birth and will not let you continue if that date puts you under 18 — on the app and on the web, and the server checks it again rather than trusting the app. To be straight about it: that date is the one you give us, not one we have verified. So if we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we close it and delete its data.

Beacon is not designed for children and is not directed at children. Nothing in it is aimed at, or marketed to, anyone under 18.

How to report a concern in the app

Anyone using Beacon can report child sexual abuse or exploitation from inside the app, and it takes a couple of taps. Every one of these routes exists today:

• Report a person. Open their profile and choose Report Person. The same option is on the list of people going to a beacon.
• Report a beacon. Open the beacon and choose Report Beacon from the ⋯ menu.
• Report a single message. Press and hold a message somebody sent you and choose Report Message. This works in every chat, including group and beacon chats.
• Report a whole conversation. In a direct message, open the ⋯ menu and choose Report Conversation.
• Block someone. Open their profile and choose Block. They can no longer see you or contact you. You can block without reporting, or do both.

A report asks you to choose a reason and lets you write what happened. There is no separate “child safety” reason to pick — choose Inappropriate content or Other and say in your own words that it involves a child. Say so plainly — our reviewers treat a report involving a child as urgent. You can see the reports you have sent us from your own profile.

If you cannot reach the app, or you would rather write to us directly, email childsafety@beaconmeetup.com.

What we do when we get a report

Our reviewers treat a report involving a child as urgent. We commit to the following:

• We review it. A person on our team looks at the report and the content it points to.
• We remove the content. Anything that breaks these standards comes down.
• We end the account. An account involved in child sexual abuse or exploitation is terminated, not warned. We keep what we need to stop the same person signing up again.
• We report it. We report apparent child sexual abuse material to the authorities, including the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), and we cooperate with law enforcement and respond to lawful requests, in line with the law that applies to us.
• We preserve evidence. Where the law requires it, we keep the relevant records for the authorities rather than deleting them with the account.

If you believe a child is in immediate danger, call your local emergency number first. In the United States you can also report to NCMEC’s CyberTipline at report.cybertip.org or 1-800-843-5678.

How we try to prevent it

• Beacon is 18+, and signup will not continue past a date of birth under 18 — checked in the app and again on our servers.
• Reporting and blocking sit on every profile, beacon, and message, so nobody has to leave the screen they are on to use them.
• A report that involves a child is treated as urgent by the people who review it.
• Location is private by default. Your exact position is never shown to other people except deliberately, around a plan you have joined — see the Privacy Policy.

Who to contact

Our child-safety point of contact is reachable at childsafety@beaconmeetup.com. This mailbox is monitored, and messages about a child's safety are handled ahead of everything else.

By post: Beacon Meetup, Inc., c/o Corporation Service Company, 251 Little Falls Drive, Wilmington, New Castle County, DE 19808, United States. For anything that is not about child safety, use our support page.