Safety

Who is in the room

• A new account needs you to be 19 or older.

  We ask when you were born at sign-up and refuse the account if it puts you under 19, the age of majority in British Columbia. It is checked in the database, not in the app, so a modified app cannot get past it.

• A Pub / patio beat needs you to be 19.

  British Columbia's drinking age is 19, the same as the age to sign up. The database checks it again when the beat is sent, not the app, so a modified app cannot get past it.

• Every account is tied to a working phone number.

  Signing in means receiving a code on a number that works. The number is what makes a ban mean something: we keep a one-way hash of it after an account closes, so a banned account cannot come back the next morning on the same number.

The shape of a group

• A room is never two people. Three is the floor.

  Not a guideline and not a target: a room with fewer than three members is not a room, and the database refuses to create one. A room forms at four so that it can lose one and still be a group.

• If a room drops below three, it stops being a room.

  Its chat freezes and it goes back to forming. Nobody is left in a two-person chat wondering what it is now.

• Nobody can see where you are. There is no map in this product.

  Your position is snapped to a 500-metre grid, with an offset that is yours alone, before anything is stored. The precise position is never written down, and no member is ever shown where another member is.

When something is wrong

• You can block somebody, and they are never told.

  A block is silent and permanent. You will not be put in a room with them again, in either direction. It survives their account being deleted, because it is carried on the hash of their number.

• "I did not feel safe" is a reason on its own. You never have to explain it.

  It is one of the reasons on the report sheet. It blocks the person, it reaches a human being, and it needs no story attached. Two separate people saying it about the same person within 30 days limits that account, and the limit stays at least until a person has read the reports.

• Leaving is always allowed and never held against you.

  You can leave a room at any moment, without a reason and without telling anybody why. Leaving without naming a person blocks the others in that room from you for 30 days rather than forever, because they may have done nothing wrong.

• Every report reaches a person, and a serious one suspends the account at once.

  A report of sexual misconduct, a threat, violence, or somebody under 19 suspends the account it is about the moment it is filed, while the one person who runs CommonBeat looks at it. Every report is answered by email within the time the service level below gives. A report nobody has answered stays on the moderation console. It is never dropped.

• When you file a report, we take a snapshot at that moment.

  The message, the room, and who was in it. It is kept for 12 months. Chat messages are deleted 48 hours after a room closes, so without it a report filed later is one person remembering against another.

• Chat is checked automatically for anything illegal or unsafe, and a person decides.

  Every message is scored by a free moderation service, and the ones it picks out are read with a few earlier lines for context. A clear breach is removed; the worst also pause the account until a person looks. Nothing automatic closes an account.

What we do not do

• We do not arrange, host or supervise meetings.

  CommonBeat puts you in a small group with a text chat, and stops there. There are no hosts, no chosen places and no check-ins. If a group decides to meet, that is its own arrangement.

• We do not vet or background-check members.

  We have no access to criminal records and we do not buy identity data. Nobody in a room with you has been cleared by anyone. Everything above makes a stranger a slightly better known stranger. None of it makes them safe.

• There are no profile photos, and nobody checks a face.

  Photo upload is switched off at this stage, and selfie checks with it. The people in a room with you show a first name, not a face, and nobody has checked that the name is theirs.

• We do not introduce two people to each other.

  There are no one-to-one rooms, no way to browse people, and no way to ask for a particular person. A room is a group or it does not open.

• Women-only rooms are not part of this version.

  The rule is built and tested in the database, and the private gender answer is collected and never shown. It is not switched on in this version, and we would rather say that here than list a room that is not offered.

• We are not an emergency service.

  If something is happening now, call 911. Tell us second. The service level below is what we promise about reading and acting, not about arriving.

• We never read your contacts.

  There is no screen that asks for your address book, and no quiet way to add one. Two checks hold that: one refuses every way of reading contacts in the code itself, including the phone's own contact picker, which needs no permission; the other reads the built app and refuses the permissions. A library that asked for either would stop the release.

• The app cannot send or read text messages.

  Not to anybody, in any build. The permissions that would let it are refused by a check that reads the built app, and without them Android gives an app no way to put a text message in the network or open an inbox. Your sign-in code is one you read on your own screen and type in.

How quickly we answer