Child safety standards.

1. Our standard: zero tolerance

Paheli Dating has a single, unambiguous position on child sexual abuse and exploitation: it is never tolerated on Paheli. Not in profiles, photos, bios, chat messages, usernames, reported links, or anywhere else a person can put content in this app.

These standards apply to every user, in every country where Paheli is available, and they are not negotiable. We do not weigh them against engagement, growth, or a user’s standing on the app. An account that violates them is removed, permanently, on the first offence.

2. What is prohibited

The following are prohibited on Paheli and will result in immediate and permanent termination:

• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) — any image, video, drawing, rendering or generated media depicting a minor in a sexualised way, including AI-generated and edited material.
• Sexualisation of minors in text, including sexual or suggestive descriptions of children, or expressing sexual interest in minors.
• Grooming — any attempt to build a relationship with a minor for sexual purposes, on Paheli or by using Paheli to move the contact elsewhere.
• Sextortion — threatening to publish intimate imagery of a minor to obtain money, further imagery, or compliance.
• Child trafficking or the solicitation of a minor, including advertising, arranging or seeking sexual contact with a minor.
• Trading, requesting, linking to or advertising CSAM, including off-platform links, group invitations and coded references intended to distribute it.
• Being under 18, or creating or operating an account on behalf of someone under 18.
• Uploading photographs of a real child in a profile, except where a user appears in an ordinary, non-sexualised family photograph — and even then, we remove images on request from a parent or guardian.

A person’s belief about the age of the other party is not a defence. Neither is the claim that content was a joke, a test, or was received rather than created.

3. How we keep under-18s off Paheli

Paheli is rated and built for adults. Keeping minors out is the first line of child safety on a dating app, and it is enforced in the product, not just in the rules:

• A date of birth is required to finish onboarding. No one reaches a profile, a match or a chat without one.
• The 18+ check is enforced on our servers, not only in the app. An account whose date of birth puts the user under 18 cannot be created, and the check cannot be bypassed by a modified client.
• Date of birth is immutable once set. It cannot be edited afterwards, so an account cannot be aged up after the fact.
• Every profile photograph is moderated before it is shown to other users.
• Age is displayed on every profile, so other users can see and report an account that does not look like the age it claims.
• A suspected-minor report suspends the account while we review it. We would rather wrongly suspend an adult for a day than leave a child on a dating app for one.

4. How to report a child-safety concern

Anyone can report a child-safety concern — you do not need a Paheli account, and you do not need to have been the person harmed.

Reports can be made anonymously. We do not tell the reported account who reported it, and we do not share your identity with them at any point.

5. What we do when we receive a report

1. We review it as a priority. Child-safety reports are triaged ahead of every other category, and a person reviews them.
2. We suspend first where a child may be at risk. If the report is credible, the account is suspended while we investigate rather than after.
3. We remove the content and terminate the account permanently where the report is substantiated, and we block the person from creating a new account.
4. We preserve the evidence. Account records, content and access logs are retained securely for law enforcement, even after the account is deleted, for as long as the law requires.
5. We report it to the authorities. See section 6.
6. We look for the rest of it. A confirmed CSAE account is a reason to review everything it touched — its matches, its conversations and any account it was connected to.

We do not require a police complaint, a court order or proof from you before we act. Our standard for removing an account is our own review, not a criminal conviction.

6. Reporting to authorities, and legal compliance

Paheli Dating complies with the child-safety laws that apply to us and cooperates fully with law enforcement. Where we identify apparent child sexual abuse material or a credible threat to a child, we report it — we do not treat that as the reporter’s job.

• The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012 and the Information Technology Act, 2000 (including section 67B) — the Indian law under which storing, transmitting or publishing child sexual abuse material is a criminal offence, and under which we are required to report and to preserve material.
• The IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 — including the obligation to remove reported child sexual abuse material within the statutory timeframe and to maintain a reachable grievance officer.
• The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) — we report apparent CSAM through NCMEC’s CyberTipline where the report is within its scope, in addition to reporting to Indian authorities.
• The National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal and the local police — we file reports at cybercrime.gov.in and respond to lawful requests for information from the police and the courts.

Where the law of another country in which a user is located imposes a further reporting obligation on us, we follow it. We do not treat a user’s privacy interest as a reason to withhold a child-safety report from the authorities.

7. Designated point of contact

Our designated point of contact for child safety — including questions from Google, regulators, law enforcement, child-protection organisations and the public about our CSAE and CSAM prevention practices — is:

This address is monitored, and child-safety correspondence is prioritised over all other mail. Law-enforcement requests should be sent to the same address and should identify the requesting officer and authority.

For anything that is not a child-safety matter, please use the routes on our support page instead, so this queue stays clear for the reports that need it.

8. Help, and where else to report

You do not have to come to us first, and you should not wait for us if a child is in danger.

If you are a survivor of abuse that happened through this app or any other, none of it was your fault, and reporting it is not something you need anyone’s permission to do.

These standards sit alongside our Community Guidelines, our Terms of Service and our Safety Centre. Where anything in those documents could be read as softening this page, this page wins.