Child Safety Standards
Version 2026-10-07
Our standard
PetsOnly has no tolerance for child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE): anything that sexualises, exploits, endangers or grooms a child. It is not allowed in any photo, video, message, post, comment, profile or listing. We remove it and can suspend or ban the account behind it. PetsOnly is a service for people and their pets. It is not made for children, and its matching and chat features are built for adults.
Who can use PetsOnly
You must be at least 16 to have an account. Sign-up asks for your date of birth and refuses anyone under 16. A 16- or 17-year-old gets a restricted account: the Deck, swiping, matches and chat are closed to them, and they never appear in other people’s Deck. A date of birth is something you tell us, not something we can prove, so we also act on reports. If two different people report an account as underage, it is suspended until a moderator has looked at it.
How to report something
Wherever you can see another person’s content (a profile, pet, photo, video, post, comment, message or listing) there is a Report action, on the web and in the apps. Choose the closest reason (spam, harassment or abuse, or an underage account) and use the details box, up to 2,000 characters, to say what you saw. If it is child sexual abuse or exploitation, say so there. You can also write to contact@petsonly.com at any time, including if you have no account. A report keeps a copy of what was reported, so it can still be reviewed after the author edits or deletes it.
Protecting yourself
You can block any account. Once you do, you and that account can no longer see each other in the Deck, matches, chat or listings. You can also unmatch at any time, which ends the match.
What we check automatically
Every photo or video you upload (a profile photo, a pet photo, a post, a message attachment, a sighting, or a document that is an image) gets a nudity check, run on our own servers; for a video it looks at a few stills. A flagged upload is shown to no one but you until a moderator decides whether it stays. This check looks for human nudity. It is not a detector for child abuse and does not replace reports.
What happens to a report
A report goes to our moderation queue and is decided by a moderator, never by the person it is about. The outcome can be a warning, removal of the content, a suspension (which signs the account out) or a ban (which hides the account’s content from everyone else).
Authorities and outside help
Where the law requires it, or where a child may be at risk, we pass what we know to the competent authorities and cooperate with law-enforcement requests. If a child is in immediate danger, call the emergency services first (112 in the EU). In Germany you can also report illegal content to the police or to internet-beschwerdestelle.de.
Contact
For anything about child safety on PetsOnly, write to contact@petsonly.com.