Skein

Safety

Child safety standards

Skein is for adults. Child sexual abuse and exploitation material has no place on it, and there is no version of this policy with an exception in it.

Last updated 31 August 2026. Skein is operated by Altros Studios.

To report a child safety concern: use Report inside the app — from any profile or from a Thread — or write to safety@skein.me. Reports about a minor are handled ahead of everything else in the queue.

If a child is in immediate danger, call your local emergency number first. In the US you can also contact the NCMEC CyberTipline on report.cybertip.org or 1-800-843-5678.

What is prohibited

The following end an account immediately and permanently:

  • Child sexual abuse material (CSAM), in any form, including drawn, generated or altered imagery.
  • Sexualising a minor in text, in a photo, or in a prompt answer.
  • Being under 18 and using Skein.
  • Attempting to contact, groom, solicit or meet a minor through Skein.
  • Advertising, linking to, or trading such material anywhere on the service.

This is the one rule in our community rules with no appeal and no second chance.

How we keep minors off Skein

  • A hard 18+ gate. Date of birth is required at signup and checked server-side; an under-18 date is refused outright, not warned about.
  • Mandatory liveness verification. A profile is not visible to anyone until a short liveness capture confirms a real person is holding the phone and matches the profile photos.
  • Age estimation as a second signal. The liveness capture is also run through automated age-range estimation. A result that looks under-20 routes to a human for review rather than being auto-approved.
  • Every photo is machine-moderated at upload, before it is stored where anyone can see it. Explicit imagery is rejected at that point.
  • No public content. Nothing on Skein is browsable without an account, and profiles are shown only to a small daily set of verified adults in the same city.

Reporting, in the app

Every profile and every Thread has a Report action, two taps from where you are. Choosing it captures the evidence at that moment — up to the last 50 messages and a snapshot of the reported profile — so the person deleting their account or editing their profile afterwards cannot erase what you reported.

You do not need to be certain, and you do not need to explain yourself. Reporting is anonymous to the person reported: they are never told who reported them, or that a report exists.

How we respond

  1. A person reviews every report. Anything involving a minor is prioritised above all other moderation work.
  2. Where the report is substantiated, the account is banned permanently and its content removed. Bans for this reason are not appealable.
  3. Apparent child sexual abuse material is preserved as required by law and reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) through the CyberTipline, and to other regional or national authorities where the law requires it.
  4. Reports survive the deletion of the account they concern. Deleting an account is not a way to erase what was reported.

Our legal obligations

Skein complies with the child safety laws that apply to it, including US reporting obligations to NCMEC under 18 U.S.C. § 2258A. We cooperate with valid legal process from law enforcement investigating child exploitation.

We do not require, and never ask for, government ID or legal name — the age gate is date of birth plus liveness. That is a deliberate privacy choice and it does not reduce the standard above.

Contact

For child safety matters, including questions from platforms, regulators or law enforcement about our CSAE prevention practices:

This page is published at a stable URL and is not editable by users.