Age Verification & Child Safety

1. How age verification works

ChatNow allows sexual conversations between consenting adults in rooms marked as adult, so every user must be 18 or older.

• Who verifies: everyone, guests and members, wherever they are.
• When: before entering any room, sending or reading private messages, sharing images or using the webcam.
• Who checks: AgeVerif, an independent age verification provider.
• What ChatNow receives: a "yes" or "no" result. Never your ID document, your selfie or your date of birth from the check.
• Double anonymity: AgeVerif doesn't know what you do on ChatNow, and ChatNow doesn't see your verification details.
• How long: nothing is kept beyond your session. You verify again at your next session.

The age or date of birth you enter when you join is a profile field. It is not an age check.

If the check fails, you can't enter, and you can try again. Getting around verification, for example with a VPN, someone else's verification or a shared session, is prohibited and leads to exclusion (see our penalties). How we handle your data is explained in our Privacy Policy.

2. If we find a minor

If we learn that a user is under 18, we close their access immediately and delete their data, except what the law requires us to keep, such as a report to NCMEC.

Parents and guardians: if you think your child uses ChatNow, email safety@chatnow.fr with their username if you know it.

3. Parental controls

As required by 47 U.S.C. § 230(d), we let you know that parental control protections (such as computer hardware, software, or filtering services) are commercially available that may help limit access to material that is harmful to minors. Current providers include:

• Apple Screen Time;
• Google Family Link;
• Microsoft Family Safety;
• filtering offered by your home router or your internet service provider.

4. How we protect children

• Age verification gates the whole service.
• Every image sent on ChatNow is compared with hashes of known child sexual abuse material from Project Arachnid, run by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. A match is reported to NCMEC.
• AI text analysis helps our moderators spot suspicious messages (details in how moderation works).
• Moderators are on call 24/7 for child safety.

We report apparent child sexual exploitation, including child sexual abuse material, online enticement of minors and child sex trafficking, to NCMEC's CyberTipline as required by 18 U.S.C. § 2258A. We preserve each report for at least one year, remove the content, permanently ban the user and cooperate with law enforcement.

NCMEC (the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children) runs the CyberTipline, the US member of the INHOPE network of hotlines.

5. Report a child at risk

• On ChatNow, use the report button and choose the reason that fits, or email safety@chatnow.fr. No account is needed.
• You can also report directly to NCMEC's CyberTipline (report.cybertip.org, 1-800-843-5678).
• Don't copy, download or forward the content, even to report it. Tell us where it is and we'll handle it.

6. Staying safe

• Never send intimate images to someone you don't know.
• ChatNow never records the webcam, but anyone watching you can record you with another device.
• If someone threatens to share your images unless you pay (sextortion), don't pay. Keep the messages, report the user to us and report it to the FBI at tips.fbi.gov.
• Treat any request for money, gift cards or crypto as a scam.
• Use block, mute and the report button whenever you need them.

If your intimate images were shared, see Report intimate images.

7. Get help now

These services can help: