اردو

Child safety standards

Effective 11 September 2026. Published to meet Google Play's Child Safety Standards policy and because it is right. Point of contact: [email protected], subject beginning "Child safety:".

The standard

Yapmesh prohibits child sexual abuse and exploitation in every form. That means, without exception: producing, requesting, sending, storing or describing sexual images or videos of anyone under 18; sexualised talk about, with, or directed at a child; grooming, meaning building a relationship with a child for a sexual purpose; sextortion; arranging to meet a child for a sexual purpose; trafficking; and sharing or advertising any of it, including drawn, animated or computer-generated material. Yapmesh also prohibits recruiting, advertising or coordinating any of the above, and using the app to help anyone else do it.

This applies to every user, every group, every rung, both editions and the browser client. It applies whether or not the material ever reaches us, and it applies to people who send such material to each other with nobody else involved.

What a serverless app can and cannot do

Yapmesh has no server. No message, image or file passes through us or through any computer we control, so we cannot scan, see, remove or report content that we never receive. We do not pretend otherwise. What we can do is design the app so that strangers cannot reach children through it, put the reporting and blocking tools on the phone, publish these standards inside the app, and act on every report that reaches us.

How the design keeps strangers away

  • No discovery. There is no directory of users, no search for people, no profile browsing, no friend suggestions, no public groups to find, and no phone-number lookup. A person cannot be found through Yapmesh.
  • Contacts are added in person or by a code you already hold. A QR code scanned face to face, an NFC tap, a sound played between two phones in the same room, a link someone sent you, or a card a friend forwards. A stranger cannot add a child without being physically present or already having a way to reach them.
  • The Nearby room is only the room. Everyone in it is within radio range, which is to say within about the same building, and the app shows who is there. There is no Nearby room across the internet.
  • Internet reach is between existing contacts only. Two phones can only meet over the internet if they already exchanged contact codes; there is no way to meet a new person that way.
  • 18 and over. Yapmesh is listed for adults and says so in the terms. It cannot verify age, and it does not claim to.
  • Files from strangers are held, not fetched. By default, videos and documents from anyone who is not a contact are not downloaded until the person taps, and nothing opens by itself.

How to report, on the phone

Hold any message and choose Report this message, or hold a name and choose Report. Pick the reason Child safety. The report keeps the message, the sender's public key, the place and the time, and blocks the person in the same tap. It is saved under Menu → Safety → Reports from this phone, where it can be exported through the share sheet.

Because there is no server, the report does not go anywhere by itself. Send it to the people who can act:

  • If a child is in danger now, your local emergency number.
  • The police or the national cybercrime unit where you are. In Pakistan, the Federal Investigation Agency's cybercrime wing. In the United States, the NCMEC CyberTipline at report.cybertip.org. Elsewhere, the national hotline of the INHOPE network.
  • Us, at [email protected] with "Child safety:" at the start of the subject, so we can do our part below. Do not attach the material itself; the exported report is enough, and possessing or forwarding such material is itself a crime in most places.

What we do with a report that reaches us

  • We read it within one working day and reply to the person who sent it.
  • We preserve it, unaltered, for as long as the law where we are requires, and never share it except as below.
  • We pass it to the authority able to act: in Pakistan the Federal Investigation Agency, and, where the report indicates another country, that country's hotline or the NCMEC CyberTipline. We do this whether or not the reporter asked us to.
  • We never contact, warn or identify the person reported.
  • We cooperate with lawful requests from child-protection authorities and law enforcement, as set out on the government and legal requests page, and we say there what we hold, which is nothing about users beyond the reports sent to us.
  • If a report shows that a feature of the app is being used to reach children in a way we did not foresee, we change the app.

Compliance with law

Yapmesh complies with the child-safety laws that apply to it, including Pakistan's Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 and the laws of the countries where the app is distributed. We do not create, hold or transmit user content, and we report what we learn. These standards are published on this site, inside the app under Menu → Safety, and are declared in the Google Play Console under the Child Safety Standards policy.

For parents, teachers and schools

Yapmesh was born in a classroom, and a school that puts it on devices it controls is the one responsible for the pupils using it. Practical advice: keep the Nearby room and drop zone in mind, since everyone in range can read them; use fenced groups for class work so the conversation stays in the room; teach the report and block gestures on day one; and know that a teacher receiving an exported report is the first person who can act.

Point of contact

Zafar Ali Khan, [email protected], subject beginning "Child safety:". This is also the designated contact given to Google Play.