Safety Policy

Company: Vicinity Social, LLC Effective date: October 14, 2026 Last updated: October 14, 2026 Address: 25852 McBean Parkway #831, Valencia, CA 91355 Safety contact: safety@vicinity-social.com Support: support@vicinity-social.com

This policy says what is not allowed on Vicinity, what we do when somebody breaks those rules, what we check and what we do not check, and what help is available if something happens to you. We have tried to write it plainly and to say what is actually true of the service rather than what sounds reassuring.

1. What is not allowed

The Acceptable Use Policy sets out our rules in full. The conduct below is prohibited, and we treat it as conduct that threatens public or personal safety:

Sexual contact or sexual conduct with another person without their consent.
Violence, threats of violence, or encouraging anyone else to commit violence.
Stalking, following, surveilling or repeatedly contacting someone who has asked to be left alone.
Harassment, intimidation, or abuse directed at another member.
Kidnapping, unlawful restraint, or luring someone to a place under a false pretext.
Drugging a person, or giving anyone an intoxicant without their knowledge.
Robbery, theft, extortion, or obtaining money or property by deception.
Sexual exploitation, commercial sexual activity, or trafficking of any kind.
Any sexual content or conduct involving a person under 18, which we report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Using a false identity, or impersonating another person.
Sharing intimate images of anyone without their consent.

2. Criminal background screening

Vicinity does not conduct a criminal background screening or criminal background check on each member.

We do not run criminal background checks on members at registration, and we do not run them periodically afterwards. No conviction currently causes an account to be excluded at sign-up, because we do not have the information that would let us identify one.

This matters for how you use the service. A screening of this kind can be inaccurate or incomplete even where it is performed, it can give a false sense of security, and people with criminal histories can evade it. Treat every member as somebody you do not yet know.

Where we learn of a conviction another way — because a member tells us, because another member reports it with evidence, or because law enforcement contacts us — we act on what we learn under the rest of this policy.

3. Identity and age verification

Age. Vicinity is for adults 18 and older. Everyone gives a date of birth at registration and must be 18 or older to finish creating an account. We do not currently verify that date of birth against a document or a third-party record. If we come to believe an account belongs to someone under 18, we remove it and we do not restore it.

Identity. We do not require members to prove their identity. We have built an optional photo verification feature that compares a short live video to the photos already on a profile and, where they match, shows a verified mark on that profile. It is not switched on yet. When it is, it will be optional, free, and it will mean only that the person in the live video is the person in the photos. It will not mean that we know their name, and it will not be a background check.

Photographs. Every photograph uploaded to Vicinity is screened automatically before anyone else can see it. Images that our screening judges to be sexual, violent or otherwise against our rules are rejected or held for a person to review. Images served from Vicinity are also scanned against known child sexual abuse material at our content delivery layer.

4. Suspending and barring members

We suspend or bar accounts for the conduct in section 1. We do this when a report gives us reason to, when our own review of content or behaviour gives us reason to, and automatically when our systems detect patterns of spam or mass unsolicited contact.

Suspension blocks sign-in. Some suspensions lift automatically after a set period, and some stay in place until a member of staff looks at the account.
Barring removes the account from the service. A barred account cannot sign in again, and its profile and location are removed from the service.
Automatic suspensions for spam escalate: a first one is short, a second is longer, and a third within thirty days waits for a person rather than lifting on its own.

We do not require a conviction, a police report, or proof to the standard a court would use. We act on our own judgment about the risk to other members.

5. Appeals

A suspended or barred member can ask us to look again. The suspension screen inside Vicinity tells the member why the account was suspended, when the suspension lifts if it lifts on its own, and how to reach us. Anyone can write to safety@vicinity-social.com, including from an account that can no longer sign in.

We aim to answer an appeal within five business days. A member of staff who was not involved in the original decision reviews it where that is possible. While an appeal is open the suspension stays in place. If we were wrong, we reinstate the account and say so.

6. Telling members who had contact with a reported member

We notify members in two situations.

Fraud. Where we bar an account because we judge there is a significant risk the person was trying to get money from other members, we tell every member who received and answered a message from that account, within 24 hours of the ban. The notice names the account as that member knew it, says that the person may have been using a false identity or trying to defraud members, warns that money and financial information should never be sent to another member, and links to information about avoiding fraud.

Other conduct. Where we remove an account for conduct that threatens public or personal safety, we may notify members who were in contact with it, and we decide that case by case. We weigh whether the warning would help the member, whether telling them would identify the person who reported, and whether it would put anyone at greater risk. We do not pass on the details of a report, and we do not name the member who made it.

In every case we tell members what they need to protect themselves and no more.

7. Reporting, and reporting honestly

Every profile, conversation, photograph and event on Vicinity can be reported from the screen it appears on. Reports reach a review queue a person works through. You do not need to be the target of the conduct to report it.

Please report honestly. A report that is knowingly false, malicious, discriminatory, made to retaliate, or made to remove a member for a reason that has nothing to do with our rules is itself a breach of our rules, and we act on it. Filing reports in bad faith can lead to your own account being suspended or barred.

Reporting something to us is not the same as reporting it to the police. For conduct that may be a crime, please do both.

Sexual conduct without the consent of the other person violates this policy, is a crime, and can carry both criminal penalties and civil liability. Consent must be freely given, and it can be withdrawn at any time. A person who is asleep, unconscious, or incapacitated by alcohol or drugs cannot consent.

We remove accounts for this conduct, we preserve what we hold when it is reported to us, and we respond to lawful requests from law enforcement investigating it.

9. Resources

If you have been hurt, these are free, confidential and available to anyone in the United States. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.

National Domestic Violence Hotline — 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788.
RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline — 1-800-656-4673, or chat at hotline.rainn.org.
988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988.
FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center — ic3.gov, for money taken by fraud.
FTC — reportfraud.ftc.gov.
Colorado members: Colorado Crime Survivors Hotline, 1-888-880-4000; Violence Free Colorado, violencefreecolorado.org.

You can also write to us at safety@vicinity-social.com. If you want material preserved for a police investigation, tell us and we will keep it.

10. Safety measures

These are on by default and need nothing from you:

Your exact location is never stored. Everything we keep about where you are is an approximate point, deliberately moved away from your real position before it is saved.
Photographs are screened before anyone else sees them.
Message patterns are checked for spam and for mass unsolicited contact, and accounts are suspended automatically when those patterns appear.
Conversations are checked for signs of sexual exploitation, and flagged for a person to look at.
A safety notice is sent to you at registration and shown before you can send your first message.

These are yours to use:

Block any member from their profile or from the conversation. Blocking is immediate and mutual.
Report anything, from the screen it is on.
Control who can find you. Your discovery settings decide who sees you and at what distance.
Turn off location sharing at any time in Settings. You can also delete your location history.
Delete your account at any time in Settings, which removes your profile, photographs, messages and location.

And these are worth doing yourself, every time:

Meet in a public place the first few times, and get yourself there and back.
Tell a friend where you are going, who you are meeting, and when you expect to be home.
Keep the conversation on Vicinity until you are comfortable moving it elsewhere.
Do not share your home address, your workplace, your financial details or identifying documents.
Never send money to someone you met online, however convincing the reason, and however long you have been talking.
Trust your instincts. If something feels wrong, leave. You do not owe anyone an explanation.

Changes to this policy

We update this policy when the service changes. The effective date above tells you when the current version took effect. Where Colorado law requires it, we send the Colorado Attorney General the address of this page within 15 days of adopting a new version, and within 7 days if the address itself changes.