Child Safety Standards
SYNC has zero tolerance for child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) and child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Our standards
- Adults only. SYNC is for people aged 18 and over. Accounts we believe belong to someone under 18 are removed.
- Prohibited, always: any content or behaviour that sexualises, grooms, exploits or endangers a child. That includes CSAM, sexualised images of minors (real, drawn or AI-generated), sextortion, and attempts to contact minors. This is set out in our Terms of Service.
- No nudity or sexual content at all. SYNC bans nudity and sexual imagery for everyone, even between adult partners. This removes the most common route for abusive imagery.
How we prevent and detect it
- SYNC is a private two-person app: the only person who can send you a photo is the partner you paired with. There is no public feed, no search and no strangers. Photos are stored encrypted, and no person at SYNC looks at them. Videos can't be uploaded.
- We use, and are expanding, automated tools to detect nudity, sexual content and known child sexual abuse material (for example matching digital fingerprints with Microsoft's PhotoDNA service and NCMEC lists). Automatic image safety checks are being rolled out in a later update and are not live yet; once enabled, they will run before a photo is shown to the other person.
- Connections are private between two people who pair deliberately (an invite plus an acceptance), with limits on how often new connections can be made. There's no search, public profiles, discovery or messaging strangers.
- Anyone can report concerns to us (see below), and reports involving children are handled first.
How we respond
- Matched material is never shared, never shown to anyone at SYNC and never simply deleted. The account is blocked at once and banned.
- We preserve the material (sealed and encrypted) and related account information for at least one year, as the law requires, and report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and to the relevant authorities in India, without anyone at SYNC viewing it. Where appropriate, we also report to other law-enforcement agencies.
- We cooperate with valid law-enforcement requests. Sealed material is only ever handed to the authorities.
- Only the named child safety point of contact below handles these reports, and works from the report details, never the images.
Report a concern
- In the app: Settings → Contact Support (opens an email to us).
- Email: syncapp.noreply@gmail.com. Please include the date and any account details you have, but do not send us the images.
- Directly to authorities: the NCMEC CyberTipline (report.cybertip.org) or, in India, the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (cybercrime.gov.in, helpline 1930). If a child is in immediate danger, call your local emergency number.
Child safety point of contact
SYNC Trust & Safety, syncapp.noreply@gmail.com. This contact is responsible for our CSAM response and can speak to our practices and compliance.