Safeguarding statement

What this page is

This page describes what VettedVault does to keep people safe, as it is built today. It is a description, not a promise: every mechanism below runs in the software now, and the one that does not yet is said to be still being built. The date above is when a solicitor last reviewed it; until that date is set, it is a draft. It changes when the platform does.

One person, one listing

Every advertiser proves who they are before anything publishes: a government photo ID, a liveness check, and a person confirming the face in the photos is the face on the ID. Each verified person may hold one listing. Two listings would present one person as two, which is exactly what the badge exists to rule out, so the rule is enforced at the moment a listing is created rather than checked afterwards. Verification expires after 12 months and is renewed the same way; a lapsed listing is unpublished until it is. How verification works sets out each step.

ID documents are verified and then deleted

We do not keep identity documents. Once a check completes, the document and the images captured during it are destroyed. What remains is the result, the month it passed, and a one-way code derived from the check. That code has one use: a banned person who tries to register again is recognised, without any document being kept to do it.

A person reads everything before it is seen

No listing is published by software. A moderator reads every new listing before it appears, and every edit to a live listing is reviewed as a revision while the existing version stays up. Photos pass through the same door: each is checked by a person before it is shown. The automatic steps in the upload pipeline transform, flag or refuse; none of them can approve.

Duplicate photos are flagged at upload

Every photo is fingerprinted when it is uploaded and compared with the photos already on the platform. A close match is flagged to the moderator as a possible duplicate before the photo is reviewed, because the same photos appearing under two names is the signature of a stolen profile or of a person being advertised without their consent. Location data and other metadata are stripped from every image before it is shown. A scan against known illegal-image hashes is built into the same pipeline and will run through a specialist provider once one is contracted.

Services come from a fixed list

Advertisers choose services from a curated list, and free text is refused everywhere on the platform. That is a safeguarding decision as much as an editorial one. A fixed vocabulary cannot carry coded language, cannot be used to advertise what the platform prohibits, and is moderated the same way for every listing.

Reports that page a person

Anyone can report a profile, without an account and without giving a name. Four categories are treated as emergencies: underage, trafficking, coercion, and non-consensual advertising of a person. Each pages a named person immediately, on a queue used for nothing else, with a response target of four hours at any hour of the day. Every other report is read by a person within a day. The reporter is never identified to the advertiser. Report a profile is the page that does this.

Removed and banned

A listing that is removed is gone from the site permanently and its address is never reused. A banned account is closed permanently, and a ban is served: because the one-way code above survives the deletion of the document, a banned person cannot re-register under a new name. Content involving anyone under 18 is reported to the relevant authorities. Every moderation decision is recorded: the decision, who made it, and when. A data export for advertisers, and erasure that keeps the moderation record with personal details removed, are part of the platform's commitments and are being built; this page will say so plainly when they run.

Who else to contact

If someone is in immediate danger, call 999. In the United Kingdom, Ofcom is the regulator for online safety under the Online Safety Act, at ofcom.org.uk.

The organisations run by and for sex workers that we list on our safety page know far more than we do, and we say so there. We are an advertising platform; they are the people to call.