When an app helps families meet in real life, safety can’t be a settings page you find later. It has to be part of how everything works. Here’s how we approached it.
Guidelines you agree to, every time
Before you send your first message in any conversation, Puddle shows our community guidelines: be kind, zero tolerance for abuse, protect children’s privacy, go at your own pace, meet safely, and report anything that feels wrong.
You tick to agree before you can type. We record when you agreed and to which version, so if the guidelines change, everyone is asked again. Nobody can say they didn’t know.
Meeting safely
In-person meetups add a second short agreement: meet somewhere public first, children stay with their own grown-ups, tell someone where you’re going, trust your instincts, and report concerns. Exact addresses are only shown to families who are going.
Blocking and reporting
You can block a family at any time. You won’t see each other in matches, pins or meetups, and neither of you can message the other. They aren’t told.
Reports can be about a family, a meetup or a specific message. We keep a copy of the reported message so the evidence survives even if it’s deleted, and offer to block at the same time.
Privacy as a default
We ask for age ranges, not ages, and areas, not addresses. Pins are private. Push notifications say who a message is from, never what it says, because they show on lock screens.
None of this is finished. We’ll keep listening to families and improving it.