Zero tolerance
Spark prohibits child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) absolutely. That includes child sexual abuse material (CSAM), sexualised depictions of minors — drawn, generated or photographic — grooming, sextortion, trafficking, and any attempt to arrange or solicit contact with a minor.
There is no warning and no second chance for this. An account involved in it is removed permanently, and we preserve the evidence and refer it to the appropriate authorities.
Spark is for adults
You must be 18 or older. Date of birth is collected during onboarding and the rule is enforced in the database itself, not just in the app, so a profile under 18 cannot be created or edited into existence.
Spark is rated for adults on the app stores and is not directed at children. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we remove it and delete the data attached to it.
Reporting a child safety concern
Every profile and every conversation has a Report control. "Under 18" is one of the listed reasons, alongside harassment and inappropriate content, and a report can be filed in a couple of taps without alerting the person reported.
You do not need an account to raise something with us. Email hello@sparked.love and describe what you saw and where. Reports about child safety are treated as the highest priority we have.
Blocking is available at the same moment as reporting, and it works in both directions immediately, so you never have to stay reachable to someone while a report is looked at.
What we do about it
Child safety reports are reviewed by a human, ahead of everything else in the queue. Where a report is substantiated we remove the content and the account, preserve what is needed for an investigation, and report to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and to law enforcement in the relevant jurisdiction.
We comply with valid legal process from law enforcement and cooperate with investigations into CSAE.
To be plain about our limits: Spark does not run automated CSAM detection or hash-matching today. Our programme is reporting-led, and that is precisely why the reporting route above is quick, prominent and available to people without accounts.
Designated point of contact
Questions about these standards, our CSAM prevention practices, or a specific case: hello@sparked.love. This address reaches the person responsible for child safety at Spark.
Keeping this current
These standards are reviewed as the product changes, and this page is updated when what we do changes. Nothing here is aspirational: it describes controls that exist today.