Crew Child Safety Standards

Effective 8 October 2026

What these standards are

This document is Crew's published standard against child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE), as required by Google Play's Child Safety Standards policy and by Apple's App Review Guidelines. It applies to the Crew mobile app on iOS and Android, to everything stored on the servers behind it, and to everyone who holds a Crew account.

By "CSAE" we mean any sexual abuse or exploitation of a person under 18, and any material or conduct that depicts, facilitates, solicits or normalises it. "CSAM" means child sexual abuse material: any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a minor.

Crew is a private app for small groups of friends who already know each other. It has no public feed, no browsing of profiles and no recommendations. Somebody can reach a person only by knowing their exact handle or email address, by scanning their code or tapping phones with them, or through a crew they are both in — and a first message from somebody who is not yet a contact waits as a request until it is accepted. No product design removes the obligation set out here, though, and none of what follows is conditional on how likely we think the abuse is.

What is prohibited

The following are forbidden anywhere in Crew — in messages, photographs, videos, voice notes, documents, stickers, profiles, handles, display names, crew names, plans, polls and support messages alike. There are no exceptions, no warnings and no second accounts.

Child sexual abuse material

Creating, uploading, storing, requesting, sharing or linking to any image, video, audio or text that sexually depicts a minor. This includes material that is drawn, animated, computer-generated or produced by an AI model, and material in which a real minor's likeness has been edited into sexual content.

Sexualisation of minors

Any description, depiction or discussion that presents a minor as an object of sexual interest, including apparently innocuous imagery of children shared or captioned for a sexual purpose.

Grooming and solicitation

Using Crew to build a relationship with a minor for sexual purposes, to solicit sexual material or contact from a minor, or to arrange or facilitate an offline meeting with a minor for such purposes.

Sextortion

Threatening to expose intimate material of a minor in order to obtain more material, money, sexual contact or anything else.

Trafficking and abuse for gain

Advertising, arranging, promoting or paying for the sexual exploitation or trafficking of a minor.

Facilitation

Promoting, glorifying, giving instructions for, or providing access to any of the above — including sharing off-platform links, codes or contact details for that purpose.

A minor is anyone under 18, regardless of the age of consent where they live.

Who may use Crew

Crew is built for adults and is not directed at children. You must be at least 16 years old to hold an account in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, and at least 13 years old elsewhere, or older where your local law sets a higher minimum age for consenting to online services.

We do not knowingly allow anyone below that age to hold an account. If we learn that a user is under the minimum age, we close the account and delete its data, as set out in our privacy policy. If we learn that an adult is using Crew to contact a minor for any sexual purpose, we terminate the account, preserve the evidence and report it.

Crew carries no advertising, recommends no accounts, and never surfaces one person's content to anyone outside the crews they chose to join.

How the product limits risk

Design is not a substitute for enforcement, but it decides how much there is to enforce. Crew has no feature that lets an adult browse for, or be recommended, a child they do not already know.

No public surface

There is no public feed, no browsing or searching of other people's profiles or content, no comments from strangers and no suggested users. A person can be found only by their exact handle or exact email address, never by a partial name. Nothing written in a chat is visible to anyone outside it, and nobody joins a crew without an invite code or link from somebody already in it.

Strangers wait at the door

A first message from somebody who is not yet a contact arrives as a request. It can be accepted, reported or blocked, and until it is accepted nothing more reaches the person it was sent to. Anyone can choose to be messaged by their contacts only.

Report and block everywhere

Every message and every person can be reported from inside the app, and blocking takes effect at once.

We can act on what is reported

Chats are encrypted in transit and at rest with keys held on our servers rather than end-to-end, which means that when a report or a lawful request requires it, we are able to access the content in question, remove it and preserve it for the authorities.

How to report CSAE

Anyone can report suspected CSAE on Crew, whether or not they hold an account, and reports go to a person rather than a queue. They are read ahead of every other message we receive.

In the app

Hold a message, or open a person's profile, and choose Report, then pick A child's safety — reports reach us directly and are read by a person before anything else. For anything that is not one message or one person, open Profile → Safety → Report a safety concern (also at the top of Help & Support) and describe what you saw and, if you can, the handle or display name involved and when it happened. Profile → Safety also links to these standards.

By email

Write to our child safety point of contact at the address at the foot of this page with CHILD SAFETY in the subject line.

To the authorities, directly

You never need our permission or involvement to report. In the United States, the NCMEC CyberTipline takes reports at report.cybertip.org or 1-800-843-5678. In the United Kingdom, the Internet Watch Foundation takes reports at iwf.org.uk. Elsewhere, INHOPE lists a hotline for your country at inhope.org. If a child is in immediate danger, call your local emergency number first.

Please do not download, copy or forward suspected CSAM to us or to anyone else — describe it and tell us where it is. Possessing or transmitting that material is itself a crime in most countries, including when it is done to prove a report.

We do not retaliate against anyone who reports in good faith, and we do not tell the reported account who reported it.

What we do when we receive a report

Every CSAE report is triaged by a person within 24 hours of reaching us. Where a report is substantiated, all of the following happen — none of them is discretionary.

Remove and preserve

The content is removed from the app and preserved, in a form that is not accessible in the product, for as long as the law requires it to be available to the authorities.

Terminate

The account is terminated and the connection it belongs to is severed, which ends the other person's exposure to it. Terminated accounts are not restored, and we take reasonable steps to prevent the same person from registering again.

Report

Apparent CSAM is reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and, where the circumstances call for it, to law enforcement in the relevant jurisdiction. We report promptly and we do not require the reporter to have contacted the authorities themselves.

Tell the reporter what happened

Where we have a way to reply and it would not prejudice an investigation, we confirm to the person who reported that the report was acted on.

Where a report concerns a minor holding an account rather than abusive content, we close the account and delete its data, and we contact the authorities if there is any indication that the child is at risk.

Compliance with the law

We comply with the CSAE laws that apply to us, and with the equivalent obligations in the countries where Crew is available. Where United States law applies to our service, this includes the reporting duty that 18 U.S.C. § 2258A places on providers to report apparent CSAM to NCMEC, and the duty to preserve the associated records.

We respond to valid legal process from law enforcement and to preservation requests, and we cooperate with NCMEC, with hotlines in the INHOPE network and with the platforms we distribute through. Our privacy policy permits these disclosures: protecting a child and complying with the law take precedence over the confidentiality we otherwise promise our users.

These standards sit alongside Google Play's Child Endangerment and Child Safety Standards policies and Apple's App Review Guidelines, and nothing in them is intended to fall short of either.

Child safety point of contact

Crew maintains a single, monitored point of contact for child safety matters. Users, regulators, law enforcement, NCMEC and hotlines, and Google and Apple may all use it. Please put CHILD SAFETY in the subject line; anything so marked is answered ahead of ordinary support, and within one business day.

For an emergency involving a child at immediate risk, contact your local emergency services first and then write to us — do not wait for our reply.

Keeping these standards current

We review this document at least once a year, and again whenever Crew gains a feature that changes how people can reach one another. The version and effective date at the top of the page tell you which text you are reading, and this URL always serves the current one.