Staying safe on Yap

• Words before faces. The person you’re matched with sees your answer, not your name or picture. Those are shown only if you both tap Keep it open and become friends.
• Conversations close by themselves a day after the first message, unless you both choose to keep them. Going quiet is a perfectly good way out.
• No read receipts, no online status. Nobody can see whether you’ve read their message or whether you’re in the app.
• Photos only between friends, and every photo from someone else arrives blurred until you tap it.
• Screenshots are blocked on Android — but anyone can still photograph a screen with another phone.
• Every report is read by a person, who decides what happens. See Leave, block and report.

Until you really know someone, don’t share:

• your full name, phone number or email;
• your home address, area, college, hostel, office or workplace;
• your Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn or any other handle — it leads to your friends, family and photos;
• your live location, or plans that say where you’ll be and when.

Details give you away in combination: a college, a city and a hobby can be enough to find someone. A voice note shares your voice and whatever is audible behind it. Before sending a photo, check the background — house numbers, uniforms, ID cards, letters, the view from a window.

Becoming friends shows your Yap name and picture to that one person. Choose a picture you wouldn’t mind them keeping.

Moving to another app hands over your phone number or your profile, and everything Yap does to protect you stays behind: we can’t see or act on what happens somewhere else, and Report only works here. A conversation that’s going well will still be going well in Yap.

Someone who pushes to move off the app quickly — especially before you’ve talked for a while — is a common start to scams and harassment. You can report it: Asking to move off the app is one of the report reasons.

Never, to anyone you met on Yap:

• send money, gift cards or crypto, or approve a UPI “collect” request;
• share an OTP, a UPI PIN, a card number or a password;
• send a photo of your Aadhaar, PAN, passport or bank card;
• install an app or open a link they send you to “verify” anything.

The usual stories, so you can recognise them:

• an investment, trading or crypto tip that “can’t lose”;
• a part-time job paying for likes, reviews or simple tasks, which soon asks you to deposit money;
• an emergency — a hospital bill, a stuck parcel, a lost wallet — from someone you’ve never met;
• someone very warm, very fast, who can never quite talk properly and then needs help.

Yap will never ask for your password or a code — you sign in only with Google, inside the app. Report a scam with Spam or a scam. If you’ve already lost money, call 1930 straight away or report it at cybercrime.gov.in; the sooner, the better the chance of stopping the payment.

View once means Yap shows the photo once. It doesn’t stop someone photographing the screen with another phone, and nothing can. So send only photos you’d be fine with anyone seeing — never an intimate photo of yourself to someone you haven’t met, and never one of anyone else.

If someone threatens to share a photo of you unless you pay or send more:

• don’t pay and don’t send anything — it rarely ends there;
• stop replying, and keep the conversation as evidence;
• report them in Yap, and report it at cybercrime.gov.in or on 1930;
• if the photo is intimate, StopNCII.org can help stop it being posted on major platforms, without the photo leaving your phone.

If an intimate or morphed image of you is on Yap, write to the Grievance Officer: we remove it within 24 hours. It isn’t your fault, and you won’t be the one in trouble for reporting it.

• Don’t send sexual messages or images to anyone who hasn’t clearly asked for them — it’s against the Terms and gets accounts removed.
• If someone says no, or stops replying, that’s the answer. Don’t push.
• Never share what someone told you, or anything they sent you, without their say-so.
• Disagree with an answer as hard as you like; don’t attack the person who wrote it.

It works the other way too: you never owe anyone a reply, a photo, your name or more of your time. Letting a conversation close by itself is a normal way to end it here.

Yap isn’t a dating app, but some conversations turn into friendships. If you decide to meet:

• talk on a video or voice call first — someone who always has an excuse not to is a warning sign;
• meet in a busy public place, in daylight if you can — a café, not a home or a quiet spot;
• tell a friend who you’re meeting, where and when, and share your live location with that friend;
• get there and back on your own, and keep your phone charged;
• keep a clear head, and watch your drink;
• leave whenever you want. You don’t need a reason.

• Leave ends the conversation for both of you. You can pick a reason; it helps us improve Yap and doesn’t punish anyone.
• Block ends the conversation and means the two of you are never matched again.
• Report ends the conversation, blocks them, and keeps a copy of it for 180 days, which a person reads to decide what happens. They’re never told who reported them, and reporting doesn’t use up your turn — you can answer again straight away. We don’t tell you the outcome, so that nothing about a report can be used against the person who made it.

Report reasons: harassment or abuse, sexual or explicit content, asking to move off the app, spam or a scam, they seem underage, or something else. If you’re unsure, report anyway — a person reads it before it counts against anyone.

How reports are decided, and what happens to the person reported, is in the Privacy Policy.

Everyone on Yap must be 18 or older. If someone seems younger — what they say about school, their age, their exams — report them with They seem underage. The conversation ends, the report goes to the top of our queue ahead of every other, and we disable the account while we check.

We have zero tolerance for child sexual abuse and exploitation: any sexual content involving a minor, or any attempt to contact a minor sexually, gets the account removed and is reported to the police, as Indian law (POCSO) requires. If a child is in danger, call Childline on 1098 or the police on 112.

• Yap will never message you, email you or call you asking for a password, a code or to “verify” your account.
• Sign out on a phone you share (You → Sign out) — it signs you out of Google in Yap too.
• Keep your phone’s screen lock on; your conversations are in the app on that phone.
• If you think someone else got into your account, sign out on every phone you use and write to harivishnu20258@gmail.com.

In India:

• Emergency — police, ambulance, fire: 112.
• Cyber fraud, sextortion or online harassment: 1930, or cybercrime.gov.in.
• Women in distress: Women Helpline 181.
• To talk to someone: Tele-MANAS, free and open all day, 14416.
• A child in danger: Childline 1098.

Elsewhere, findahelpline.com finds a helpline near you. Yap isn’t a crisis service, but we want to know: report the person in the app, and write to harivishnu20258@gmail.com if you need us to keep evidence or help the police. We answer a lawful request from the police within 72 hours.