1. Real profiles
Your profile is you: your own name, your real age and recent photos of you.
- Use your own first name and your real date of birth.
- Use photos of you, recent enough that someone would recognise you. Your main photo shows your face.
- Don’t use someone else’s photos, pretend to be someone else, or make a profile for someone else.
- One account per person, and it’s yours alone. Don’t share it, sell it or let anyone else use it.
If it’s broken: A photo that isn’t you is removed. A profile that pretends to be someone else is closed.
2. Respect, and no pressure
Treat people with respect, especially when it isn’t working out.
- If someone ends a chat, doesn’t reply or asks you to stop, leave it there. Don’t keep writing, and don’t look for them elsewhere.
- No insults, threats or intimidation, and nothing meant to make someone feel small.
- Don’t pressure anyone to meet, to send photos, to share their number or to keep talking.
- No hate: nothing that attacks people for their race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability or age. No slurs, not even as a joke.
- Don’t share someone’s messages, photos or personal details outside Lately without their OK.
If it’s broken: Depending on how serious it is: a warning, removing what you wrote, a suspension or closing your account. Threats and hate can mean we close your account straight away.
3. Money and scams
Never ask anyone on Lately for money, in any form, for any reason.
- No asking for money, loans, gift cards, crypto or bank details, however good the reason sounds.
- No investment tips, trading platforms or “business opportunities”.
- No stories that end in someone paying: an emergency, a ticket, a visa, a parcel stuck at customs.
- Someone asking you for money? Don’t send anything. Report them, and we’ll look at it.
If it’s broken: Asking for money usually means we close your account. We may also warn the people you’ve been talking to.
4. Sexual content and photos
No nudity or sexual content on Lately, and nothing sexual that nobody asked for.
- Your photos show you. Swimwear on a beach is fine; nudity and sexual photos aren’t.
- No sexual answers, captions or hellos.
- Flirting is fine. Sexual messages, comments about someone’s body or asking for photos aren’t, unless someone clearly wants them.
- No photos showing violence, self-harm, drugs or anything illegal.
If it’s broken: Photos are checked automatically when you add them. One that breaks this rule is held back for a person to look at, or refused. Unwanted sexual messages can mean a warning, a suspension or closing your account.
5. Safety when you meet
When you meet someone from Lately, they must be safe with you and free to leave at any time.
- Respect a no, at any moment, about anything. Agreeing to meet isn’t agreeing to anything else.
- No violence, no threats, and no touching someone who doesn’t want it.
- Never spike a drink, or push someone to drink or take anything.
- Don’t follow someone, turn up where they didn’t invite you, or film or photograph them without their OK.
- What happens on a date counts too. We act on reports about meetings, not just about chats.
If it’s broken: We can close an account straight away, and when the law allows, we help the police. If you’re in danger, call the emergency services first. Tips for meeting safely are on our Safety page.
6. Contact details and promotion
Keep contact details for your chats, and keep Lately free of advertising.
- No phone numbers, email addresses, links or social media handles in your profile, answers, moments or hellos. We check for them automatically, and they can’t be saved there.
- In a chat, share your number when you both want to. Don’t push someone to move to another app before you’ve met.
- No advertising, selling or promoting anything: not a business, an event, another app or your other accounts.
- No sending the same message to lots of people, and no bots or automated accounts.
If it’s broken: Promotion is removed, and accounts used for spam or business are closed.
7. 18 and over
Lately is only for adults: you must be 18 or older.
- Use your real date of birth. If you’re under 18, you can’t have an account.
- No photos of children on their own, including your own children.
- Nothing that sexualises anyone under 18, ever.
- Think someone on Lately is under 18? Report them and choose “Seems under 18”.
If it’s broken: We close the accounts of people under 18. Anything that sexualises a child is removed, the account is closed and we report it to the police.
Anything illegal isn’t allowed on Lately either, even where these rules don’t mention it.
What happens when a rule is broken
We look at what happened, how serious it is and whether it happened before. Then we do one of these:
- A warning. We tell you which rule it was about.
- Removing something: a photo, an answer, a moment or a hello.
- A suspension for a number of days. You can still read your chats, but you can’t write, and you aren’t suggested to anyone.
- Closing your account. Your chats end, and we can stop the same Apple or Google account from signing up again.
Some checks are automatic: photos are checked when you add them, and contact details can’t be saved on a profile. But every warning, removal, suspension and ban is decided by a person on our team.
You get the reasons
With every decision, you get a statement of reasons in the app: what we decided, which rule it’s about and why. If we closed your account, you can still sign in to read it.
You can ask us to look again
Think we got it wrong? Ask us to look again in the app, within six months of the decision. Someone other than the person who decided looks at it, and we tell you the outcome. If we got it wrong, we undo it.
If you reported someone
A person reads every report. When we’ve looked at it, we usually let you know whether we took action. We don’t share the details of what we decided about someone else.
See something?
From any profile, chat or moment, tap ••• and choose Report or Block. Blocking is instant and silent. You don’t need an account to tell us about something on Lately: mail [email protected].
If you’re in danger, call the emergency services first. For tips on meeting safely and where to find help, see Safety.