Our Social Network Safety Strategy

User Safety statement
All providers of internet communities and social networks have a responsibility to create a safe environment for their users. It is not sufficient to rely solely on user education and other passive means; the provider must take active steps to ensure a safe environment exists.

We believe we have developed the worlds most sophisticated, rigorous and effective social network safety mechanisms. We first deployed 24/7 service monitoring in 2004 and since that time have invested huge resources in ongoing development.

Lateral has implemented user safety measures in all its’ services in all countries on all operators. Based on the ACMA Safety Measures Notice, the Virtual Global Taskforce, The British Home Office and a number of other on-line agencies Lateral believe its’ systems achieve the following:

• Make our services a hostile place for anyone trying to use the system inappropriately.


• Make perpetrators aware that our services are not anonymous places. That communications are being constantly scrutinised.


• That users of our services are educated and informed about the potential dangers


• That a constant process of human monitoring, educating warning and banning is ongoing


• That very robust and accessible information storage is available at all times to report on the communications of problem users. That this information is available to authorities quickly and effectively if required.


• That inappropriate material is automatically filtered by sophisticated electronic tools.


• Give users the tools to block other users permanently and to report on inappropriate behaviour.


• Select, train, guide, manage and monitor the monitoring staff to appropriate standards.

This highly visible process of 24/7 monitoring, filtering warning, educating and banning is more than adequate for the level of risk expected in Social Network services.

This level of responsibility exceeds the standards of all the Internet standards groups and enforcement agencies around the world. It also exceeds the level of supervision of all fixed Internet Chat service providers.

Components in Safety plan:

We currently take all these steps on a continual 24/7 basis.

• Continuous human post moderation (monitoring). This is monitoring of communications almost immediately after they have happened. Monitoring is done on all messages posted to the service and all stored information. A procedural manual is used to manage all aspects of this activity and interventions. The monitoring system is highly sophisticated, managing the history of each user, storing details of all warnings, bans, user blocks, user negative reports etc. Problem users are identified to the monitors immediately when they login to the service.



• Continuous human pre-moderation (moderation): This is monitoring of communications prior to posting and is in place on selected networks. The messages are quarantined and only released if considered appropriate. A procedural manual is used to manage all aspects of this activity and interventions.



• Age restriction: Using the official age verification systems are available on some mobile networks, Chat services may be restricted to 18 years and above. This is used in conjunction with “monitoring and surveillance” 24/7 as age restricted services are not free from exploitation.



• Automated Filtering: This consists of automated filtering processes, which block inappropriate content.



• Transcript recording: All communications plus the tracking of users activities such as nick name or profile changes are recorded. This mechanism is applicable on all services. The transcripts of all communications sent and received (over the last month) by all users is available immediately on-line to the monitoring teams. All communications are archived and are recoverable indefinitely.



• Image moderation: Images submitted to the system are moderated prior to publication. This also includes “Adult Services”, where moderation is required for images that may be illegal.



• Recommended age restriction: This is somewhat different to age verification. It is highly effective with a monitored service. In this case users are informed that the service has an age limit, but no technical barrier to entry exists. In the event that a user discloses an age less than the recommended age, they are banned immediately by the monitors.



• User Self management: Users have a number of tools at their disposal. If they feel threatened or concerned by any other user they can “block” that user permanently. The block is applied to the offending user’s phone number, so the system, cannot be fooled by nickname changes. A record of these blocks is kept against the offending users records, so that serial offenders can be identified and dealt with. Alternatively users can report other users for inappropriate behaviour. These reports go immediately to the monitoring teams.



• System “pattern-match” surveillance: An automated surveillance system is running continually in the background. This system checks for the use of inappropriate words and contextual language, storing information against users records. Users who generate a large number of alerts are investigated.

We believe, we have developed the worlds most sophisticated, rigorous and effective social network safety mechanisms.