Safety, in practice
Adults and under-18s never meet
This is the rule everything else is built around. Members under eighteen and adult members are two separate communities on one site. They do not appear in each other's Discover, cannot send each other a connection request, cannot open each other's profiles and cannot exchange a single letter. It is enforced in the database, not by a setting somebody might forget.
Verified human
Anyone can record a short selfie video to prove they are a real person. A moderator checks that the face in the video is the face in the profile photo, and the profile then carries a green badge. You can also set your account to accept letters only from verified members.
Where someone has not verified, the site says so — in the conversation itself, above the letters, every time.
Photos are reviewed
Profile photos, album photos and photos attached to letters go past a content filter, and anything it flags reaches a moderator. Video letters are always reviewed. Photos can be sent view-once, opening for ten seconds and then closing for good.
Blocking and reporting
Blocking is one click and total: the other person disappears from your site and you from theirs. Reporting takes two, and a report reaches a person, not a queue that nobody reads. We keep the report and the material it concerns so that somebody who tries it twice is recognised.
What we ask of you
Never send your address, phone number, passwords or money, however long you have been writing. Keep it on the site until you are sure. If something feels off, it is worth reporting even if you cannot say exactly why — you will not be wasting anyone's time.
Faces and albums wait for trust
Members can keep their profile photo pixelated, sharpening step by step as letters are exchanged and becoming clear only after twenty-five of them. Photo albums are locked by default, and nobody can even ask to see one until the two of you have exchanged twenty-five letters. Whoever owns the album then decides, album by album, who gets in. A stranger who has written you two lines cannot get at your photographs by asking nicely.
Location data is stripped
Photos taken on a phone usually carry the exact place they were taken, hidden in the file. Every photo uploaded to PenPalConnect has that information removed before it is stored, so a picture of your garden cannot quietly tell someone where the garden is. Profiles show a country and, if you choose, a town — never anything more precise.
Slowing down the people who write to everyone
Until someone answers you, you can send them one letter a day. For most members that rule is invisible. For the small number of people who join a site like this to message everybody at once, it is a wall, and it makes them easy to spot. The site also notices when a letter looks like an attempt to move the conversation elsewhere — a phone number, an email address, the name of a messaging app — and shows a gentle warning about why that deserves caution. It never blocks the letter; it just makes sure nobody is rushed.
If something goes wrong
- Stop replying. You do not owe anyone an explanation.
- Report the conversation from inside it. Choose the reason that fits best; if none quite does, pick the nearest and say more in the box.
- Block the person. They disappear from your view entirely, and you from theirs.
- If you are under eighteen, tell a parent or another adult you trust as well. If you think someone is in immediate danger, contact the police.
A moderator reads every report. Depending on what we find, we may ask the reported member to verify themselves before they can write again, remove what they posted, or close their account.
For parents
If your teenager has a pen pal — here or anywhere else — our guide to pen pal safety for parents and teenagers sets out the warning signs, what never to share, and how to talk about it at home without banning it.