This Privacy Policy applies to the Dating Chat room. It explains what information we collect, what we do with it, what our safety systems look at, and what we will never do with your data. Please read it alongside our Terms of Use and our Dating Chat Rules.

1. About This Policy

#1 Chat Avenue has run free chat rooms since 1999. We have written this policy to set out plainly how we handle information in Dating Chat, and to make clear where the limits of our systems are.

Dating Chat is one room within the wider #1 Chat Avenue community, which also includes message forums and our blog. Each chat room has its own age requirement and its own rules. Dating Chat is for users 18 or over.

Our chat rooms are accessible through a web browser and through our mobile apps for Android and iOS. This policy applies however you reach Dating Chat.

2. Information We Collect

2.1 Using the Room Without an Account

You do not have to give us personal information in order to look around. As with any website you visit, our servers automatically record certain technical information in log files, which may include:

• Your Internet Protocol (IP) address
• Basic system and browser configuration information
• The address of the page that referred you to us
• Your locale and language preferences

2.2 When You Register an Account

To chat in Dating Chat you must register an account. When you register, we collect:

• A username of your choosing
• An email address, which identifies you as the account holder and lets you recover access to your account
• The date of birth and gender you enter, which determine whether you meet the age requirement for this room

By giving us this information you confirm that it is yours to give, or that you have the permission you need to give it to us. Anything else you choose to add — a profile picture, a background image, an About Me — is entirely voluntary, and you should treat it as public.

2.3 What We Do Not Ask For

#1 Chat Avenue will never require you to give us more personal information than is needed to take part. We do not ask for your real name, your home address, your phone number, or identity documents. If a person in the chat room asks you for any of these, do not give it to them, and report them to us.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the limited information described above only to run the service and to keep it safe. Specifically:

• To create your account, log you in, and let you use the room
• To remember your settings and preferences between visits
• To contact you about your account, such as a password reset
• To enforce our Terms of Use and Rules, including removing accounts that do not meet the age requirement for this room
• To detect and stop abuse, spam, automated registration networks, and above all child sexual exploitation and abuse

We do not use your personal information for any other purpose. We do not build advertising profiles from it, and we do not sell it.

4. Automated Safety Systems

It is important that you understand what our safety systems look at. We would rather tell you plainly than leave you to guess.

4.1 Image Scanning

Images uploaded across our domain are automatically scanned against hash lists of known child sexual abuse material maintained by child protection organisations, so that known material is identified even where nobody has reported it to us.

We also use AI moderation to check profile pictures and background images. It is not perfect, and you may see the occasional false positive or false negative, which is one of the reasons we ask the community to keep reporting images that break our rules.

4.2 Removal of Personal Information

Our systems and our moderators remove personal information posted publicly in the room — email addresses, phone numbers, full names, home addresses — whenever we become aware of it. This is for your protection, and it applies even if you posted the information about yourself on purpose.

5. What We Do Not Keep

6. When We Share Information

We do not sell, rent, trade, or share your personal information with third parties for their own purposes — not for marketing, not for analytics, not for any commercial reason.

The limited information we hold, including IP addresses, may be disclosed in the following circumstances only:

• Law enforcement and child protection. We report illegal activity, and in particular child sexual exploitation and abuse, to law enforcement and to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). We work with law enforcement agencies internationally, and we respond to lawful requests for account information. Members of law enforcement should use our law enforcement page.
• Legal process. If a government agency or an attorney subpoenas information, or makes a formal and official request for discovery in connection with actual or pending legal action, we will respond as the law requires.
• Our own legal matters. If our attorney requests information relevant to a legal matter in which you are a party or have otherwise contributed to the cause of the matter.
• Abuse reports to providers. We may report unlawful activity to an Internet Service Provider in order to identify a user for possible legal action.

We will not hand over user information on an informal request from anybody else, including other users who claim to need it.

7. How Long We Keep Information

IP address logs are kept only for a limited period and are then discarded. They may or may not still exist at the time of a request.

If you are making a formal request for data — whether as a member of law enforcement, a parent, or a party to a legal matter — make it sooner rather than later. We cannot produce what has already been deleted, and we will not pretend otherwise.

Account information is kept for as long as the account exists. Accounts we remove for breaking the rules may be retained in our enforcement records so that the same person cannot simply return.

8. How We Protect Your Information

• Information you send to us travels over an encrypted connection (SSL/TLS).
• Data is held behind secured networks and is accessible only to a very small number of people with specific access rights, who are required to keep it confidential.
• Our systems are scanned regularly for viruses, malware, security holes, and known vulnerabilities.
• We deliberately collect as little as possible, because the safest data is the data we never held.

9. Cookies

We use cookies in some areas of the website. Cookies are small files that a website transfers to your device through your browser, if you allow it. They let our systems recognise your browser and remember certain information — for example, your username and your settings in the chat rooms.

You can set your browser to warn you each time a cookie is sent, or to refuse cookies altogether. Some features of the chat room may not work properly if you do.

10. Advertisers

We use an outside advertising company to display advertisements. Those advertisements may set their own cookies, which are collected by the advertising company and not by us. We do not have access to that information, and we do not give the advertising company your account details.

11. Public Areas — Please Read This One

So please think before you share. Do not give out your full name, your address, your phone number, your other social media, or anything else that identifies you or the place you live — not in the room, and not in private messages, however friendly the person seems.

The same applies to webcams, voice, and any media you upload. Treat everything you put into this room as permanent and public, because for practical purposes it is.

12. GDPR and European Users

If you are a resident of Europe, you have the right to access the personal information we hold about you and to ask that it be corrected, updated, or deleted. To exercise that right, please use our contact us page.

Where we hold personal information about a European resident, we do so in order to provide your participation in our chat rooms, forums, and the other areas of the website. Your information will be transferred and stored outside of Europe, including in data centres in North America. We keep it for a limited period, or until you ask us to delete it.

Personal data, including IP addresses, can in certain circumstances be provided to law enforcement agencies. Processing of this kind is lawful under GDPR where it is carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority. Members of law enforcement should use our law enforcement page.

13. For Parents and Guardians

This is an adult room and is not intended for anyone under 18. If you have discovered that your child has registered for an account here, please contact us with the username and we will remove it immediately.

If you believe your child has been targeted by someone on our platform, report it to us and contact your local police. In the United States you can report directly to the NCMEC CyberTipline at report.cybertip.org or 1‑800‑843‑5678.

14. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as our safety systems and legal obligations change. The current version is always the one published on this page, and the date it was last revised is shown at the bottom.

15. Questions

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, about how this room works, or about your dealings with this website, email us at admin[@]chat-avenue.com.

Please also make sure you have read our Terms of Use and our Dating Chat Rules.

Last Updated: September 11th, 2026