What your child is walking into

Your controls

The parents' page

The link we email you opens a page for your child's account. No login, no account of your own to make. From there you can:

• Approve the account, or say no.
• Switch free chat, friends and home invites on or off, each separately.
• See when they've played and for how long over the last week.
• See any warning, mute or ban a moderator has given them.
• Sign them out on every device.
• Delete the account and everything attached to it.

Changes reach the game within about 30 seconds, even if they're playing. You won't see their chat or who they played with, and your child is told what you can see.

Any player can also delete their own account from the Settings menu in the game. Either way it happens straight away, with nobody to ask: the login, email, hats, tickets, home and drawings all go.

One thing is kept for a while. If the account was reported, reported someone, or was picked up by the word filter, those moderation records stay for 90 days with the name removed, so that deleting an account can't be used to wipe a report. Then they go too.

Chat and behaviour

What happens when someone's unkind

• A word filter blocks hate speech outright, and blanks out phone numbers, email addresses and web addresses before anyone sees them.
• Anything it catches goes to a moderator to read, along with the few lines around it.
• Mute and block on every player. Muting hides what someone says, for as long as your child picks. Blocking makes the two disappear from each other's game entirely, and they can't be matched. The other player isn't told.
• A report button is on screen at all times. It works for someone who has already left the room.
• Chat can be paused for everyone by a moderator, in seconds, if something goes wrong.
• A person decides. Warnings, mutes and bans are only ever given by a moderator, never automatically.
• The reporter hears back in the game once it's been looked at.

Drawings from the easel are checked by a moderator before anyone else can see them.

Try the filter yourself

This runs the game's real chat filter. Type what a child might, or what you'd worry about someone saying to them, and see what other players would see and what a moderator would be told. If it gets something wrong, tell us. (Under 13s without your go-ahead don't type at all: they pick from set phrases.)

While the game is this small, the moderator is Ryan, the person who makes it. That means reports are read when he's awake, not around the clock.

Safe by design

How we keep children safe

Most of what protects children here is what the game doesn't have. These were decisions, not things we haven't got round to.

• No private messages. There's no way to talk to one person where others can't see.
• No way to find or follow someone. There's no search, no profile pages and no “where is this player”.
• No photos, videos or links. Nothing can be uploaded, and web addresses typed in chat are blanked out.
• No money. Nothing costs real money, nothing can be traded, and there's nothing to be pressured into. Hats and furniture are bought with tickets earned in the arcade.
• No ages on show. Other players can't see who's under 13.

The filter also watches for the ways children get moved somewhere less safe: being asked how old they are, where they live, or to add someone on another app. Those go to a moderator, with the chat around them.

If something serious happens

If we ever believe a child is at risk, we don't handle it quietly ourselves. We remove the account involved from the game, keep the evidence, and report it to the police or the right child-protection organisation. If your child tells you something that worries you, write to us and keep anything they can show you. If you think a child is in immediate danger, call 999.

We've written down the risks of a game like this and what we do about each one, as UK law asks. If you'd like to know more about any of it, ask.

Privacy

What we keep

• A username and nickname they choose. Never a real name.
• Whether they're under 13 or not. Not a birthday.
• An email address: yours for an under 13, optional for everyone else. Used for approval and password resets, nothing else.
• Play statistics: when they visited and what they played. Kept for 90 days, then deleted. No advertising trackers, and nothing is sold or shared for marketing.
• Reports and flagged messages, so moderators can do their job.

The Commons is based in the UK and is built to follow UK data protection law and the Children's Code. The full detail is in our privacy notice, and what players agree to is in the terms and the rules.

Elsewhere

Discord and the wider internet

There's a Discord server for players who are 13 or over, which is Discord's own age rule. It isn't shown or linked in the game to under 13 accounts, and nothing your child says or does in the game appears there under their name.