How Tacq protects teenagers

Tacq can be used from age 13. For anyone under 13 the app is closed completely: it does not create an account for them.

Why you cannot “stumble upon” a stranger here

Tacq has no people search, no feed, no followers and no public profiles. Nobody can find you by name, by phone number or “by chance”. Only someone you gave a link or QR code to yourself, or someone who invited you and whose invitation you accepted, can contact you. From a group you cannot open a private conversation with another member unless you already had one.

What is closed until 18

Listings and QR tags are ways in which a person you do not know can contact you. That is why they are closed entirely until 18: you cannot create your own listing or tag, reply to someone else’s listing, or message someone through their tag. Personal invitations, groups and requests to organisations remain open to teenagers.

Tacq is looking for a safe way to open listings and tags to teenagers over time. Until there is one, Tacq chooses caution.

A new contact

For the first week after meeting someone, a teenager sees a reminder in the conversation: if you do not know this person in real life, do not send them your photos, address or phone number and do not agree to meet. You can close the reminder, and nobody but you sees it.

Report and block

Any conversation can be blocked with one tap, after which the person can no longer message or call you. In the same place you can report it, including with the reason “Danger to a child”. Tacq moderators review such reports first, and where the law requires it, Tacq passes the information to the competent authorities.

Conversations in Tacq are encrypted, so without your consent no one can read them, Tacq included. Whether to attach the latest messages to a report is up to you: the app shows you this excerpt before sending. So moderators see only what you yourself chose to send them. The excerpt and your note are stored on the server only in encrypted form: while the report is being reviewed and for 90 days after the review ends. If the report is confirmed and concerns sexual abuse of children, the law requires Tacq to report it to the US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and to keep the excerpt and your note for a year after that report. Only Tacq moderators can read them, on their own devices.

Your age stays with you

Tacq asks only for an age group, never a date of birth. The answer is stored on your device and is not sent to the server. Tacq does not collect usage statistics or crash reports from anyone: error details reach Tacq support only if you send them yourself by email.

Age confirmation in Google Play

In some countries and US states the law requires the app store to confirm a user’s age. If you installed Tacq from Google Play and Google reports your age group, Tacq uses it instead of the answer on the age screen. If the law in your region requires your age to be confirmed and it has not been yet, Tacq will ask you to do so in Google Play, and listings and tags will be unavailable until then. Google Play tells Tacq only your age group.