Age Assurance and Online Safety
1. Yunoh is 18+
You must be at least 18 to use Yunoh in any capacity — as a Guest, as a Member or as an Earner. If the age of majority where you live is higher, you must have reached that instead. There is no under-18 mode and no parental-consent route.
We apply the rule in both directions, because they are different risks. A minor must not get onto the Platform. A minor must never appear on camera. The second is graver, so the strongest control sits there: nobody appears on camera until she has been age-assured. Age assurance exists because a live one-to-one video call is precisely where a child must not be, on either side of it.
2. Two gates, and they are not the same thing
Yunoh runs two separate checks, answering different questions at different moments. Neither substitutes for the other.
Gate 1 — age assurance. Mandatory for every Earner, before camera, never optional. It answers one question: is this person an adult?
Gate 2 — financial KYC and AML. Deferred until withdrawal. An Earner may register, pass Gate 1, appear on camera and accrue a Wallet balance without ever completing Gate 2. To take money out she completes financial identity verification through Persona — identity document, liveness and administrative review — plus AML and sanctions screening, and becomes a Verified Earner. Gate 2 asks whether we may lawfully pay her. It is not age assurance. Passing it lets nobody skip Gate 1, and passing Gate 1 says nothing about whether we may pay her.
3. Gate 1 — age assurance for Earners
3.1 Before the camera, and it fails closed. Gate 1 is completed during onboarding, before camera access exists, and is enforced technically: our infrastructure refuses a video stream from an account that has not passed. There is no provisional access and no verify-later route. If our provider is unavailable, no new Earner goes on camera.
3.2 Facial age estimation. Estimation is performed by a specialist age-assurance provider, engaged as a processor under a written data processing agreement. Before capture we tell you what is taken, why, by whom, for how long, and that you may refuse. Refusing means you cannot become an Earner; it affects nothing else you do on Yunoh.
3.3 The conservative buffer: approximately 25. Estimation is statistical, and its error margin is widest around the boundary between the late teens and the early twenties. So we apply a buffer: you are not admitted on the estimate alone unless it clears approximately 25, against a legal threshold of 18.
Two consequences, stated openly. Many perfectly ordinary adults will not clear on the estimate alone — a 22-year-old very often will not. That is not an accusation; it is the buffer working as designed. And nobody is refused on the estimate alone: a below-threshold estimate is a referral to a stronger check.
3.4 Liveness. Estimation alone can be defeated by a photograph, screen, mask or recording held to the camera. Gate 1 therefore includes a liveness check in the same flow, confirming that a real, living person is present at the device. A failed check is a hard stop and goes to review; a deliberate attempt is circumvention under section 7.
3.5 Government-ID fallback. Where the estimate does not clear the buffer, you are offered the identity-document route — the ordinary path for many legitimate adults, carrying no implication of suspicion. It requires a government-issued identity document — passport, national identity card or driving licence — a selfie taken at the same time and matched to the photograph on it, and a liveness check on that selfie. You pass if the document is genuine, the faces match and the date of birth shows you are 18 or over. We accept only unexpired, unedited documents issued by a competent public authority. The fallback is always available, so nobody is refused because a model performs less well on faces like hers.
3.6 Outcomes, and a person on every refusal. Gate 1 returns a pass, and camera access is enabled; a referral, where a trained reviewer may ask for a fresh capture or a different document; or a failure. No refusal stands on automation alone. Every one is seen by a trained person before it is final, and every one can be contested under section 4.
3.7 What we keep. The raw facial image is not retained beyond the decision. It is deleted as soon as the decision is returned, and our provider must delete it in the same window. We keep the decision record, and hold any fallback document briefly for review and appeal before deleting it. We do not build a facial-recognition database, match faces across users, or use these images for advertising, profiling or model training. This processing engages special-category data; the legal basis and retention periods are in the Privacy Policy, which governs.
4. If you think the age result is wrong
Because the buffer sits deliberately well above 18, automated refusals will sometimes be wrong about adults — and a wrongly excluded adult loses income. This route is a substantive right, not a formality.
4.1 Ask for a review. Write to support@yunoh.com with the subject line "Age assurance review", quoting the email address on your account and the date of the attempt. The reviewer is a trained person who was not responsible for the original outcome, and who may accept an alternative identity document or a fresh capture. We aim to acknowledge within 3 business days and to decide within 14 days. There is no charge. An obvious capture problem — poor lighting, an obscured face — can simply be retried, up to a capped number of attempts.
4.2 The outcome. Where the reviewer concludes you are an adult, the refusal is overturned and camera access is enabled. Where the reviewer upholds it, we tell you, and the account cannot become an Earner. We do not disclose internal thresholds, confidence scores or the document features behind a rejection: that would tell a bad actor what to defeat.
4.3 A refusal is not an accusation. It is not published, not shared with other Users, and not held against you elsewhere; you may still use Yunoh as a Member.
5. Re-verification
Passing Gate 1 once is not a permanent entitlement. We may require any Earner to repeat age assurance at any time, and camera access is suspended while she does. The triggers are: a report or flag that the person on camera may be under age; a person on camera who does not appear to be the one who passed Gate 1; a material change to the account — name, date of birth, country, an inconsistent device or location pattern, or reactivation after long dormancy; a defect reported by our provider; and an audit, a regulator's request or a change in law that calls a decision or a cohort into question. Re-verification uses the same process, buffer and fallback. An Earner who does not complete a required one keeps her Wallet balance under the Earner Agreement, but does not regain camera access.
6. Two different standards, and we say which applies to you
Yunoh applies two age-assurance standards. Which one you meet depends on where you are, and we are not going to blur them.
6.1 United Kingdom — highly effective age assurance, for everyone, before anything. If you are in the UK you must pass highly effective age assurance before the interactive service opens at all. That means before matching, live video, audio, Messages, images, Friend Connections, buying Coins or sending a Gift. Until you pass, you can see a landing page and nothing else: no User content, no camera, no Session, no purchase.
A self-declaration does not satisfy this. Nor does a payment-card signal. We say so because it is true and because the UK regulator says so. The check is run by our age-assurance provider against the criteria Ofcom sets, and we repeat it where an Account looks to have changed hands, a safety signal arises, or the earlier result is in doubt.
There are no Guest minutes in the United Kingdom. A Guest reaches nothing interactive, so the five free minutes described in 6.3 are not available to a UK visitor.
6.2 Earners everywhere — Gate 1, no exceptions. Every Earner, in every country, passes Gate 1 before she appears on camera. It is per-person, non-delegable and never waived. If the vendor is unavailable, no new Earner goes on camera. This has always been the position and the UK change does not alter it.
6.3 Everywhere else — self-declaration, a card signal, and a gap we will not dress up. Outside the UK a User confirms at registration that he is 18 or over, or the higher age of majority where he lives, by an affirmative action rather than a pre-ticked box. A false declaration is grounds for immediate termination. When he first buys Coins, a successful card authorisation is a supporting adult signal, because cards are in most markets issued only to adults. We record that the signal arrived; we never store card numbers. A Guest, who has not registered and has not paid, gets 5 free minutes of Session time in total on a self-declaration alone.
The card signal is corroboration, not verification. It arrives late, it is defeated by a parent's card or a prepaid instrument, and it says nothing about someone who never buys — a larger population by design, since a first-time registered User receives 15 free Coins, and so fifteen minutes of Session time, before any card is presented. This is not equivalent to Gate 1 and we do not present it as such.
The residual risk, stated plainly. Outside the UK, everything after that declaration is detection rather than prevention. A minor can click through a declaration and reach a live one-to-one Session with an adult stranger before anything but detection engages. Three things reduce that: the Earner on the other side has passed Gate 1, may end the Session at any
moment and must report anyone who appears to be a minor; the Session carries the same continuous automated detection as any other; and the Guest window is short, capped and cannot be extended without registering. These reduce the risk. They do not remove it, and we do not offer them as a substitute for a gate.
6.4 We may always require more. We may require any User, anywhere, to complete stronger age assurance up to the full Gate 1 process, and suspend the Account or its purchases until he does.
7. Suspected minors, document fraud and immediate suspension
7.1 Detection never stops. A gate at the door is a control, not a guarantee. We act on apparent age on camera; self-disclosure of age or school year; a third person in frame who appears to be a minor; voice and language indicators; reports from Users, parents, schools, safety organisations or law enforcement; a mismatch between the person on camera and the person who passed Gate 1; and device and payment patterns. Message text is scanned, and every image sent in a Message is scanned before delivery — one that appears to depict or sexualise a minor never reaches its recipient.
7.2 The response. Where anyone is suspected of being a minor the Session ends immediately — any moderator, or the Earner herself, may end it — and access is suspended at once, before any investigation. The case goes ahead of every other queue, camera access is revoked, and the account is reviewed against every signal available, including the Gate 1 decision record. Where we conclude the person is under 18 the account is closed permanently, and we keep the minimum record needed to prevent re-registration. Where the matter involves a minor in a sexual context, or any child sexual abuse material, our child-safety protocol applies in full, including preservation of evidence and reporting to the authorities and hotlines. Suspension is not a finding: where it is not made out, access is restored promptly and we explain why.
7.3 A suspected-minor report is immediate at any hour. It does not wait for a shift to open. If you believe someone on Yunoh is under 18, report it in-product or write to support@yunoh.com. A good-faith report that turns out to be mistaken carries no penalty.
7.4 Circumvention and document fraud. Attempting to defeat age assurance is a serious breach: presenting a photograph, screen, mask or recording during a capture or liveness check; using a deepfaked or face-swapped image; using another person's identity document, or one that is edited or forged; having someone else complete a capture in your place; enrolling on behalf of a minor; sharing, selling or renting a verified account, or appearing on camera in place of the account holder; and creating a new account to evade a refusal or a ban. Each results in refusal, permanent termination or both, and where relevant a report to the authorities — on a reasonable belief, whether or not the attempt succeeded. We cannot lawfully pay a minor and we will not: where a closed account holds a Wallet balance, the Earner Agreement governs.
8. The UK Online Safety Act
8.1 How we classify the service. Our working assessment is that Yunoh is a regulated user-to-user service with links to the United Kingdom, in scope of Part 3 of the Online Safety Act 2023. Users generate content encountered by another User: live video and audio in a Session, in-Session chat, Gifts, text Messages between friends, and images sent by a Verified Earner. Every Session is one-to-one and private, but that does not put it, or Messages, outside scope. We rely on no Part 3 exemption, and we do not expect Yunoh to meet the Category 1, 2A or 2B thresholds at launch.
8.2 Illegal-content duties. We maintain a written illegal-content risk assessment against Yunoh's actual design, completed before UK launch and reviewed annually and before any significant change to the service. It concentrates on child sexual exploitation and abuse including grooming, sexual exploitation of adults, intimate image abuse, harassment and threats, fraud and coercion — assessed on both surfaces, the live Session and Messages, because a persistent written channel behaves differently from a live call. We do not claim continuous human moderation. Automated coverage runs at every hour; human coverage at launch is a staffed moderation shift with on-call escalation outside it, and child safety is immediate at any hour.
8.3 Children's access — decided. Ofcom's guidance is that a service may conclude children are not normally able to access it only where it operates highly effective age assurance, and that a self-declaration is not sufficient for that purpose. We accept that, and we have applied it. In the United Kingdom highly effective age assurance runs on the access side, for every User, before any part of the interactive service opens — not only for Earners on camera. Section 6.1 sets out what that means in practice. We complete a written children's access assessment before UK launch, it is signed by a director, and we repeat it annually.
We do not rely on the private, one-to-one nature of a Session as an exemption. A Session is content generated by one User and encountered by another, and we treat the service as regulated on that basis rather than arguing our way out of it.
8.4 Reporting child sexual exploitation and abuse. Where we detect CSEA content with a UK link we report it to the National Crime Agency through the Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Industry Reporting Portal, we preserve the associated evidence, and we do not tip off the account holder.
8.5 Pornographic content and Part 5. Part 5 applies to services that publish or display provider pornographic content. Yunoh publishes none. Yunoh prohibits the nudity and sexually explicit material that would engage those stricter duties; such material is removed rather than published, and Sessions are never recorded, so there is no provider content to publish or display. Suggestive presentation is permitted, and suggestive presentation is not pornographic content. Our working position is therefore that Part 5 does not apply to Yunoh. That conclusion is a property of what actually appears on the Platform, which is why the content line is a compliance control and not a content preference.
8.6 Accountability. A single senior individual is accountable for online-safety compliance, including the illegal-content and children's-safety duties and engagement with Ofcom: our Head of Trust & Safety, contactable at support@yunoh.com, reporting to the board. Ofcom and other UK authorities reach us at support@yunoh.com, and we answer statutory information requests within the period specified. We keep written records of our assessments, the measures taken, complaints, enforcement actions and CSEA reports, available to Ofcom on request.
9. RTA and ASACP — child protection, not age assurance
Yunoh serves the RTA (Restricted To Adults) meta label site-wide. The label is served on every page of yunoh.com and declares, in a form software can read, that this is an adults-only service, so parental-control software can block it. Yunoh is also applying for membership of the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP).
We adopt both although the content line requires neither. Neither is age assurance and neither substitutes for any control in this document. RTA verifies nobody, works only where somebody else has installed filtering software and kept it running, and does nothing where none is. It does not narrow the Guest gap in section 6.
10. Review
Where our controls are insufficient for a market, we change them or we do not enter that market. This document is reviewed at least every 12 months, before launch in a new market, whenever our provider or the law changes, before any change to the content line, and after any material incident involving a minor. Nothing in it removes any right you have as a consumer under mandatory local law.
Contact
- Age assurance, contesting a Gate 1 refusal, reporting a suspected minor, safety and regulatory
- correspondence: support@yunoh.com
- Data protection and age-assurance data: privacy@yunoh.com
- General enquiries: info@yunoh.com
- Post: PXL NexQuantum Ltd, Voukourestiou 25, Neptune House, 1st floor, Flat/Office 11, Zakaki, 3045 Limassol, Republic of Cyprus
- Company registration number: HE 497211