Safety and privacy
Trust is a product feature, not a promise
A service where strangers talk about the worst parts of their week only works if the rules are real and enforced. Ours apply to listeners exactly as strictly as they apply to you.
The four mechanisms
What protects you on a call
Screening before anyone can take a call, reporting during and after it, blocking that ends contact, and a published way to reach a human.
Screening before anyone can take a call
Listeners are not self-serve. Every applicant completes identity and age verification and training on our conduct rules before their profile goes live, and profile photos, nicknames and bios are reviewed before they are shown to anyone.
Reporting on every call
A report control is available during a call and after it ends, with specific reasons and a free-text box. Every report is read by a person. We act on reports of prohibited content or behaviour within 24 hours.
Blocking
Blocking an account removes it from your view and prevents any further contact between you — no call can be placed in either direction once a block is in place. Blocking is separate from reporting: a block protects you, a report is what stops the same thing happening to the next person.
A published way to reach us
Our contact details, our Grievance Officer and our child-safety point of contact are all published, with stated response times. You are never left with only a form.
Verification
Nobody takes a call without being checked first
Listening on Neeli is not self-serve. An applicant must be 18 or over, submit a government identity document and a selfie so that the person applying can be matched to the document, and complete training on our conduct rules — what they must never do, how to hold a supportive conversation, and how to respond if someone discloses that they are in danger.
Profile photographs, nicknames and bios are reviewed before they appear to anyone. Listeners are bound by the Listener Agreement and the Community Guidelines, and are removed for breaching them.
Because you choose a listener from their profile rather than being paired at random, you always know who you are calling before the call starts.
Reporting
What happens after you report someone
A report control is available during a call and after it ends. You pick a reason — harassment, sexual content, asking for money, a scam, inattention, impersonation, a suspected minor, and others — and can add anything else in a free-text box. Reporting from inside the call attaches the call reference automatically, which makes the investigation much faster.
Every report is read by a person. We act on reports of prohibited content or behaviour within 24 hours. We review the report, the account history of both sides and the metadata for the call — not the conversation, because it is not recorded.
We will confirm that your report was reviewed. We will not tell you what action was taken against the other account, because that is their personal data. Filing deliberately false reports to harm someone is itself a violation.
You can also write to contact@neeliapp.com at any time, and anyone — including people who do not use Neeli — can raise a child safety concern at contact@neeliapp.com.
Enforcement
The ladder, in order
Where an account lands on this ladder depends on severity and history. Some categories skip it entirely.
- 1A warning, for a first low-severity breach
- 2A feature restriction, such as losing access to video calls
- 3Suspension while an investigation completes
- 4A permanent ban on the account
- 5A ban on the associated device and email address, to stop the ban being evaded
- 6Referral to law enforcement, with evidence preserved
Anything involving a minor, non-consensual intimate imagery, or a credible threat to life results in immediate permanent removal with no warning step, evidence preservation, and referral to the authorities. Appeals are available for everything else — see the Community Guidelines.
Child safety
Zero tolerance, stated plainly
Neeli has zero tolerance for child sexual abuse and exploitation. The service is strictly for adults aged 18 and over. Any account found to belong to a minor is closed and its data deleted, and any account engaging in child sexual abuse or exploitation is banned permanently, reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and to Indian law enforcement, and handled under the POCSO Act, 2012.
Our published Child Safety Standards set out the prohibitions, how we detect and respond, the in-app reporting mechanism and our named point of contact.
Privacy
What happens to your data
Calls are not recorded. Neeli does not record, store or listen to the audio or video of a conversation. We keep metadata — who spoke to whom, when, for how long and how the call ended — because we need it for safety investigations and disputes. Recording a call is separately prohibited for both sides.
You stay anonymous to the other person. A nickname is all a listener sees. You never have to share your phone number, address or social handles, and listeners are forbidden from asking for them or moving the conversation off Neeli.
We do not sell personal data and do not share it with data brokers or advertisers. We do not read your contacts or messages and do not collect your location.
The Privacy Policy gives the itemised list: every category collected, the purpose, how long it is kept and which processors touch it. You can delete your account and data at any time, from inside the app or from the web — see account and data deletion.