Child Safety Standards
The Korean version is the original. If the two differ, the Korean version prevails to the extent permitted by the law of your country.
MARU is an app where people around the world sit together quietly, looking at landscapes under the real weather of real places. MARU and its developer have zero tolerance for child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) and child sexual abuse material (CSAM), in any circumstances.
1. What is prohibited
- Creating, uploading, requesting or sharing CSAM, or directing people to places where it can be found
- Any words that depict children sexually or treat them as sexual objects
- Grooming: any behaviour that approaches a child or teen to build trust in order to exploit them for sexual purposes (drawing them into private conversations, asking for contact details, photos or meetings, etc.)
- Sextortion, child trafficking, and every other form of sexual exploitation targeting children
Violations lead to removal of the content and a permanent ban of the account without warning, and are reported to the authorities as described in section 3.
2. How the app protects children
- Age check: on first launch we ask for birth year and month; people under 14 cannot use MARU (this is recorded on the device so the answer cannot be entered again).
- Protections for under-18s: 1:1 chat opens only between people who are mutual friends, and requests from strangers are declined automatically. Some public posting (wishes, notes) is read-only. Ads are non-personalised.
- There is no feature for sending or receiving photos, videos or files. Chat is short text only (120 characters), and your location is not shown to other people.
- Automatic filtering: every public chat message is checked on our server; prohibited words are masked and logged. Contact details (phone, e-mail, messenger IDs, links) are masked automatically.
- Report and block: tap a person (character) or a name in chat and choose Report → Child safety. Child-safety reports are flagged “urgent”, go to the top of the operator's review queue and are handled first. Blocking hides that person's messages and requests.
3. When something is reported
- The operator reviews it first, removes the content and suspends the account.
- Relevant records (content, time, account details) are preserved so that they cannot be altered, for legal proceedings.
- CSAM and situations where a child is at risk are reported to the authorities: in Korea the Korean National Police Agency (112, cybercrime reporting) and the Korea Communications Standards Commission; in the US the NCMEC CyberTipline; in other countries, that country's law enforcement.
- We cooperate with formal requests from law enforcement in accordance with the law.
If you see a child in immediate danger in the app, please first call 112 (emergency, Korea) or your country's emergency number.
4. Child safety point of contact
E-mail: tssu106@gmail.com (subject “[MARU Child Safety]”)
You can report to this address even without an account. Including the place, time and the other person's name in the app helps us find it quickly.
MARU complies with the Korean Act on the Protection of Children and Youth against Sex Offenses and with the child protection laws of the countries where it is offered.