Safety
Cosmic personals, terrestrial safety.
Cloak, report, opt out of meetups, control who can transmit. Below are the answers to what people usually ask.
How old do I have to be?
18+. You attest to your age at signup. Under-18 accounts are removed when reported via the underage category.
Real-world meetups — are they actually allowed?
Yes. We don't ban meetups; we label them clearly. Users opt in via their profile's meetup preference. If you're not open to meeting Earthside, set it to online_only or roleplay_only and the option to propose disappears from your inbox.
How do I cloak (block) someone?
From any profile page, hit Cloak this entity. They're hidden from your browse, can't transmit to you, and you don't appear to them in discovery. They aren't notified. You can uncloak from the same button.
How do I report harassment, spam, or worse?
From any profile, hit File Incident Report. Pick a category and write what happened. An admin reviews from the moderation queue; we triage in hours, not weeks. Don't argue with the offender — report and move on.
What's a shadowban?
An admin tool. The shadowbanned user can still use the site as if normal, but their signals/posts don't reach anyone else. Used for spam-pattern accounts before a hard ban.
What can admins see?
Admins can see signal/match/message counts, profile metadata, and reports. They cannot read your private transmissions unless you've reported a specific message and they're investigating that report. Audit log keeps every admin action on file.
First-meetup safety basics
Don't share a private address on the first contact. Public location, daylight if possible. Tell someone where you'll be. The Propose First Contact form intentionally asks for a public location label, not your home address.
What if a meetup goes wrong?
Report the user (dangerous_behavior category). Block them. If there's a physical threat, contact local authorities — alien.net is not a substitute for emergency services.
Does alien.net store payment info?
No. Merch fulfillment is via a print-on-demand external provider; they handle checkout. The dating side is free at MVP. Future premium features will route through Stripe — we'll never store card numbers on our servers.
What about photos?
User uploads are re-encoded to WebP and stripped of EXIF (so GPS metadata doesn't leak). Up to 8MB per image. Inappropriate uploads are removed on report.