Is Kindred safe?

Partly. Here is the version without the marketing, including the parts that are not reassuring.

What the design genuinely protects

• Your exact location is never shown. Only an approximate distance, and it is not possible to work out where you live from your profile.
• Your face is not visible for three days, and when it becomes visible it happens for both people at once. Nobody can look at you without being looked at.
• Your name is not visible early either. Which means nobody can search for you elsewhere before you have decided you want that.
• Nothing about you is sold, shared or tracked. There is no advertising network and no analytics service inside the app that could receive anything.
• Couple accounts are confirmed in person by two separate people with two separate registrations, so a couple profile is not one person pretending.

Why nobody actually verifies identity

Real verification means collecting government identification from every person, storing it, and being a target worth attacking. It also excludes people without the right documents, who are often exactly the people most in need of a way to meet others. Most apps that advertise verification are checking that a face matches a photo, which confirms the photo is of the person holding the phone and tells you nothing whatsoever about whether they are safe to meet.

What actually keeps you safe

1. 1
   Meet in public, the first few times. Not once. The first few.
2. 2
   Tell somebody where you are going and roughly when you expect to be back.
3. 3
   Arrange your own way there and back. Never rely on the other person for transport on a first meeting.
4. 4
   Never send anyone money. No exceptions, no matter how good the reason sounds. This is the most common way people are actually harmed on social apps, and it does not require anybody to meet you.
5. 5
   Leave whenever you want. You owe nobody an explanation, an evening, or a polite ending.

Reporting

Reporting is a real feature with real consequences rather than a form that disappears. Pushing for anything non platonic in the friends or couples modes is a specific, named reason to report an account, and it gets accounts removed.

The honest summary

Kindred removes some specific risks that other apps create: being located, being seen before you agree to it, being catalogued and sold. It does not remove the risk of meeting a stranger, and nothing can. Read the safety section and the terms of use, which say the same thing in more detail and do not dress it up.

Common questions

Is Kindred safe to use?

It removes some risks by design: your exact location is never shown, your face and name are hidden for the first three days and then revealed to both people at once, and nothing about you is tracked or sold. It does not remove the risk of meeting a stranger, does not run background checks and does not verify identity, and no consumer app does.

Does Kindred verify users?

No. Real verification would mean collecting and storing government identification, which creates a target and excludes people without the right documents. Most apps advertising verification are only confirming that a face matches a submitted photo, which says nothing about whether a person is safe to meet.

What safety precautions should I take when meeting someone from an app?

Meet in public for the first several meetings rather than just the first, tell someone where you are going and when you expect to return, arrange your own transport both ways, never send anyone money under any circumstances, and leave whenever you want without justifying it.

Before you meet anybody

Kindred does not run background checks and does not verify that anyone is who they say they are. No app does, whatever it implies. Meet somewhere public the first few times, tell someone where you are going, sort out your own way home, and never send anyone money. The safety section is honest about exactly what we do and what we cannot do.