Child Safety Policy

In short

• Tillyard is for adults. Nobody under 18 may hold an account. That includes 17-year-old college students and high-school students taking college classes.
• An account that may belong to someone under 18 can be paused while we check. If we conclude the account holder is under 18, we close the account.
• Child sexual abuse material, sexual content about anyone under 18, and any attempt to seek sexual contact with someone under 18 are never allowed, in any form, for any reason. There is no warning step. The account is removed.
• The platform is almost all text. The only pictures are figures in papers for Tillyard Research and receipts for research grants, and the editor looks at every figure before a paper is published. We act on what we know, from reports, from automated text checks that a person then reviews, and from what staff see.
• When we have actual knowledge of apparent child sexual abuse material, child sex trafficking or the online enticement of a child, we report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) as soon as reasonably possible and preserve what we reported, as federal law requires. We restrict the account and do not tell the person reported.
• If you see something, report it. Do not screenshot, save, forward or open the material, and do not confront the person.
• We work with law enforcement through NCMEC and in answer to valid legal process, and we may act faster in an emergency.
• If a child is in danger right now, call 911. NCMEC's CyberTipline is 1-800-843-5678.

If this summary and the full text below ever differ, the full text governs.

1 About this policy

1.1 Who we are

Tillyard is an Ohio nonprofit corporation. In this policy "we", "us" and "our" mean Tillyard. "The platform" means the website at tillyard.org and everything people can do there.

1.2 What this policy is for

It says who may use the platform, what is never allowed where children are concerned, how to tell us about a problem, what we do when we learn of one and what we do not do.

1.3 Who it is for

Members, people thinking of joining, parents and guardians, teachers, anyone who has seen something that worries them, and the police and other agencies who may need to know how we work.

1.4 How it fits with our other documents

• The Terms of Use are our agreement with members, including the promise each member makes that they are 18 or older.
• The Community Guidelines set the general rules for what members may post. The Reporting, Enforcement and Appeals Policy says how we enforce them and how to appeal.
• The Intimate-Image Removal Policy explains how anyone can ask us to remove an intimate image, including one of a person under 18.
• The Privacy Notice explains what we do with personal information, and the Messaging and Monitoring Notice explains how notes and chat are checked.

Where two documents could cover the same point, the more specific one governs. Section 37.5 of the Terms of Use sets the order among all our documents, including the sections of those terms that prevail over every other document. This policy is the specific one for anything involving a person under 18. The Intimate-Image Removal Policy is the specific one for how a removal request is made and the deadline that applies to it.

1.5 This is not an emergency service

We are a small company. If a child is in danger now, call 911 before you do anything else. Section 13 lists other help.

2 Words we use

Words that have one meaning in every one of our documents, such as member, visitor, staff, the editor, record item, hold, case and tip, are defined in Definitions. The words below are added for this document's own subject, or repeated from Definitions for convenience. If a repeated meaning ever differs, Definitions governs the meaning of the word.

2.1 Child, minor, under 18

In this policy a child or minor is any person under 18. It makes no difference what the age of consent or the age of adulthood is where they live, whether they are enrolled in college, or whether a parent has given permission.

2.2 Child sexual abuse material

Child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, is any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a person under 18. The law's own term is "child pornography". We use CSAM because it describes what the material is. In this policy it includes:

• photographs and videos;
• images made or altered by a computer or by artificial intelligence that look like a real child, and sexually explicit drawings or animations of children;
• an image a young person made of themselves; and
• anything on the platform that carries or leads to such material: a link or web address, text that encodes an image, or directions to where it can be found.

2.3 Sexualization of a minor

Sexualization of a minor means treating a person under 18, real or invented, as a sexual object in words. Section 5.2 gives examples.

2.4 Solicitation, grooming and enticement

Solicitation means asking or encouraging a person under 18 to take part in sexual activity, to send sexual images or to meet for a sexual purpose. Grooming means building trust with a child, or with the people around a child, in order to do that. Enticement is the law's word for persuading, inducing or coercing a minor into sexual activity. We use these words together because the behavior overlaps.

2.5 Sextortion

Sextortion means threatening to share a sexual image of someone, or threatening other harm, in order to get more images, sexual activity, money or anything else.

2.6 Child sex trafficking

Child sex trafficking means recruiting, advertising, offering, moving or obtaining a person under 18 for a commercial sex act, or profiting from it.

2.7 NCMEC and the CyberTipline

NCMEC is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the organization that Congress chose to receive reports of child sexual exploitation from the public and from online services. The CyberTipline is its reporting line. NCMEC passes reports to law enforcement.

2.8 Know and apparent

We know something when we have actual knowledge of it: a person on our staff has received or seen facts, not merely a possibility that something exists somewhere on the platform. A violation is apparent when the facts we have point to it, even though no court has decided anything.

2.9 Staff

Staff means the owner (our president) and anyone working for us under a paid, written contract who handles safety matters. At present the owner is the only member of staff. Members are never given this role, and no member has power over another member's account.

2.10 Hide, pause, remove

To hide content is to take it out of view while it is looked at. To pause or restrict an account is to stop it taking part while leaving the member able to download their data and close the account. To remove an account is to close it permanently.

3 Adults only

3.1 You must be 18 or older to hold an account

You must be 18 or older to hold an account. There are no exceptions.

3.2 Who this leaves out

We know this rule leaves out some real college students. It applies to:

• first-year students who are still 17;
• high-school students taking college classes, including dual-enrollment and early-college students, even where the college has given them a college email address;
• students younger than 18 who started college early; and
• anyone under 18 who has a parent's or a teacher's permission, or who would be supervised while using the platform.

The rule is about what the platform is built for. It is not a judgment about any young person. Anyone it leaves out is welcome once they are 18 and otherwise eligible. High-school students are not eligible at any age. The Terms of Use set out the full eligibility rules.

3.3 What we ask at sign-up

• A college email address at a United States college on our list. The list leaves out elementary, middle and high schools.
• A date of birth. Our server checks it and then discards it. We keep only the fact that the check was met and the date it happened. We never store a birthdate.
• Where you are in your studies. One of the answers is "high-school student taking college classes". That answer is not eligible.
• A ticked statement that begins "I am 18 or older", which is part of the Terms of Use. Section 2.1 of those terms quotes it in full.

If the date of birth shows that the person is under 18, no account is created, and the browser is stopped from simply trying again with a different date. The email address entered during a declined attempt is not kept as an address. So that the form cannot simply be tried again, a short-lived cookie is set in that browser and a keyed hash of the address may be kept for up to 30 days, as section 5 of the Privacy Notice and row A4 of the Data Retention Schedule say. The date that was entered is never kept.

This has a limit. After those 30 days nothing in the software stops the same address being tried again with a different date. We act when we learn of it, and any member can tell us through the report category "This member may be under 18".

3.4 What those checks cannot do

A college email address shows that someone controls a mailbox. It does not show their age. We do not check identity documents, we do not ask for a selfie, and we do not use face or voice analysis. We chose not to hold that kind of information about anyone. A person who is determined to lie about their age can do so here, as they can anywhere online. If they do, they have broken the Terms of Use, and we act when we learn of it.

We check school email addresses again from time to time. That check confirms the mailbox only.

3.5 How the platform is built to limit harm

We designed the platform on the assumption that a rule alone is not enough.

• No contact from strangers. A member can write only to members they are connected with, and a connection takes an act from both sides.
• Almost all text. The only uploads are figures for a paper in Tillyard Research and receipts for a research grant. Both are checked by type and size, and a receipt is never public. No video, audio or other files can be uploaded, and there are no profile pictures.
• No random one-to-one matching of members, and no video or voice rooms run by us.
• Links are inert. A typed link appears as text with no preview, and new accounts cannot send links at all.
• Real names beside a school, not anonymous handles.
• Report and block controls on every piece of member-written content and every member.
• Logged spaces. Table chat is logged for a limited time and may be reviewed. Nothing that counts toward The Record requires private one-to-one contact or a call somewhere else.
• Coarse timestamps. Public pages do not show when a member was active more precisely than the day.

None of this makes the platform safe for a child to use. It limits what can go wrong while we find out.

3.6 Children under 13

The platform is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from a child under 13. If we learn that we have, we delete it as soon as we reasonably can, unless the law requires us to keep it. A parent or guardian who believes their child has given us information can write to safety@tillyard.org.

3.7 State laws

Some states have their own laws about young people and online services. Where we are not yet sure how such a law applies to us, we may hold back sign-up for schools in that state.

4 Accounts that may belong to someone under 18

4.1 How we come to suspect it

• A member reports that another member may be under 18.
• A member says something that points to it, such as their age, their grade or their high school.
• A parent, guardian, teacher or school tells us.
• Staff notice it while handling something else.
• A law enforcement agency or NCMEC tells us.

4.2 The pause

An account reported as possibly under 18 can be paused straight away, before a person has looked at the report. While an account is paused the member cannot enter The Shop, exchange notes, nod to other members, submit work or take part in sessions. They can still download their data and close the account. We may also hide the member's profile and public pages while we check.

A pause is a precaution. It is not a finding, and it leaves no mark on the member's standing if the concern turns out to be unfounded.

4.3 The check

A person on our staff looks at what we have. We may ask the member to confirm their age again and to explain whatever prompted the concern. We do not demand identity documents. We decide on the information in front of us, and where real doubt remains we resolve it in favor of protecting someone who may be a child.

4.4 If we conclude the account holder is under 18

We close the account. Then:

• We erase the account's information without the usual waiting period, except for what the law requires us to keep and what we need to keep the decision in force: the case record, anything under legal preservation (section 9.4), and the limited records the Privacy Notice says survive any closed account.
• A paper the member wrote alone is withdrawn. Their name is taken off shared work. Links to their pages on The Record say that the item is no longer listed.
• Their connections end. Other members are not told why the account closed.
• We tell the person, in kind and direct words, that the account has been closed because the platform is for adults.

A person whose account was closed only because they were under 18 is welcome to join once they are 18. Closed accounts are normally blocked from signing up again, so they may need to write to support@tillyard.org first.

4.5 If we conclude the account holder is 18 or older

The pause is lifted. We keep a record of the case, as we do for every case, but it does not count against the member or affect their standing.

4.6 If we cannot tell

Where we cannot reach a conclusion, we may keep the account paused or close it. The member can use the single appeal that our rules provide (see the Reporting, Enforcement and Appeals Policy).

4.7 If someone joined while under 18 and is 18 or older now

Giving a false answer at sign-up breaks the Terms of Use whatever the person's age today. We decide these cases one at a time.

4.8 If you are under 18 and reading this

You are not in trouble with us. Please close your account, or write to support@tillyard.org and we can close it for you. If anything happened here that worried or hurt you, tell us or tell one of the organizations in section 13. None of it is your fault. You are welcome when you are 18.

4.9 Parents and guardians

If you believe your child has an account, write to safety@tillyard.org with their name and school, and the email address they used if you know it. We can pause an account on your word alone. Federal privacy law limits what we may tell you about what is in an account, or hand over from it, unless the account holder agrees or a court requires it. We can tell you what we have done.

4.10 If you realize you are talking with someone under 18

Stop the conversation, do not move it anywhere else, and report it. You do not need to be sure. Ending an ordinary conversation and reporting it never counts against you.

4.11 Reports made in bad faith

Reporting someone as under 18 when you know they are not, in order to get them paused, is misuse of the report control. Reports are limited and weighted so that they cannot easily be used as a weapon, and we may act on the account of a member who tries.

5 What is never allowed

Nothing in this section has a warning step. Section 5.9 says what happens.

5.1 Child sexual abuse material, in any form

You may not post, send, link to, request, offer, trade, sell, advertise or describe how to find CSAM. That includes:

• typing or pasting a link or web address that leads to it;
• pasting text that encodes it;
• naming a site, a group, a channel, a file name, a search term or a code word used to find it;
• asking whether anyone has it, or offering to share it somewhere else; and
• material made with artificial intelligence, and drawings or animations.

5.2 Sexualizing a person under 18

You may not write about a person under 18 in a sexual way. That includes:

• sexual comments about a real child or teenager, including a classmate's younger sibling, a student you tutor, a public figure who is under 18, or a member you believe is under 18;
• sexual stories, fan fiction or role-play involving a character who is under 18 or who is written as a child, whatever age the writer assigns to the character;
• sexual role-play in which someone plays a child;
• sexual descriptions of children's bodies; and
• rating, ranking or speculating about the sexual life of anyone under 18.

It makes no difference that a relationship or an act would be lawful where you live. Sexual content involving anyone under 18 has no place here.

5.3 Seeking sexual contact with a person under 18

You may not solicit, groom or entice a minor, or try to. That includes:

• asking someone you know or believe to be under 18 for sexual images, sexual conversation or a meeting;
• offering money, gifts, help or favors for any of those;
• steering a young person toward a private channel or another service for a sexual purpose, or asking them to keep contact secret;
• pretending to be younger than you are in order to get close to a young person; and
• asking other members to put you in touch with children.

It is no defense that the person turned out to be an adult, or turned out to be a police officer. What matters is what you believed and what you tried to do.

5.4 Sextortion and threats

You may not threaten to share a sexual image of a person under 18, or threaten them or the people around them in any other way to get images, sexual activity, money or silence.

5.5 Child sex trafficking

You may not advertise, offer, recruit or arrange for a person under 18 to take part in a commercial sex act, or help anyone do so.

5.6 Promoting or enabling abuse

You may not praise, justify or make light of the sexual abuse of children, argue that sexual contact between adults and children is acceptable, share advice on gaining access to children or avoiding detection, or use the platform to find or gather people who want to do any of this.

5.7 Putting a child at risk in other ways

You may not post information that identifies or locates a particular child in a way that could expose them to harm, and you may not use the platform to arrange contact with a child that their parent or guardian would not know about. Other harm to children is covered by the Community Guidelines and is treated as urgent.

5.8 Things that do not make it acceptable

None of the following changes any rule in this section:

• "It was a joke", "it is only fiction", or "no real child was involved".
• "It is legal in my country" or "in my state".
• "The young person made the image" or "the young person agreed".
• "I was sharing it to show how terrible it is", "to raise awareness", "for research" or "as evidence".
• "It was in a private note."

If you come across this material, report it (section 8). Never share it, for any reason.

5.9 What happens

• The content is hidden.
• An account that we conclude was used to do any of the things in this section is removed permanently, the first time. Any titles and items on The Record are withdrawn, and the person is not allowed to join again.
• We may also remove other accounts that we conclude belong to the same person.
• Where the law requires it we report to NCMEC and preserve the records (section 9). Where the law allows it we may refer the matter to law enforcement.

6 What is allowed

We do not want these rules to shut out honest work or honest conversation. Tillyard publishes student research, and child protection is a serious subject in law, psychology, social work, education, medicine and public policy.

6.1 Research and study

You may write about child abuse, exploitation, online safety, adolescent health and related subjects as a matter of study, provided the writing:

• contains no sexual or graphic description of a child;
• does not identify any victim, or give details from which a victim could be identified;
• contains no link to illegal material and no directions for finding it (cite published reports, cases and studies by name); and
• is not a set of instructions for causing harm.

Literary and historical analysis of works that deal with these subjects is allowed on the same terms.

6.2 Speaking about your own experience

A member who was harmed as a child may say so, and may write about it in terms that are not graphic. If you tell us about harm that is happening to a child now, we may pass what we know to the authorities where the law allows, and we encourage you to contact them directly (section 13).

6.3 Asking for help, and reporting

Reporting a concern, asking how to report, or asking for help is always allowed.

6.4 Ordinary mentions of children

Members who are parents, siblings, tutors, coaches or camp counselors may mention the children in their lives in the ordinary way. Keep identifying details out (section 7.3).

6.5 The editor's discretion

The editor may decline or withdraw any paper, and staff may hide any content, that they conclude comes too close to the lines in section 5, even where the author meant well. The more specific rules for papers are in the Editorial Policy of Tillyard Research.

7 Contact with children away from the platform

Members tutor, mentor, coach, volunteer and do research, and some of that involves children. Some of it may appear on The Record.

7.1 We do not arrange, supervise or screen it

Tillyard does not place members with children, does not supervise any activity, and does not run background checks on anyone. We keep a record of what a member did and who confirmed it. Any organization that works with children is responsible for its own checks and its own supervision.

7.2 What an item on The Record means

An item on The Record states what a member did and who confirmed it. It is never a statement by us that a person is suitable to work with children, and nobody should read it that way.

7.3 Keep children's details out

Do not name, describe or otherwise identify a child you worked with, taught or studied, anywhere on the platform. Describe the activity and the organization, not the children.

7.4 Research with participants under 18

Research that involves participants under 18 must follow the ethics rules of the author's own college, and no participant may be identifiable in anything submitted here. The editor may decline work that does not show this.

7.5 Do not bring people under 18 onto the platform

Do not invite anyone under 18 to a table, a session, a booth or a thread, and do not use an outside call link set at a table to bring a person under 18 into a call with members. Outreach to high-school students belongs somewhere else.

8 How to report

8.1 In an emergency

If a child is in immediate danger, call 911. Then tell us.

8.2 If you are a member

Use the report control beside the content or on the member's card. Choose the category that fits best. There is one for a member who may be under 18 or any other concern about a minor. If you are unsure, choose the closest and say that your report concerns a child, so that it goes to the urgent queue.

When you report, the platform saves the item and the messages around it by itself. You do not need to copy anything, and you should not.

8.3 If you do not have an account

• Email safety@tillyard.org with the subject line "Child safety".
• If your concern is a sexual image of a person under 18, or a link to one, you can also use the removal form at tillyard.org/removal/intimate. See the Intimate-Image Removal Policy.
• Write to Tillyard, Attn: Child safety, 10602 York Rd SW, Etna, Ohio 43062. Post is slow, so use it only if nothing else is open to you.

8.4 Report to NCMEC as well

Anyone can report child sexual exploitation directly to NCMEC's CyberTipline, at report.cybertip.org or 1-800-843-5678, at any hour. Reporting to us does not stop you doing that, and we encourage it. NCMEC and the police do not depend on our website being available.

8.5 What to tell us

• Where on the platform you saw it: the page address, the room or table, the conversation.
• The name of the member involved, as it appears on the platform.
• The date and rough time.
• In your own words, what you saw and why it worried you.
• Whether you think a child is at risk now.

8.6 What not to do

• Do not screenshot, save, download, copy, forward or post the material. Holding or passing on child sexual abuse material can be a crime even when the reason is a good one.
• Do not open a link that you think leads to such material.
• Do not send the material to us, as an attachment or in any other way.
• Do not confront the person, question them, or tell them you have reported.
• Do not investigate. Do not pose as a child, set a trap, or gather evidence yourself.
• Do not accuse anyone in public, here or anywhere else.

If someone sent you a link or a message like this, you have done nothing wrong by receiving it. Report it and do not open it.

8.7 If you already have a copy

Do not send it to us or to anyone else, and do not post it. Tell NCMEC or the police what you have, and follow their instructions about what to do with it.

If such material reaches us anyway, for example attached to an email, we do not open it or pass it on. We report it to NCMEC and keep it only as the law requires, out of reach of everyone who does not need access.

8.8 Who learns that you reported

We do not tell the person you reported who you are. We may give your report, including your name and contact details, to NCMEC or to a law enforcement agency, because they may need to speak to you.

8.9 Reports made in good faith

A report made in good faith never counts against you, even if it turns out that nothing was wrong. A report you know to be false is misuse of the report control.

8.10 If the site is paused

The platform can switch parts of itself off, and the whole site can be unreachable for a time. Reporting is among the things we aim to keep open when other features are paused. If you cannot reach the site at all, email safety@tillyard.org, which does not run on the same system as the website, and report to NCMEC directly.

8.11 If your concern is about someone who works for us

Report it directly to NCMEC or the police. You do not need to tell us first, and you should not if you think doing so could put a child at risk.

9 What we do when we know

9.1 When we know

We act when a person on our staff has facts in front of them: a report, an automated flag that a person has then looked at, something seen while handling another matter, or a notice from NCMEC or a law enforcement agency.

9.2 We hide the content and restrict the account

Content can be hidden automatically as soon as a report or a flag arrives, before a person has looked. Urgent cases go to the top of the queue. If an urgent case is not picked up, the platform can switch off chat, and then close The Shop, by itself until someone has dealt with it.

Removing an account for conduct is a decision a person makes. An account under review for anything in section 5 may be paused by rule, so that it cannot post, send notes or enter rooms while a person looks; a pause is not a finding. One closure happens by rule and is not a finding about conduct: an account whose holder answers an age re-check by saying they are under 18, or does not answer one in the time shown (currently 30 days), is closed as not eligible (section 4).

9.3 We do not look at the material

Staff do not open a link that has been reported as leading to child sexual abuse material, and do not go looking for the material. We work from the report, from the text stored on the platform and from our records. Examining the material is for NCMEC and law enforcement.

9.4 We preserve what the law requires

Sending a report to the CyberTipline has the legal effect of a request to preserve what we reported for one year. We preserve it for at least that long, together with the reasonably accessible records that give it context, such as the surrounding conversation and the account's details. We keep preserved material in a secure place and limit access to the few people who need it.

Preservation overrides our normal deletion schedules. Text that would otherwise delete itself after a short period, and an account that would otherwise be erased, is held. We may preserve for longer where a law enforcement agency asks or where a legal matter is open.

9.5 We report to NCMEC

When we obtain actual knowledge of facts or circumstances that show an apparent violation of the federal laws on child sexual abuse material, child sex trafficking or the online enticement of a child, we report them to NCMEC's CyberTipline as soon as reasonably possible. Federal law requires this of us, and we do it.

We may also report facts that suggest an offense involving child sexual abuse material is planned or about to happen. Where we believe a child is in danger of death or serious physical injury, we may tell a law enforcement agency what relates to that danger (section 11.3).

A report may include the account's name, school email address and school, the text and links concerned, dates and times, and the technical records we hold. It does not include images, because we hold none.

9.6 We do not tell the person reported

We do not tell an account holder that we have made a report to NCMEC or spoken to a law enforcement agency, and we do not tell them who reported them. We may give no notice at all. If they do receive a notice from us, it says only that the account has been restricted or removed for a serious breach of our rules.

9.7 We remove the account

An account that we conclude was used to do any of the things in section 5 is removed permanently, as section 5.9 says. Removal does not wait for a prosecution, and it does not depend on one.

We enforce this by recognising the email address that was used. We cannot prevent a person from returning under a different address, and we act when we learn of it. The Privacy Notice, section 16.4, says what is kept for that purpose and for how long.

9.8 What the reporter hears

We aim to acknowledge a report. We may tell you that we acted. We generally cannot tell you what NCMEC or the police did, or give details about another person's account.

9.9 Looking after the young person

If a person who may be under 18 has been using the platform, we deal with their account under section 4, with care, and we aim to point them to the help in section 13. A young person who has been exploited, or who shared an image of themselves, is someone to protect. We still close the account, because the platform is for adults, and we still report where the law requires it. Where we believe in good faith that there is an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to anyone, we may give a law enforcement agency the information that relates to the emergency without waiting for legal process.

9.10 Who handles these matters

Child-safety matters are handled only by staff, which at present means the owner alone. Members are never asked to review, moderate or investigate.

9.11 Appeals

A member whose account is removed can use the single appeal that our rules provide (see the Reporting, Enforcement and Appeals Policy). An appeal does not put content back while it is considered, does not undo a report to NCMEC, and does not end preservation. We may limit what we explain while a matter is with the authorities.

10 Where our work stops

This section says where our work stops.

10.1 Images

Pictures can be uploaded only as figures in a paper for Tillyard Research and as receipts for a research grant. A published figure is served through Cloudflare, whose CSAM Scanning Tool checks the pictures it serves against lists of known material. A figure that is still private, and a receipt, are not served from Cloudflare's cache, so the tool does not see them: the editor looks at every figure before a paper is published, and only the member and the owner see a receipt. We run no other image-matching tool. Please do not describe the platform as scanned or screened for this material beyond that. The law does not require an online service to monitor its users or to search for this material. It requires a service to act on what it knows, and we do.

10.2 Text checks

Text that other people can see goes through automated safety checks, either before it appears or, for live table chat, shortly afterwards. Some checks are run by outside providers named in the Privacy Notice. A check can flag or hold text for a person to look at. It never removes an account by itself. These tools miss things and sometimes flag things wrongly, and we do not promise that harmful text will be caught.

10.3 Private notes

Private messages and group threads pass through the same automated checks. Staff do not read conversations to see what is being said. They open one only in the situations listed in section 6 of the Messaging and Monitoring Notice, the main ones being that it was reported or that screening flagged it. Messages are not end-to-end encrypted. The Messaging and Monitoring Notice has the detail.

10.4 Identity documents

See section 3.4.

10.5 Calls on other services

A table host can set a link to a call on another company's service. What happens in that call is not logged here, and our report control does not reach it. If a member behaves badly there, report the member to us and report the conduct to that service.

10.6 Investigating crimes

We are not a law enforcement body. We do not run stings, pose as children or try to identify offenders beyond what our own records show, and we do not allow members to do so here.

10.7 We do not promise response times

Apart from the legal duties in section 9 and the deadline in the Intimate-Image Removal Policy, we give no fixed times. We treat child-safety matters as the most urgent thing we handle.

10.8 We do not report to colleges or parents as a routine

We do not contact a member's college, or a young person's parents or school, in ordinary cases. Serious matters may be referred to law enforcement, or in a rare case to a member's institution, where that is appropriate and the law allows it, as section 19.9 of the Terms of Use provides.

11 Working with law enforcement

11.1 Reports go through NCMEC

NCMEC receives our reports and passes them to the law enforcement agencies that can act on them.

11.2 Legal process

We answer valid legal process: a subpoena, a court order or a search warrant, as the law requires for the kind of information sought. Send it to legal@tillyard.org or to Tillyard, Attn: Legal, 10602 York Rd SW, Etna, Ohio 43062. We read each request, and we may ask for it to be narrowed or put in the proper form.

11.3 Emergencies

Where we believe in good faith that an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury requires it, we may disclose information to a government agency without waiting for legal process. An officer making an emergency request should write from an official address and explain the emergency.

11.4 Preservation requests

We preserve records when a government agency asks us to in the way the law provides, for the period the law sets.

11.5 Telling members about requests

In child-safety matters we do not tell the account holder about a request for their information. In other matters our approach is set out in the Privacy Notice.

11.6 What we hold

We hold members' names, school email addresses and schools, the text they wrote that is still within our retention periods, dates and times, and case records. We hold limited technical records, described in the Privacy Notice. We do not hold images, video or audio, dates of birth, identity documents or payment details. Much of what members write is kept only for a limited time, so a preservation request should come early.

11.7 Referrals we choose to make

Apart from reports to NCMEC, we may tell a law enforcement agency about serious matters where the law allows us to. A referral that is not a report to NCMEC and is not an emergency under 11.3 carries a member's name, college and a factual description only, as section 19.9 of the Terms of Use provides, and never the contents of messages on that footing.

12 Your information in a child-safety matter

12.1 What we collect

From a person who reports: what they tell us, and their name and contact details if they give them. From the platform: the reported content and its surroundings, the account's details, dates and times, and what we did.

12.2 What we use it for

To protect people, to enforce our rules, to meet our legal duties to report and preserve, and to keep a record that shows what we did.

12.3 Who sees it

Staff who handle safety matters; the companies that provide our hosting and email, which process it for us; NCMEC; and courts and law enforcement agencies where the law requires or allows it. We do not sell it and we do not use it for marketing.

12.4 How long we keep it

Material preserved after a CyberTipline report is kept for at least one year from the report, as the law requires. Case records are kept on the schedule in the Privacy Notice, and longer while a legal matter is open. The usual rights to have information deleted do not override a legal duty to preserve.

12.5 More detail

The Privacy Notice covers the rest, for members and for people who are not members.

13 Help for someone in danger

These organizations are separate from Tillyard. We are not affiliated with any of them and do not speak for them. Contact details were checked in October 2026 and can change, so check each organization's own website.

14 How we hold ourselves to this

• Staff who handle these matters follow a written procedure that covers everything in section 9.
• Actions that staff take on cases and accounts are recorded in a log built so that entries cannot be quietly changed afterwards, including by the owner.
• Access to case files and preserved material is limited to the people who need it.
• We have set up the means to send reports to NCMEC's CyberTipline as a service provider.
• We aim to review this policy at least once a year and after any serious case.

15 Changes to this document

We may change this policy as the law, the platform or our experience changes. Each version has a number and an effective date at the top, and we keep earlier versions available. If a change makes a real difference to members, we aim to say so on the platform before it takes effect. A change required by law, or one that gives children more protection, may take effect straight away.

16 Contact

• To report a child-safety concern: the report control on the platform; safety@tillyard.org with the subject line "Child safety"; or NCMEC's CyberTipline at report.cybertip.org or 1-800-843-5678.
• To ask for the removal of a sexual image: see the Intimate-Image Removal Policy.
• Parents and guardians: safety@tillyard.org.
• Law enforcement and legal process: legal@tillyard.org, or by post to the address below.
• General help, including closing an account: support@tillyard.org.
• Post: Tillyard, Attn: Child safety, 10602 York Rd SW, Etna, Ohio 43062.

Tillyard is not a school, a child-protection agency or a law enforcement body, and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by any college or university.

Questions about this document

support@tillyard.org

Legal notices

legal@tillyard.org

By post

10602 York Rd SW, Etna, Ohio 43062

For anything else, see where to send what.

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