1. What these terms are
1.1 These terms are the agreement between you and us about using gassed. If you use gassed, they apply to you.
1.2 We have written them in short sentences on purpose. Most people using gassed are 13 to 18 years old. If any part of this is unclear, ask us at support@getgassed.app and we will explain it.
1.3 Read these alongside our Privacy Notice, which explains what we do with your information.
1.4 We are: [to be confirmed before launch]
2. Who can use gassed
2.1 You must be 13 or over. This is a hard rule. If you are under 13 you cannot have an account, and if we find out an account belongs to someone under 13 we will close it.
2.2 You must be in the United Kingdom, and you must sign up with a UK mobile number. gassed is not available anywhere else.
2.3 One account per person, and one account per phone number.
2.4 If the place you pick is a school or sixth form (including all-through, special and independent schools), you must be 19 or under, and the age check must not have read your face as clearly adult.
2.5 If the place you pick is a university, you must be 16 or over.
2.6 Further education colleges take anyone who meets rule 2.1, because they genuinely teach 14-year-olds and adults in the same building.
2.7 In the UK you can agree to these terms yourself from the age of 13. You do not need a parent's or carer's permission. You can still ask them for help, and we would rather you did. Section 11 explains what the law says about people under 18 and money.
2.8 We can refuse or close an account that does not meet these rules.
3. Proving your age
3.1 When you join, you type your date of birth and then take one selfie. The selfie is used to check the birthday you gave is believable. Our Privacy Notice explains exactly what happens to it.
3.1A Before the camera opens, the app tells you what happens to the selfie — one photo, sent to Didit, deleted by them straight away, never stored by us or shown to anyone — and you continue only by tapping I understand, take the photo. Tap Not now and nothing is taken. The document photo in an appeal (3.4) is asked for the same way: the screen says where it goes and when it is deleted, and you continue only by tapping I understand, open camera.
3.2 The selfie route closes after two scans that come back as a fail, or three that do not work at all (bad light, no face, a photo of a screen). A scan that does not work is not held against you as a fail. Nobody gets more than six attempts in any 24 hours.
3.3 The birthday is fixed by your first real result. After that you cannot try again with a different one.
3.4 If you run out of scans, you can appeal to a person. You send a photo of something official that shows your date of birth. One of our moderators looks at it and decides, usually within 24 hours. You get two appeals.
3.5 The photo of your document is deleted as soon as the decision is made, and within seven days whatever happens.
3.6 Do not lie about your age. Getting an account by giving a false birthday is a breach of these terms, and we will close the account.
3.7 The limits in 3.2 and 3.4 are tied to your phone number and survive deleting your account. Deleting and signing up again does not reset them.
4. Your account and your name
4.1 Your display name should be your real name. Other people at your school see it, in chat, stories, friends and polls.
4.2 You also get a random voting handle, like "Velvet Comet". It is the only name ever attached to a vote. You can change it for free, whenever you like, in Settings.
4.3 Do not pretend to be somebody else. Do not use a name that is a slur, an insult, an advert or somebody else's personal information.
4.4 Your date of birth and your school are locked after you join. If one is wrong, email support@getgassed.app and a person will look at it.
4.5 Keep your phone secure. Anyone who can receive your text messages can sign in as you.
5. The rules about what you post
These rules apply to everything you write in gassed: chat messages, group chat names, story captions, the blank in a custom poll, and your display name.
5.1 Some things are never allowed, in any circumstances. There is no exception for a joke, for sarcasm, for "banter", for a dare, for something you were sent first, or for something the other person said they did not mind. You must never post, send or share:
- (a) Pornography, or any sexual content. This includes sexual messages, sexual descriptions, sexual images, and asking anyone for any of those.
- (b) Anything that encourages, promotes or gives instructions for suicide.
- (c) Anything that encourages, promotes or gives instructions for self-harm.
- (d) Anything that encourages, promotes or gives instructions for an eating disorder, or for behaviour linked to one. This includes content that presents starving, purging or extreme dieting as a goal.
- (e) Bullying. This includes picking on one person, joining in on someone else's pile-on, mocking, humiliating, deliberately excluding, or repeatedly contacting someone who wants you to stop.
- (f) Abuse and hate. This includes slurs, and abuse or hatred aimed at someone because of their race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, disability, or because they are transgender or have changed gender.
- (g) Violence. This includes threats of violence, encouraging violence, describing violence you intend to do, and sharing violent content.
5.2 These are also never allowed:
- Harassment of any kind, and threats of any kind.
- Sharing someone's personal information to find or target them — their address, their phone number, where they work, where they will be.
- Sharing a private message, photo or screenshot of someone in order to embarrass them.
- Sharing an intimate image of someone without their consent, a link to one, or a threat to share one. If this has happened to you, pick "An intimate image of me shared without consent" when you report. You will be asked to confirm two things — that the image shows you (or someone you are responsible for) and that you did not agree to it being shared — and we act within 48 hours (7.8).
- Content that sexualises a child in any way. This is a criminal offence and we report it to the National Crime Agency. If you see it, pick "Child sexual abuse or exploitation" when you report — that reason goes to the top of our queue.
- Selling or offering drugs, weapons, alcohol, vapes or anything else illegal.
- Content supporting terrorism or a proscribed organisation.
- Scams, phishing, or pretending to be gassed staff.
- Spam, automated posting, or scripts against our servers.
5.3 gassed is for positive things about people. The poll prompts are a fixed list and every one of them is a compliment. The one blank you can fill in yourself, in a custom poll, is checked before the poll is posted and refused unless the check says it is clearly fine (6.2). Nothing negative about a person is allowed — not in a poll, not in a message — and the check is built to refuse it. Ranking people on how they look is not allowed either.
5.4 If you are struggling with any of the things in 5.1(b), (c), (d) or (e), please talk to someone. In the app, choose Settings → Get support, or pick "Self-harm or suicide" or "Harassment or bullying" when you report something and we will show you the same numbers: Childline 0800 1111 (under 19s, childline.org.uk), Samaritans 116 123 (free, 24 hours, jo@samaritans.org) and Papyrus HOPELINE247 0800 068 4141 (under 35s). If someone is in immediate danger, call 999.
5.5 Illegal content, and how we deal with it. Some of what section 5 bans is also a crime. The law (the Online Safety Act 2023) asks us to say separately how we handle three groups of it. The answer is the same for all three, so here it is once: we look for it before it is delivered (6.1); we take it down as soon as we know about it, whether from the check, from a report, or from anything else that reaches us; and we can close the account straight away without going through the ladder (6.9). Then the differences:
- (a) Terrorism content. Content that encourages terrorism, that supports or glorifies a proscribed organisation, or that gives instructions for an attack. gassed has no public feed beyond one school and no image or video sharing, so this is rare here, but the rule is absolute: it is removed, the account is closed, and we can report it to the police.
- (b) Child sexual exploitation and abuse content. Anything that sexualises a child; asking a child for a sexual image, or offering one; grooming, meaning anyone building towards sexual contact with a child; a link to a sexual image of a child. We do not wait for a report. It is preserved as evidence, removed, and reported to the National Crime Agency, as the law requires. Most users here are under 18, so a sexual message between two users can be this even when both are children. Report it under "Child sexual abuse or exploitation": that reason goes to the top of our queue and a person opens it before anything else.
- (c) Other priority illegal content. Threats and harassment; hate offences (abuse aimed at someone's race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity); encouraging or helping suicide; controlling or coercive behaviour; sharing, or threatening to share, an intimate image of someone; extreme pornography; selling drugs or weapons; fraud and scams; content about unlawful immigration or people smuggling; encouraging cruelty to animals. Each is banned by 5.1 or 5.2, screened by the check, removed when we see it, and counted on the ladder (6.6). Where someone is in danger we call the police ourselves.
If something of yours is removed you are normally told (6.6). We may not tell you where telling you could put a child at risk or interfere with a police investigation. We keep a record of what we removed and why for 24 months (Privacy Notice, note P), and longer if the police or the National Crime Agency are involved.
5.6 How we protect people under 18 from content that could harm them. The law lists kinds of content that children must be kept away from or protected from. Every one of them is banned by 5.1 for everyone, whatever their age, because almost everyone here is under 18. What we do about each, in plain words:
| Kind of content | What we do |
|---|---|
| Pornography and sexual content | Banned (5.1(a)). There is no image or video sharing anywhere in gassed, so it can only arrive as words or a link. Every message, caption and name is checked before delivery, and sexual content is blocked, not held (6.1). Reported content is removed. |
| Suicide and self-harm content | Banned (5.1(b), (c)). Encouraging or instructing it is blocked before delivery. Words that sound like someone is struggling are held for a person to read, not punished (6.1), so a real person sees them. If you report it, the app shows you Childline, Samaritans and Papyrus straight away (5.4), and your report goes to the top of our queue. |
| Eating-disorder content | Banned (5.1(d)). Screened and removed like the above. No prompt in gassed ranks anyone's appearance, and there is no feed that can keep showing you more of something: the feed shows only your school's polls, sorted on your own phone. |
| Bullying | Banned (5.1(e)). The poll prompts are fixed and positive, so there is no anonymous way to write something about a person; votes are anonymous but carry no words; nobody is shown vote counts, rankings, or who was not chosen. Chat is real-name and checked before delivery. You can block anyone, and blocking works both ways on our servers. You can stop being put in polls at all (Settings → Polls about you). Repeat behaviour adds up on the ladder (6.6). |
| Abuse and hate | Banned (5.1(f)). Slurs and abuse aimed at a protected characteristic are blocked before delivery, and removed on report. |
| Violent content | Banned (5.1(g)). Threats are blocked before delivery. There is no image or video sharing. |
| Harmful substances; dangerous stunts and challenges | Banned (5.2). There is no marketplace, no search of what people post, and nothing that spreads a post beyond one school. |
| Being named and not chosen; pressure to pay | Not "content", but a way gassed itself could hurt, so: nobody is shown who was not chosen or by how much; only the winner is told, and only that they won; you can leave polls entirely; a paid hint is one clue, never a name; and paying changes nothing about what anyone can post. |
We do not yet treat a 13-year-old differently from a 17-year-old inside the app: everyone gets the same messaging, the same group chats and the same
6. How we check, and what happens when a rule is broken
6.1 Everything you write in free text is checked before it is delivered. It is sent to Google's Gemini AI, which decides one of three things:
- Allowed — it is delivered.
- Held — a person looks at it before it goes anywhere. You are told it is under review.
- Blocked — it is never delivered. You see a short message. We do not tell you which rule you hit, because that teaches people how to get round the check.
6.2 A story caption, a group chat name and a custom poll blank are refused outright if they are anything other than "allowed". There is no held state for those — they are seen by a whole school, or they are not created.
6.3 If the check cannot run, nothing goes through. We would rather your message fails than let something harmful past.
6.4 Anyone can report anything, in two taps, from a poll, a story, a message or an account. A person reviews every report. We aim to look within a few hours. We do not offer 24-hour cover and we are not going to claim we do.
6.5 A moderator can remove content, release a held message, resolve a report, or decide there was no breach. Every one of those actions is logged.
6.6 What happens to you builds up. Only decisions a moderator has upheld count. Being reported does not count, and neither does content that was held and then released.
| Upheld decisions | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1–2 | Warning. You are told. Nothing is taken away |
| 3–4 | Limited for 7 days. You cannot make new polls, post stories, or start new chats. You can still read, vote, like, and carry on your existing conversations |
| 5 or more | Banned. You cannot post anything, and you are signed out, and for 12 months the phone number can't be used to open a new account, even if you delete this one |
6.7 Only decisions from the last 180 days are counted.
6.8 Reporting and blocking are never taken away, even from a banned account. If you are limited or banned, you can still report someone and still block them.
6.9 We can remove content or close an account straight away, without going through the ladder, if something is serious enough.
6.10 The automatic check, in plain words. The law calls it "proactive technology" and asks us to describe it. What kind: a large language model, an AI that reads text, made by Google (its Gemini model) and run on our servers. When it runs: at the moment you send or post, on chat messages, story captions, group chat names, the blank in a custom poll and your display name, before anyone else can see them (6.1). It does not run on votes, because a vote has no words; it does not look at pictures, because there are none; and it does not go back over old messages. How it works: it reads the text on its own, with instructions from us that most people here are 13 to 17 and that it should judge as if a 13-year-old wrote the words and a 13-year-old will read them. It gives one of three answers, allowed, held or blocked, with the kind of rule it thinks applies and a one-line reason. We keep the first 200 characters of what you wrote, its answer and its reason for 24 months so a person can check whether it is being too strict or too lenient (Privacy Notice, note I). It is not perfect: it will sometimes hold or block something harmless, and sometimes let something through. When it holds something, a person decides. When it blocks something, no person is involved unless you ask one to look (7.9). If it cannot run, nothing is delivered (6.3). Every month we look at how often it held things that a person then released.
6.11 We use no other automatic technology on what you post: no image matching (there are no images), no keyword lists, no scanning of your phone or your contacts. The warning-limit-ban ladder (6.6) counts automatically, but every decision it counts was made by a person.
7. Complaining, and appealing a decision
7.1 You can complain to us about any of these:
- Content you reported that we did not remove.
- Content of yours that we removed, or a message that was blocked.
- A warning, a limit or a ban.
- A phone number that has been refused a new account because of a ban (6.6).
- An age check that we got wrong.
- An intimate-image report (5.2) that we have not acted on within 48 hours.
- Anything else about how we have treated you.
7.2 An age decision is appealed in the app. Send a document, and a person decides — see section 3.4.
7.3 Every other complaint goes to support@getgassed.app. Put Appeal or Complaint at the start of the subject line. You do not need an account to write to us. Our support page says what to include and how each kind of decision is appealed.
7.4 [to be confirmed before launch]
7.5 A blocked message currently has no appeal route in the app. [to be confirmed before launch]
7.6 If we cannot sort it out, you can complain about our handling of your personal information to the Information Commissioner's Office. [to be confirmed before launch]
7.7 This section is our complaints policy. In one place, so you can find it: what you can complain about is in 7.1. An age decision is appealed in the app (7.2, 3.4), and a person decides, usually within 24 hours. Everything else goes to support@getgassed.app (7.3); our support page says what to include, who decides, and how long each kind of complaint takes. You will get an acknowledgement, a person will look, and you will be told what happened to your content or account, never what happened to someone else's. You can tell us at any time that you do not want to hear from us again about a complaint, and we will stop, except for anything the law requires us to tell you. Anyone can complain, including parents, carers, teachers and people who do not use gassed. We may not investigate a complaint in full if it is obviously unfounded, for example the same complaint again with nothing new, but we will always tell you once, and we always open a report about self-harm, suicide or child sexual abuse.
7.8 Intimate images: a faster route. gassed has no image sharing, but someone could send a link to an intimate image of you, or threaten to share one, in a message. If that happens, or if you believe an intimate image of you (or of a child you are responsible for) is being shared through gassed, report it in the app under An intimate image of me shared without consent and tick the two statements it asks for: The image shows me (or someone I'm responsible for) and I did not agree to it being shared. We act on it — removing the reported content — within 48 hours of your report, and we do not have to decide first whether it is against the law. If we decide not to remove something, if 48 hours pass without us acting, or you think we were too slow, you can make an expedited complaint: email support@getgassed.app with Intimate image as the subject. It goes to the front of the queue, and a person looks at it before any other complaint. You do not need an account to write to us. If you are under 18, Report Remove (run by Childline and the Internet Watch Foundation, at childline.org.uk) can also help get an image taken down anywhere else.
7.9 If the automatic check gets it wrong. If something of yours was held, a person will decide it; you do not need to do anything. If something was blocked, you can ask a person to look: email support@getgassed.app with Appeal at the start of the subject, and roughly what you sent and when. A blocked message is never stored, so it cannot be released; a person can check whether the check was wrong, record that, and tell you. You can send it again in other words. (7.5 records that there is no route for this inside the app yet.)
8. Votes, anonymity and hints
8.1 No screen in gassed shows anyone who voted for whom. Not the winner, not the person who made the poll, not your friends. The app is built so that a normal query cannot return it.
8.2 We can see it. Votes are stored with the account attached, because that is how counting and hints work. We do not have a screen that shows them, and we do not browse them. If we are legally required to hand something over — by a court or by the police using a proper legal power — we have to. Ninety days after a poll closes, we remove the link between each vote and the account that cast it. The count stays. Who cast it is gone — from us too.
8.3 Who created a poll is never shown to anyone using the app. A moderator can see the creator of a poll that has been reported.
8.4 A paid hint is one clue about one person who voted for you. It is one of: their year, their gender, or their first initial. We only use a clue if at least five people at your school share it.
8.5 One hint per win, ever. You cannot buy a second hint for the same win, and hints cannot be stacked to narrow somebody down.
8.6 A hint never gives you a name, a photo, a phone number or any way to contact someone.
8.7 A hint is attributed to the voter's voting handle. That handle stays the same until they change it. If you win several polls and the same person keeps voting, clues about one handle can add up over time. Anyone can change their handle for free in Settings, at any time, and we recommend it.
8.8 Do not use gassed to work out who voted for you and then confront them. Doing that is harassment under section 5, and we will act on it.
9. Things you can pay for
9.1 You can pay for one hint, or subscribe to gassed+ (called Premium in some screens), which gives one hint on every win with no gas needed. A hint is one clue about one voter — their year group, gender or first initial — never a name (see section 8). You can also spend gas, which is free and earned by posting polls and by being voted for.
9.2 All payments go through Apple. We never see your card. The price you see is Apple's price for your country, taken live from the App Store.
9.3 gassed+ renews every week until you cancel. Cancel in your Apple ID settings. Cancelling stops the next payment. You keep what you have paid for until the end of the week you paid for. The price is shown before you subscribe, as the weekly amount, and again on Apple's payment sheet.
9.4 [to be confirmed before launch]
9.5 Hints are available for 90 days after a win. After that we have deleted the link between each vote and the person who cast it (section 8.2), so no hint is offered and none can be bought.
9.6 If your Apple ID uses Ask to Buy, a purchase waits until the family organiser approves it. Nothing is charged and nothing is unlocked until then. Once approved, a hint purchase is used the next time you tap Get a hint on a win; you are not charged again.
10. Refunds
10.1 Apple handles refunds for purchases made through the App Store. Ask Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com. Cancelling gassed+ stops the next payment; it does not refund the current week.
10.2 If you think you have been charged for something that did not work, tell us too at support@getgassed.app and we will help.
11. If you are under 18 and you have spent money
11.1 Under the law of England and Wales, a contract made by someone under 18 can generally be cancelled by them. That includes paying for a hint or a subscription.
11.2 In practice this means: if you are under 18 and you (or your parent or carer) ask for a purchase to be refunded, we will not argue about your age. We will help you get the money back.
12. What you post stays yours
12.1 What you write is yours. We do not claim to own it.
12.2 You give us permission to store it and show it to the people it is meant for, for as long as it is on gassed. That permission is only so the app can work.
12.3 [to be confirmed before launch]
13. Leaving
13.1 You can delete your account at any time: Settings → Delete account. There is no email to send and no waiting period.
13.2 When you delete your account, your votes, likes, messages, stories, hints, blocks and reports go with it. Votes in polls that closed more than 90 days ago were already unlinked from you (see 8.2), so they stay as counts with nothing about you left in them. Polls you created stay up, with you removed — nobody could see you had created them anyway.
13.3 Two things survive on purpose: the scrambled record of your age-check attempts (see 3.7), which also carries the date of a ban for 12 months (see 6.6), and our moderation records. The Privacy Notice explains both.
13.4 We can suspend or close your account if you break these terms, if we have to by law, or if we stop running gassed.
14. Things we do not promise
14.1 We try to keep gassed working, but we do not promise it will always be available or free of faults.
14.2 We can change or remove features.
14.3 We are responsible for loss we cause you that we could reasonably have foreseen. We are not responsible for things outside that.
14.4 Nothing in these terms takes away your legal rights. We cannot and do not exclude responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law says we cannot exclude. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights stand whatever this document says.
15. Changes to these terms
15.1 [to be confirmed before launch]
16. Which law applies
16.1 [to be confirmed before launch]
17. Contact
Email us at support@getgassed.app — for questions, complaints, appeals, refunds and anything about your data. If you are a parent, carer or teacher, you can also write to safeguarding@getgassed.app. Our website is getgassed.app.