Terms of Service

1. Who we are and how to contact us

ChatNow is a trading name of Skyline Online LLC, a Limited Liability Company registered in the State of New Mexico, United States of America, registered office 1209 Mountain Road Place NE, Ste N, Albuquerque, NM 87110, USA, represented by its Managing Member. Skyline Online LLC is not registered for VAT in the United Kingdom. "ChatNow", "we", "us" and "our" mean Skyline Online LLC.

Email contact@chatnow.fr for general questions, accounts and Premium; safety@chatnow.fr for illegal content, intimate-image abuse, child safety and Online Safety Act complaints; privacy@chatnow.fr for data protection; legal@chatnow.fr for legal notices, law enforcement and regulators; or use the web contact form or write to the registered office. The person accountable for our online safety compliance is Gérald A., Head of Trust & Safety (safety@chatnow.fr). Our UK representative under Article 27 UK GDPR is DataRep, 107-111 Fleet Street, London EC4A 2AB, United Kingdom. See also Company information.

2. Definitions and how these Terms apply

• "Service": the ChatNow chat service at https://chat-now.uk/ and all its features.
• "Rules": the Community Rules (plain-English summary) and the Acceptable Use Policy (full binding text), both part of these Terms.
• "Guest": a person using the Service without registering; "Member": a person with a registered account; "you": either.
• "User Content": anything you post, send, upload or stream.
• "Adult Rooms": rooms we label as set aside for sexual conversation between consenting adults.

These Terms are a contract between you and us, accepted when you enter as a Guest or register as a Member; the link to these Terms and the Rules is shown before the button you press, and Guests and Members contract on the same terms. You use the Service as a consumer: Part 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 applies, and information we give you under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 forms part of the contract (regulation 13(6)).

3. Eligibility and age assurance

You must be 18 or over to use any part of the Service.

We enforce the minimum age with highly effective age assurance, never a tick-box. Before any room, private message, image or webcam becomes accessible, every Guest and Member completes an age check operated by the independent provider AgeVerif, by facial age estimation (challenge age 25: anyone estimated under 25 must use a document-based method), photo-ID document match, credit-card check or digital identity wallet. AgeVerif does not learn which site you are visiting and ChatNow receives only a yes/no result; no document, photo or estimate is ever transmitted to or stored by ChatNow, and the result is held for your session only and re-checked each session. Self-declaration, tick-boxes and warnings are never treated as age assurance. See the Age Assurance Policy.

Misrepresenting your age or helping anyone circumvent the check is a serious breach. Any account found to belong to a person under 18 is deleted and its data erased. An adult wrongly assessed as under 18 can complain under section 12.

4. Guest access, registered accounts and account security

Guests enter with a username of 3 to 20 characters, a gender, an age and a city; no email address or password is needed, and a Guest's messages and media are deleted automatically 24 hours after the Guest leaves. Members register with an email address, a password of at least 12 characters, a date of birth and a gender, or sign in with Google.

You may hold one account and one active session at a time. Keep your password confidential and do not let anyone else use your account. You are responsible for what is done through it unless this results from a security failure on our side; tell us at contact@chatnow.fr if you suspect unauthorised access. Accessing another person's account or our systems without authority is an offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

5. ChatNow Premium

ChatNow is free. Premium is an optional paid add-on sold by Skyline Online LLC. It never affects safety features, moderation, reporting or the outcome of a complaint.

5.1 Before you buy

Before you confirm we show the total price, what Premium includes, the plan length and whether it renews. The price shown is the total you pay; as Skyline Online LLC is not registered for VAT in the United Kingdom, no UK VAT is added. Card details are handled solely by a PCI-DSS certified payment processor and ChatNow never sees your card number. The charge appears on your statement as SKYLINE-ONLINE.

5.2 Your 14-day right to cancel

Under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 you may cancel Premium for any reason within 14 days of the day you buy it. When you buy, we ask whether you want Premium to start immediately. If you choose immediate access and then cancel within the 14 days, we refund the price less a proportionate amount for the days you had Premium (regulation 36); otherwise we refund the full price. Refunds are made within 14 days of cancellation to the payment method used. To cancel, email contact@chatnow.fr from your account email address; any clear statement suffices.

5.3 After the 14 days, renewals and refunds

After the 14 days, Premium runs to the end of the period paid for. You can stop any automatic renewal before the renewal date by emailing contact@chatnow.fr. Your Consumer Rights Act 2015 rights apply: Premium must be as described, of satisfactory quality and fit for purpose. If we withdraw or materially reduce Premium, or terminate your account other than for a serious breach, we refund the unused period; Premium is forfeited only where your account is terminated for a serious breach.

6. Acceptable use and the Community Rules

In summary: use the Service lawfully; treat other people decently; only ever involve adults; respect consent, including for sexual conversation and images; do not harass, threaten, defraud or spam; do not evade bans, run bots or scrape; do not solicit or advertise paid sexual services. Sexual conversation between consenting adults is permitted in Adult Rooms and, with clear consent, in private messages; unsolicited sexual images are prohibited everywhere. The full binding rules, mapped to the UK law each engages, are in the Acceptable Use Policy; the Community Rules are the short version. We apply the Rules consistently to all users, as section 10(8) of the Online Safety Act 2023 requires.

7. How we protect you from illegal content

ChatNow is a regulated user-to-user service under Part 3 of the Online Safety Act 2023. As section 10(5) requires, this section addresses terrorism content, child sexual exploitation and abuse content and other priority illegal content separately.

7.1 Terrorism content

Terrorism content (offences under the Terrorism Acts 2000 and 2006 listed in Schedule 5, such as encouraging terrorism or inviting support for a proscribed organisation) is prohibited absolutely. Accounts operated by or for an organisation proscribed under section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000 are removed as soon as identified. Banned-word lists and our AI classifier flag suspected terrorism content in public and private messages for immediate human review; moderators remove it, permanently ban the account, IP address and device, preserve the evidence and refer the matter to the police.

7.2 Child sexual exploitation and abuse content

CSEA content (indecent or prohibited images of children, grooming, sexual communication with a child and the other offences in Schedule 6) is prohibited absolutely and treated most severely. Every uploaded image is hash-matched against known child sexual abuse material through Project Arachnid (Canadian Centre for Child Protection) before anyone else can see it. A match blocks the image and triggers an immediate permanent ban of the account, IP address and device, preservation of evidence, a mandatory report to the National Crime Agency through its CSEA Industry Reporting Portal under the Online Safety (CSEA Content Reporting by Regulated User-to-User Service Providers) Regulations 2026 (in force since 7 April 2026) and, where relevant, a report to the Internet Watch Foundation. Our AI classifier flags messages suggesting grooming or sexual communication involving a child for urgent human review. Anyone found to be under 18 is removed and their data erased. See Child Safety & Safeguarding.

7.3 Other priority illegal content

This covers the offences in Schedule 7: hate; harassment, stalking, threats and abuse; controlling or coercive behaviour; intimate image abuse, including cyberflashing; extreme pornography; sexual exploitation of adults; human trafficking; unlawful immigration; fraud and financial offences; proceeds of crime; drugs and psychoactive substances; firearms, knives and other weapons; encouraging or assisting suicide or serious self-harm; foreign interference; and animal cruelty. It is detected through user reports, the AI classifier, banned-word lists, anti-spam controls that catch fraud patterns and StopNCII.org hash-matching (section 8), and removed by moderators as soon as we become aware of it, with sanctions under section 11. Intimate image content is removed within 48 hours under section 9. Illegal content that is not a priority offence is likewise removed swiftly once we are aware of it.

8. Proactive technology we use

As section 10(6) of the Online Safety Act 2023 requires, this is the kind of proactive technology we use, when it is used and how it works:

Webcam and voice streams are relayed in real time and never recorded or stored, so no proactive technology is applied to them; they are protected by the report button, moderators in rooms and your block and mute controls. No permanent ban is ever applied on a purely automated basis. Every automated removal is notified to you with the reason and can be appealed to a human reviewer under section 12.

9. Intimate images: removal within 48 hours

Section 10(3A) of the Online Safety Act 2023 (in force since 29 June 2026) requires us to remove intimate image content as soon as reasonably practicable and no later than 48 hours after a report.

• Who can report: the person shown, or someone acting on their behalf, whether or not they use ChatNow; real and purported ("deepfake") images are both covered.
• How: the "intimate images" category of the report button, or safety@chatnow.fr, monitored 24/7 for this purpose; the Report page explains what to include.
• What happens: we remove the content within 48 hours of a valid report, unless we reasonably believe it is not intimate image content or the reporter is neither the person shown nor entitled to act for them, in which case we tell the reporter why and how to complain. We add the image's hash to our StopNCII.org matching to prevent re-upload, sanction the account that shared it, preserve the evidence and assist the police where a crime appears to have been committed.
• Complaints about our handling of an intimate-image report follow an expedited procedure (section 12).

10. How children are prevented from encountering harmful content

Adult Rooms permit pornographic content between consenting adults, which is primary priority content harmful to children under section 61 of the Online Safety Act 2023. Whether or not the children's safety duties in section 12 of the Online Safety Act 2023 apply to us, we state here how children are prevented from encountering such content: children are prevented from accessing the Service at all. The age assurance in section 3 gates every room, private message, image and webcam for Guests and Members alike, and nothing, blurred or otherwise, is visible before the check is passed. We rely only on methods Ofcom recognises as capable of being highly effective, operated by an independent provider, never on self-declaration. No person under 18 may appear in any image or webcam stream. These measures are applied consistently, and an adult wrongly assessed as a child may appeal under section 12.

11. Moderation and enforcement

Human moderators and administrators are present in rooms daily. We decide whether content or conduct breaches the Rules or the law reasonably and consistently, by reference to the Rules, the evidence and the seriousness of the harm. The sanctions, in increasing order of severity, are: removal of the content; reduced visibility of your messages or profile for a limited time; a temporary mute; a temporary ban of your account, IP address and device; and a permanent ban of your account, IP address and device with termination of your account. The gravest breaches (child sexual exploitation and abuse, terrorism, non-consensual intimate images, threats of violence) lead directly to a permanent ban.

Every moderation decision taken against you is notified to you with the reason, the rule or law relied on, whether automated technology was involved and how to appeal. No permanent ban is applied on a purely automated basis without human review. Evading a ban, including by creating a new account, is itself a breach.

12. Reporting, complaints and appeals

This section states the policies and processes governing the handling and resolution of complaints, as section 21(4) of the Online Safety Act 2023 requires; full details are on the Report content or a user and Complaints & Appeals pages.

Reporting. Every message and profile carries a report button with categories for each kind of illegal content, breaches of the Rules and anything else. Non-users, including a person shown in an image, can report by email to safety@chatnow.fr. We acknowledge reports within 24 hours and decide standard reports within 7 days; intimate-image reports follow section 9.

Complaints we handle: content on the Service; a moderation decision taken against you (an appeal); a report you made that was rejected; an age-assurance decision that wrongly assessed you as under 18; the proactive technology we use; ChatNow's compliance with its Online Safety Act duties; the handling of your personal data; and the Service or these Terms as a consumer (the proactive-technology head is handled as type 5 on the Complaints page). Intimate-image complaints are expedited.

Appeals against a sanction are decided within 14 days by a human reviewer who did not take the original decision; if your appeal succeeds we restore the content, lift the sanction and correct our records, and if not we tell you why.

Manifestly unfounded complaints. A complaint that repeats, in substance, one by the same person that we have already decided, without new information, may be closed without further review; we record a written note of each closure and tell you.

13. Your right to bring a claim for breach of contract

Section 72(1) of the Online Safety Act 2023 requires us to tell you this clearly: if we take down content you have generated, uploaded or shared, or restrict access to it, in breach of these Terms, or if we suspend or ban you from the Service in breach of these Terms, you have the right to bring a claim against us for breach of contract. "These Terms" includes the Rules. You need not use our complaints procedure first, although appealing is faster and free. The courts in which you can bring a claim are in section 24.

14. Freedom of expression and privacy

When we design and apply safety measures we have particular regard to protecting your right to freedom of expression within the law and to protecting you from unwarranted intrusions into your privacy, as section 22 of the Online Safety Act 2023 requires. In practice: the Rules prohibit only conduct that is illegal or causes defined harm, and lawful speech is not removed merely because someone disagrees with it; automated flags are reviewed by people before any lasting sanction; staff do not read private messages except to assess one that has been flagged or reported, or where the law requires; only message text, never your identity, goes to the AI classifier; webcam and voice are never recorded by us; and the age check reveals nothing beyond a yes/no result.

15. Your content and the licence you give us

You keep ownership of your User Content. So that we can run the Service, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to host, store, transmit, reproduce, display to the people you send it to, moderate and secure your User Content and to use it to comply with the law. The licence may be sub-licensed only to providers processing data on our behalf, does not allow us to use your User Content in advertising or promotion without your separate consent, and ends when you delete the content or your account, subject only to backup copies removed in the ordinary course and records we must keep by law or for an ongoing report, complaint or investigation (see the Privacy Policy).

To the extent needed for moderation and display (cropping, resizing, blurring or removing an image) you agree that we may alter your User Content and waive your moral rights of attribution and integrity under sections 77 to 80 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 for those purposes only. You promise that you own or have the necessary rights in your User Content, that every person shown in an image, voice note or webcam stream is an adult who consented to appear and to it being shared on ChatNow, and that it complies with the Rules. You are responsible for your User Content; we are not its author and moderating it does not make us so.

16. Our intellectual property

The ChatNow name and logo, the chat-now.uk domain, and the software, design and text making up the Service belong to us or our licensors. We grant you a personal, non-commercial, non-transferable licence to use the Service in accordance with these Terms. You must not copy, scrape, harvest, reverse engineer or make derivative works of the Service, except to the extent the law allows despite this term. Copyright complaints follow the Copyright & Intellectual Property Complaints procedure; defamation complaints follow the Defamation Complaints procedure.

17. Privacy, data and third-party links

Skyline Online LLC is the controller of the personal data processed through the Service. The Privacy Policy explains what we collect, why, for how long and who receives it; the Cookie Policy covers storage on your device; Your Data Rights explains how to exercise your rights. Links posted by users or shown by us may lead to sites we do not control; we do not endorse them and these Terms do not cover them.

18. Availability, changes to the Service and suspension

We provide the Service with reasonable care and skill. Because it is free and delivered over the internet, we cannot promise it will always be available or uninterrupted, and we may take it offline for maintenance, giving notice in the Service where practicable. Webcam and voice features need a current web browser, a camera or microphone and a connection able to carry real-time video.

We may change, add or withdraw features only for these valid reasons: to comply with a legal or regulatory requirement (including one from Ofcom or the Information Commissioner); to protect the safety or security of users or the Service; to reflect a technical change in the systems we rely on; or to improve the Service. Where a change materially reduces what the Service offers we give at least 30 days' notice in the Service, unless the law or an urgent safety risk requires immediate action, and refund any unused Premium period affected. We may suspend the Service or your access temporarily to deal with a security incident, a legal requirement or an urgent risk to users.

19. Ending the agreement

By you. A Guest ends the agreement by leaving; the Guest's content is deleted 24 hours later. A Member can delete their account at any time from account settings without contacting us; the Member's data is anonymised within 30 days, except records we must keep by law. Deleting your account ends any Premium plan, and the refund rules in section 5 apply.

By us. We may end your access immediately, without prior notice, on serious grounds: illegal content or conduct, a serious or repeated breach of the Rules, a risk to the safety of other users, evidence that you are under 18, or a legal requirement, and we tell you the reason and how to appeal. In any other case, including closure of the Service or of the part you use, we give at least 30 days' notice and refund any unused Premium period.

Sections 13, 15 (as to retained records), 16, 20, 21, 23 and 24 survive termination.

20. Our responsibility to you

What we never exclude or limit. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence; for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; under section 46 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, if digital content we supply damages your device or other digital content and we failed to use reasonable care and skill, in which case we will repair the damage or compensate you; or for anything else the Consumer Rights Act 2015 or other law does not allow us to exclude or limit. Nothing in these Terms affects your statutory rights as a consumer.

What we are responsible for. If we fail to comply with these Terms or to use reasonable care and skill, we are responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result of that failure. Loss is foreseeable if it is obvious it will happen or if, when the contract was made, both we and you knew it might.

What we are not responsible for: loss that was not foreseeable; loss connected with a business, trade or profession, because the Service is for personal use; the content or conduct of other users, except where we failed to act as these Terms require after becoming aware of it; and events outside our reasonable control, provided we take reasonable steps to limit their effect.

21. Your responsibility to us

If a third party brings a claim against us because you broke the law or the Rules while using the Service (for example by uploading content that infringes someone's rights or sharing an image without the consent of the person shown), you agree to compensate us for the losses and reasonable costs we suffer as a direct result, to the extent caused by your breach. You are not responsible for losses caused by our own breach or negligence, and this section does not apply to ordinary good-faith use of the Service.

22. Changes to these Terms

We may change these Terms or the Rules only for these reasons: a change in the law, regulatory requirements or guidance (including from Ofcom, the Information Commissioner or the Competition and Markets Authority); a change to the Service or a new feature; a safety, security or abuse risk; or to make the text clearer without changing its meaning.

For any material change we give at least 30 days' notice before it takes effect, by a notice in the Service, by email to Members and on the Legal Documents Version History page, which archives every version. If you do not accept a change you may stop using the Service and delete your account before it takes effect, and any unused Premium period is refunded. A change required by law or by an urgent safety risk may take effect sooner, with an explanation. Changes never apply retrospectively; continuing to use the Service after the effective date means the new Terms apply.

23. Assignment, entire agreement and other general terms

Assignment. We may transfer our rights and obligations under these Terms only to a successor operator of the Service who takes on the same obligations towards you and it will not reduce your rights. You may not transfer your account or your rights under these Terms.

Entire agreement. These Terms, the Rules and the pre-contract information we give you (which regulation 13(6) of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 makes part of this contract) make up the whole agreement between you and us about the Service. This clause does not exclude liability for fraud or limit any statutory right.

Third-party rights. No one other than you and us may enforce these Terms, whether under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 or the Contract (Third Party Rights) (Scotland) Act 2017.

Severance, waiver and notices. If a court finds part of these Terms unenforceable the rest continues to apply, and if we do not insist on a right immediately we may still do so later. We contact Members at their account email address and all users by notices in the Service; you contact us at the addresses in section 1, using legal@chatnow.fr for formal legal notices.

24. Governing law, courts and dispute resolution

These Terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of them or your use of the Service, are governed by the law of England and Wales. You can bring proceedings in the courts of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland you can also bring proceedings in the Scottish courts, and if you live in Northern Ireland, in the courts of Northern Ireland. Nothing in these Terms removes the protection of the mandatory consumer laws of the part of the United Kingdom where you live, and we will never require you to use arbitration or give up your right to go to court.

If you have a consumer complaint about the Service or these Terms, tell us first at contact@chatnow.fr; we give a final response in writing. As section 308 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 requires, when we give you the outcome of a complaint we will tell you about any alternative dispute resolution scheme available. ChatNow is not a member of any alternative dispute resolution scheme and is not required to be; if you remain dissatisfied you may bring a claim in the courts described above. Concerns about our Online Safety Act compliance may also be raised with Ofcom, and data-protection concerns with the Information Commissioner's Office.