Privacy & Safety

Most students on Nearpeer are in high school, and many are under 18. Safety is built into how Nearpeer works, not added on. This page explains it in plain words, for students, parents, and counselors.

Everything happens on Nearpeer

Messages, video calls, documents, files, scheduling, and payments all happen inside Nearpeer. Nobody needs another app, and nobody needs anyone's phone number or email.

Contact info is never shared

• Students and counselors never see each other's email address or phone number. Emails from Nearpeer go to each person's own address.
• Sharing contact info isn't allowed anywhere on Nearpeer: in messages, documents, comments, file names, profiles, or AI chats. That includes emails, phone numbers, social media handles (Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, and others), and links to outside meeting apps (Zoom, Google Meet, and others), even when they're spelled out or disguised.
• Payments only happen through Nearpeer. Asking to be paid another way isn't allowed.

Conversations are checked for safety

Everything written on Nearpeer is checked automatically before it reaches the other person: by rules that look for contact info and outside links, and by an AI safety check that looks for harassment, sexual content, grooming, and signs that someone may be in crisis.

• If something breaks the rules, it isn't sent. The writer sees why, and our safety team reviews it.
• If someone writes that they might hurt themselves, their message still goes through, they see crisis resources right away (call or text 988), and our safety team is alerted.
• In shared documents, the same rules run as you type, so contact info can't be added. Everything else in a document is checked when it saves.
• Our safety team can read flagged content only by opening the flagged item. Every time they do, it's logged. Nobody at Nearpeer browses conversations.
• People who break the rules can be warned, suspended, or banned.

Who can see what

• Only the student and their counselor can see their messages, documents, files, calls, and calendar. Our safety team sees only what's flagged or reported.
• A parent or guardian who pays for sessions sees the sessions and charges, and can dispute a charge. They don't see messages, documents, or notes.
• Counselors can keep private notes about their work. Students never see those.
• Only the student and counselor (and our safety team, if there's a safety concern) can join their video calls. Calls aren't recorded.

AI on Nearpeer

• Nearpeer's AI tools help students and counselors between sessions. They only use information the person using them is allowed to see. A counselor's private notes are never shown to a student or the student's AI.
• The student AI never writes or rewrites essays. Your essays are yours.
• Our AI runs on Anthropic's Claude. Anthropic processes the text only to provide the service and doesn't use it to train its models.

Report a problem

Every profile and conversation has Report and Block buttons. You can also email hello@getnearpeer.com. If anyone is in danger right now, call 911.