Safety & trust

Safety isn't a feature. It's the foundation.

offline exists to put you in a room with people you haven't met yet. That's the whole point, and it's exactly why trust has to be structural rather than promised. So this page doesn't hand out a "trusted" badge. It sets out the rules that keep the room real, including the parts we deliberately don't do.

Who's in the room

No bots, no ghosts, no strangers out of nowhere.

The biggest difference between a dating app and offline is right here: the people standing in front of you got there through rules the app enforces, not through a profile they wrote about themselves.

Safe space

Women-only events

Any woman can create or join a women-only event. Gender is declared once during sign-up and is then permanently locked — it can't be edited in the app, and corrections go through support. We don't check it against a document, and we won't pretend we do. What we do enforce is the wall around the event: to everyone else it simply doesn't exist. Not in the feed, not on the map, not in search. The attendee list is closed off the same way, so nobody outside can see who's going, and a link to one shared publicly returns a 404.

You only connect with people you actually met

There's no cold-messaging strangers. After a private event you can swipe only the people who were in the room with you, and only if your own attendance was confirmed. A mutual yes opens a chat. That's the only way a direct chat ever comes into existence — the rule sits in the database, not just in the interface.

The deposit keeps the room real

Most private events ask for a refundable €4 deposit, so the people who said yes are people who meant it. Confirm your attendance and the full €4 comes back. It isn't instant: settlement runs after the event has ended and a one-week window has passed. If your attendance is never confirmed, the deposit is forfeited. An organiser can also run a private event with no deposit at all.

16 and over, with a date of birth that can't move

You have to be at least 16 to use offline. You give your date of birth once at sign-up and it can't be edited afterwards — which is what makes the 18+ gate mean anything. It's self-declared: there's no ID check, and we don't claim one.

A venue review only counts if you were there

You can only review a venue whose event you attended, with attendance confirmed, and only that venue — the check runs on the server, so nobody can drive-by one-star a competitor. Star ratings lock 30 days after posting, so a review can't be turned into leverage later. Text and photos stay editable.

Your privacy

Privacy is in the architecture — not bolted on afterwards.

We can't quietly switch these on later, because the machinery to do it was never built. Here's what that means in practice, with the limits included.

Never tracked

Location is read when you tap. Never in the background.

offline reads your location at exactly four moments, and every one of them is a tap you chose to make: confirming your attendance at an event, the "use my location" button when you're picking a place, sharing your location inside a direct message, and the "my location" button on the map on this website. There is no background location and no continuous tracking anywhere in the app. At check-in the reading is used for one thing only: comparing where you are to where the event is. You have to be within 200 m.

Direct messages are end-to-end encrypted

In a one-to-one chat, the text you write and any location you share are sealed on your device with a key that never leaves your phone. We can't read them. Two honest limits: photos and voice notes in a direct chat are not encrypted, and group and event chats aren't either — those stay readable on purpose, so a report about what was said in them can actually be acted on.

Your data is yours (GDPR)

Export everything offline holds about you in one tap, and delete your account from the same place. Deletion clears your profile, photos, direct chats, swipes, saved events and payment records. Three things stay on purpose: your messages inside group event chats remain but are relabelled as a deleted account so the conversation still reads, Stripe keeps payment records for the accounting period it's legally required to, and backups roll off within a week.

The feed is ranked — and you can switch that off

We rank what you see, and we'd rather say so than claim there's no algorithm. The signals are your own taps, the interests you picked, how close an event is and how soon it starts. An organiser can also pay €2 to lift their own event for seven days. What offline doesn't do is optimise for time spent in the app. Settings has a switch that turns personalisation off entirely.

Your sensitive details aren't on your public profile

Your email, date of birth, home location and gender live in a private part of your account that only you can read — they're not on the profile other people see. If your profile is shared as a link, that page shows your name, first photo, short bio and a few interests. Nothing else.

Your money

0 % commission — and the charges that do exist, stated plainly.

Payments and payouts run through Stripe

Card security and business identity checks are handled by Stripe and Stripe Connect. Ticket money goes straight to the organiser's or the venue's own Stripe account, and offline takes 0 % commission on it. Stripe's processing fee is deducted from that transfer — at least 1.5% + €0.25, so on a €10 ticket the venue receives at most €9.60, and cards that cost Stripe more to process (corporate cards, or cards issued outside the EEA) pay out less than that. We do charge for a few things directly, and it's better you read it here than find out later: €4 to publish a free public event, one ticket price to publish a paid one, €2 for a seven-day feed boost, and the refundable €4 deposit on a private event. Everything is in euro — there's no per-country pricing.

0 % commission on tickets
€10 ticket → at most €9.60 paid out to the venue
Card security and business checks by Stripe

Leaving early: exactly what comes back

On a €4 deposit: change your mind within 30 minutes of paying and you get the whole €4 back. Cancel later and €2 comes back. Inside the last 24 hours before the start, nothing comes back. Turn up and get your attendance confirmed and the whole deposit comes back — and it comes back in full too if the event is called off for want of a quorum or an organiser removes you, because neither of those is your fault.

If GPS won't cooperate

Basements, thick walls, a phone having a bad day. When check-in fails you can ask the people who were there to confirm you instead. One confirmation from someone who did check in is enough; if anyone disputes it, the organiser decides. Your deposit is never forfeited while a request is still open.

If something goes wrong

Tools that actually work — and a person behind the decision.

Safety isn't only prevention. When someone crosses a line you need something that works immediately, and a process that doesn't stop there.

Report anyone, and repeat reports escalate

You can report any user or any event, with a reason, straight from their screen. When three different people report the same target, it escalates automatically into a moderation queue. Suspending an account is always a person's decision, never an automatic one — a handful of throwaway accounts should not be able to remove someone from the app.

Adult (18+) events are opt-in and age-gated

18+ events are hidden from everyone by default and only appear once you turn them on yourself in Settings. An account under 18 can't turn them on, can't see them and can't join one — that check runs on the server, so no modified app gets around it.

Blocked means blocked

Blocking takes effect immediately and it sticks. Your shared chat is deleted along with its messages, photos and voice notes, and no new chat can ever open between you — even if you both swiped yes before. If someone you blocked ends up joining the same private event, the server removes them and refunds their deposit.

Rooms don't stay open forever

A group event chat freezes once the event is over and is deleted 30 days later. The yes/no swipes from an event expire after 90 days. Nothing lingers just because it might be useful to us one day.

Built on trust

Meet new people, on terms you can check.

Every rule on this page exists so that saying yes to a room full of people you haven't met is a reasonable thing to do. That's the entire point of offline.

Coming to iOS and Android

We're finishing offline. Leave your email and we'll tell you on launch day — nothing else.

We store only your email and language, use them for one launch announcement, then delete them. Privacy policy

Browse the live map → Privacy policy