Compliance Review Walkthrough

1. Registration and sign-in

A visitor selects “Apply for membership” and enters an email address. Velvet Haven emails a one-time sign-in link. Only the owner of that inbox can sign in, so the account email is confirmed at this point. There are no passwords and no anonymous accounts.

2. Adults-only (18+) gate

Before the application begins, the applicant must confirm they are 18 or older. This is an initial warning gate only. It is never treated as age verification and it unlocks nothing.

3. Membership application

The applicant completes a multi-step application with a progress indicator, validation and required-field markers. Private verification details (legal name, date of birth, residential address) are collected separately from the member-visible dating profile (display name, age, general region, occupation, education, interests, biography, relationship preferences).

4. Age and identity verification step

The application cannot be submitted until identity verification has been attempted through the independent provider's own hosted flow. The applicant scans or uploads a government-issued photo ID and completes a selfie/liveness and face-match check where supported. Velvet Haven never receives the ID image, the selfie, the document number or biometric data.

5. Verification pending

While the provider processes the check, the application shows a pending state. Nothing is unlocked in this state, and the browser cannot change the status.

6. Successful verification outcome

The provider returns the result directly to our backend. Only the backend can set a passed status; no user and no browser request can mark an account verified. We store only a provider reference, status, the 18+ result, verified age, name-match result, attempt counts, reason codes and timestamps.

7. Failed verification outcome

A failed check never approves anyone. The applicant may retry. Each failure increments an attempt counter, and after three failed attempts verification pauses automatically and the case is sent to administrative review rather than allowing endless retries.

8. Under-18 blocked outcome

If the provider's confirmed date of birth shows the person is under 18, the application is blocked immediately: no submission, no browsing, no messaging, no membership activation. A safety record of the block is kept without retaining unnecessary identity material.

9. Profile photo submission and moderation

After verification passes, at least one ordinary dating profile photo is required before submission. Photo moderation is entirely separate from identity verification, and a government ID image is never used as a profile photo.

10. Agreements

The applicant must accept the Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Community Guidelines and Acceptable Use Policy before the application can be submitted.

11. Administrative review

Staff review the application status, verification status, email verification, profile completeness, answers, photos, safety flags, attempt counts, submission time and audit trail. Approval is impossible while verification has not passed and is blocked outright on an under-18 result. Reviewers see the provider's verification result only — never government ID images.

12. Approval

Applications move through submitted → under review → approved, waitlisted or declined. Only an approved application unlocks the next step.

13. Membership activation and billing

Approved members activate a $25 per month recurring membership through the payment provider's hosted checkout. Velvet Haven never stores card details. Members can manage or cancel future renewals from the billing portal at any time. Cancellation, refunds and chargebacks are described in the Refund & Cancellation Policy.

14. Paid features: profiles, interest and messaging

What the paid membership unlocks is ordinary dating functionality: browsing published member profiles, sending one expression of interest to another member, and — only after that interest is accepted by the recipient — private one-to-one text messaging. There is no adult content, no paid content, no tipping, no per-message charges and no cam, streaming or escort functionality anywhere on Velvet Haven. The only charge is the $25 per month recurring membership.

14a. Member safety controls: Report and Block

Every member card in Discover, every received interest and every one-to-one conversation shows two controls: “Report member” and “Block member”. These are live in the member area; the panels below are illustrative and use no real member data.

Report member requires a reason (for example harassment, scam or fraud, soliciting payment or commercial sexual services, suspected trafficking or exploitation, appears to be under 18, fake profile, inappropriate content, or asking to move off the platform) and accepts optional details. The report is saved on our server with a pending status and an audit-log entry, the reporter sees a neutral confirmation, and the reported member is never told. Members cannot report themselves. Only admin and moderator staff can read reports, and they review them in the staff review desk.

Block member asks for confirmation and takes effect immediately and unilaterally. After a block, neither member can send interest or messages to the other; any pending or accepted interest between them is closed; each is hidden from the other in Discover, interests and conversations. Past messages stay stored for safety review but no new messages can be sent. The block is enforced on the server and by database access rules, not just in the page. Members can unblock from My profile, and every block and unblock is written to the audit log.

15. Message safety monitoring

Velvet Haven proactively screens member-to-member messages. Screening is not optional, not opt-in, and not done in the browser: every outgoing message is checked on our server before any message record is created, so a flagged message is never delivered to the recipient. The screening engine is a documented deterministic, rules-based scanner — keyword, pattern and combination rules with text normalisation to catch common obfuscation (character substitution, spacing, repeated letters). We do not claim artificial intelligence or machine-learning classification.

Screened categories:

• commercial sexual services (paid companionship terminology, payment-for-sex combinations, rate or transactional language);
• human and sex trafficking (third-party control or recruitment of people for sexual services, debt bondage, document retention, arranged travel for “work”);
• grooming and the sexualisation or exploitation of minors, including stated ages under 18, references to minors in sexual or secrecy contexts, and child sexual abuse material terminology;
• coercion, sexual violence and non-consensual content (forced-sex language, threats, drugging or incapacitation, hidden recording, intimate-image extortion);
• scams and fraud, including payment-app, money-transfer, gift-card, crypto, investment and advance-fee solicitation;
• attempts to move communication or transactions off the platform — phone numbers, email addresses, external links, and third-party messaging or social platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Snapchat, Instagram, Discord or Skype when paired with contact intent, plus explicit “pay me directly / off the app” requests.

A flagged message is stored in a dedicated safety-flag record — sender, intended recipient, the message body as evidence, the matched categories, a risk level, internal indicator labels, and timestamps — together with an audit-log event. The sender receives a neutral safety-review notice; we never reveal which rule matched or how to avoid it. Staff with admin or moderator roles are the only accounts that can read flagged content, and database row-level security enforces that; the evidence fields cannot be altered even by staff. Reviewers mark each flag a confirmed violation or a false positive, add a note, and apply a warning or a messaging suspension. Only staff-confirmed violations count towards enforcement: on the third confirmed message violation, messaging is suspended pending review. Unreviewed flags and false positives never count. Members can see their own enforcement status and appeal from inside their account; no member data is deleted. Members can also report any profile, photo or message at any time.

16. What is never unlocked early

• Signing in with an email does not make someone a member.
• Checking an 18+ box does not make someone verified.
• Typing an age into a form does not make someone verified.
• A pending application does not grant browsing, messaging or membership.
• If a verification state is unknown or the provider is unavailable, access stays closed.

Policies

• Terms of Service
• Acceptable Use Policy
• Refund & Cancellation Policy
• Law Enforcement Requests
• Verification Process
• Privacy Policy
• Community Guidelines