Safety Tips

Cykee — Safety Tips

Last Updated: [DATE]

💛 This page is practical advice, not a legal document. The legal version of how we protect you on the platform lives at Safety and the Privacy Policy. This page is the friend-to-friend version — what we'd tell our own sister, brother, or best friend before their first date with someone they met online.

Why we wrote this

Most dating-app safety advice is generic — "meet in public, tell a friend, don't share your address." All true. All forgettable.

Cykee is a specific product. The dates happen in a structured 38-minute chat where photos start blurred and clear gradually. Voting is double-blind. Contacts only unlock when both people vote yes. That changes which advice actually matters for our users.

This page is the advice that's actually load-bearing for the way Cykee works. Read it before your first date.

Before the date

1. Trust the blur

The chat starts with both photos heavily blurred. The blur clears over 8 minutes as you talk. This is the feature, not a bug. If someone is pressuring you to "skip the blur" or "send a clear pic" early — that's a red flag worth listening to. The whole point of Cykee is to give the conversation a head start over the visuals. If they can't wait 8 minutes for the photo, they probably can't wait for the rest of you either.

2. Read the soul cards carefully

Profiles have four soul cards — Unpopular Opinion, Ideal Sunday, Values & Desires, Dream Pursuit. Plus How to Lose Me (the dealbreakers).

These are more reliable than photos. People polish their photos. They rarely polish their dealbreakers. If the How to Lose Me card says "I can't stand laziness" and you've got "I'm a chill homebody" in your Ideal Sunday — that's the date being mis-matched by design, and Cupido's matching algorithm probably already filtered it. But if you got through the filter, the dealbreaker line is the truth-teller.

3. Practice with Cupido — really

The Practice mode lets you talk to an AI roleplaying your match, using their real profile data. It costs the same touches as chatting with Cupido. Use it. Two outcomes either way:

It goes well → you walk into the real chat warmer.
It goes badly → you realize this person isn't your match before spending 38 real minutes finding out.

Practice is the cheapest filter in the app.

4. Charge your phone

The chat runs in real time. There's no rejoin if the app crashes mid-date and your battery dies. Plug in before you tap "I'm ready." Same goes for your data connection — if you're on flaky Wi-Fi, switch to LTE before you start.

During the date

5. Cykee will block contact sharing

We auto-redact phone numbers, emails, Instagram handles, WhatsApp links, and other contact info inside the date chat — even if it's obvious from context. We do this because:

Contact-share before a vote breaks the structure (the whole point is double-blind voting).
Skipping the structure is the #1 way someone slips through who shouldn't (we've seen the patterns).

If someone is trying creative spellings — "ig: l u c y . r e a l" or "my number is one two three…" — that's not flirty, that's a workaround. The system will still try to block it, but use your own judgment. If the workaround is happening, ask yourself why they're so eager to leave Cykee.

6. The 38 minutes are structured for a reason

Minutes 0–8: heavy blur. Talk, don't ogle. This is where Cupido's pre-date playbook helps most — open with something specific from their soul cards.
Minute 8: blur drops sharply (one of two big clarity bumps). You see them more clearly. Keep talking — first impressions on the new face are less reliable than first impressions on the conversation.
Minutes 8–38: the decision window. By the end you should have a real read on whether this person is worth meeting in person.

If someone is rushing you to "skip the chat and meet up tomorrow" before the date is over, slow down. The structure exists so you don't make a meeting-in-person decision in 4 minutes of charm.

7. Cupido is not a substitute for your gut

The AI can give you a coaching tip. It cannot tell you whether someone feels safe to you. If your instincts say "something is off" — listen. You can leave the chat at any time. No vote is required. No penalty for ending early. Your honesty about whether someone feels off is more valuable than any voting outcome.

After the date

8. The vote is final

Once both people vote YES, contacts unlock and the system shares them automatically. There is no undo. If you're not sure — vote no. You can always meet again through Cykee if you both reconsider; you can never un-share a phone number.

9. If contacts auto-share and you regret it

Voting yes shares your phone number, Instagram, and WhatsApp (whichever you put in your profile). If you regret the share:

Block them from your own phone first — contacts unlocking through Cykee doesn't give them special access to you. They can text/call you the way anyone with your number can. Block at the device level.
Then report them in Cykee if their behavior was unsafe — open their profile in the inbox, tap the three dots, choose Report. The founder reads the queue personally.
Strike system applies: confirmed safety reports add to their strike count. After enough strikes they're removed from the platform. Your report contributes to the pattern.

10. Meeting in person — the playbook

Once you've voted yes and contacts are shared, the in-person meet is between you and them. Cykee doesn't have a "meet-in-person" feature; we're a 38-minute chat platform. But the advice we'd give:

First meet: public, well-lit, daytime if you can swing it. Coffee shop, casual lunch, bookstore. Not "their place." Not "your place."
Tell a specific friend the specific details. Where you'll be, who you're meeting (send them the Cykee profile screenshot), what time you should be home. Set up a "if you don't hear from me by X" plan.
Drive yourself or use rideshare you control. Don't let them pick you up the first time. Your transportation autonomy is your safety net.
Trust your read from the date. Cykee gave you 38 minutes to vet them. If you voted yes, your past self decided this was worth meeting. But your present self meeting them in 3D gets the final veto. Walking out of a coffee shop because you're getting a weird vibe is always the right call.

11. The gift, if you sent one

Goody (our gift fulfillment partner) will email the recipient with the gift link. The recipient enters their own shipping address — you never see it, and they never see yours. This is by design.

If you sent a gift and changed your mind: gifts are non-refundable once the recipient has claimed them (the Goody system has paid out at that point). If they haven't claimed yet, contact support@cykeeapp.com within 48 hours and we'll see what's possible. Don't message the recipient asking for the gift back — that's a different problem.

Reporting and blocking

We've made these two features deliberately easy to find because they have to be:

Block: from any profile screen, tap the three dots → Block. Blocked users can't see your profile, message you, or even know you exist on the platform. The block is silent on their side.
Report: from any profile, message, or completed date, tap the three dots → Report. Choose the reason (harassment, sexual content, safety concern, scam, underage, other). Reports go straight to the founder's queue, not an offshore moderator.

When to report immediately (not just block)

Someone who appears to be underage
Threats of violence or self-harm
Sexual content sent without consent
Requests for money, gift cards, or crypto (almost always a romance-scam pattern)
Someone who appears to be impersonating a real person whose photos they've taken from elsewhere

These get prioritized over normal-volume reports.

When to contact support directly

Some things don't fit the in-app reporting flow:

Account hijacked / locked out: support@cykeeapp.com
Gift sent to wrong person / Goody issue: support@cykeeapp.com (Stripe + Goody disputes need our involvement)
Believe your data has been breached: security@cykeeapp.com (this is the responsible-disclosure address)
You've been physically harmed by someone you met through Cykee: contact local law enforcement first, then email support@cykeeapp.com. We will cooperate fully with law enforcement on a legitimate request and preserve evidence in your account per our Privacy Policy §9.

For an emergency in progress, call your local emergency number (911 in the US, 999 in the UK, 112 in most of the EU). Cykee is not equipped to handle real-time emergencies.

What we can't do

We're going to be honest about the limits:

We can't tell you that a stranger is a "safe person" — no app can. We can filter for hard violations (banned content, banned behavior patterns, repeat offenders). We can't read minds.
We can't undo a vote, a contact share, or a gift once they've happened. The structure is "decide carefully, then commit." That's the feature.
We can't intervene in the in-person meet. Once contacts share, the relationship leaves our platform. Your safety in that meet is on the playbook in §10 above, not on Cykee's servers.

One last thing

The most common piece of feedback we get from users who had a bad experience: "I knew something was off but I went anyway because I didn't want to be rude."

You will never owe a stranger your time. If a date is going badly, end it. If the person you met from Cykee turned out not to be who you thought, you're allowed to disappear from their phone — block and move on. Politeness is for people who've earned it.

That's the whole tip sheet.

— The Cykee team