Trust & Safety

Every account passes through identity verification before transacting.

• Talents + members — passport / Emirates ID + selfie face-match (powered by Stripe Identity).
• Companies — trade license + company registration + signatory passport.
• Talents under 18 — additional parental approval flow (parent name, contact, ID upload, declared relationship).

KYC documents are encrypted at rest, only accessible to admin SUPPORT / FULL tier for face-match review, and never appear on public profile responses. We use document OCR (Tesseract) to extract fields for verification but never for marketing.

• Rate limits on sign-in (10 / 15 min), sign-up, password reset, KYC submission, payment requests, message send, report submission. Counters keyed by IP + account.
• Account lockout — 10 failed logins lock the account for 30 minutes.
• Token versioning — admins can rotate tokenVersion to force-logout an account (used after a credential compromise).
• TOTP (optional) — 2FA available for all account types.
• HIBP password check — passwords compared against the Have I Been Pwned breach list at registration + password change.
• Atomic claim — discount codes, EXCLUSIVE contract acceptance, and competition entries use transactional claim semantics so they can't be over-redeemed under concurrent load.
• CSRF + CSP — all server actions are CSRF-protected; strict Content Security Policy headers on every response.

The platform exists to keep talent free from the exploitative terms common in traditional agency representation. These commitments are enforced in code, not just policy:

• 20% commission cap — an agency can never take more than 20% commission on a talent's work. Any commission rate an agency sets is hard-clamped to the cap at the point it is read, so even a mistaken or abusive override above 20% is brought back down to the cap before it can ever be charged.
• No lifetime lock — there is no permanent, irrevocable representation lock. An EXCLUSIVE contract may hold a new talent to one agency only until they reach Level 3, after which they are free to change or leave. There is no mechanism to extend a lock beyond that.
• No-fee notice-period exit — either party can end representation by giving notice (default 14 days). The relationship simply stays active until the notice window passes, then a cron finalizes the termination. No exit fee, no buyout owed by the talent, no clawback of commission already earned. Either side can cancel the exit before the window closes.
• Symmetric and free both ways — a talent ending representation (TALENT_INITIATED) and an agency dropping a talent (AGENCY_INITIATED) are treated identically: same notice, no penalty.
• Talent stays sovereign — talent contact details are never exposed to an agency before a signed Work Contract, and the talent's earnings, profile, and audience belong to the talent.

• Deposits held in escrow — bookings collect a 20% deposit at request time (job-posting selections collect 10%); the balance is captured on completion.
• 48-hour silent-flag window — after delivery, the buyer has 48 hours to flag a problem before the escrowed payout is released. Payouts settle via Stripe Connect transfer only after that window passes (or the buyer confirms earlier).
• Atomic escrow freeze on dispute — filing a dispute freezes the held funds atomically, so money cannot move while a case is open.
• Stripe-only payment — no cash, no off-platform payment links. Attempts to route off-platform are an account-suspension event.
• Refunds + disputes — see /refund. All refunds processed via Stripe to the original payment method in AED.
• No card storage — we never see or store full card numbers; Stripe is the merchant of record.

• Talent contact sealed — agency / company cannot see talent's real name, phone, or email until a Work Contract is signed.
• Company anonymised on jobs — public job feed renders posts as "Hashtags posted a job" or anonymised by sub-type (TALENTS_AGENCY → "Agency", PROVIDER → "Direct client", FIRM → "Brand", etc.).
• EXCLUSIVE contract lock — a talent under an active EXCLUSIVE contract routes bookings + offers through their representing agency only until they reach Level 3 (no lifetime lock — see Talent Sovereignty above).
• Blocks — talents and members can block any other user; blocks prevent messages, bookings, and visibility of the blocker's content.

• Pre-publish review — events, competitions, services, products, courses, magazine articles, partnerships, and media posts pass through admin moderation before going public.
• Post-publish moderation — reviews + comments + reports queued for MODERATOR-tier admin action.
• Blocked patterns — public media posts cannot contain off-platform contact info (phone, email, telegram handles); pattern-matched at submission.
• Hate speech / harassment — zero tolerance. Reports surface to admin and content is taken down on confirmation.

• Members must be at least 13.
• Talents under 18 require parental approval before profile visibility.
• Bookings of under-18 talents always route through parental notification email.
• All under-18 talents are flagged with extra moderation on KYC + content posts.

When a transaction goes sideways, either party can open a structured dispute from the transaction page. Filing freezes the escrowed funds atomically. Admin (MODERATOR / FULL tier) reviews the booking timeline, message history, file uploads, and evidence submitted by both parties. Resolution outcomes:

• Refund client — full or partial refund processed via Stripe.
• Pay talent — funds released to talent; client absorbs cost.
• Split — partial refund + partial payout, used for partial delivery.

The party that loses may file a single appeal with a written narrative. If the appeal is upheld, any payout already released is clawed back and the corrected outcome is applied. While a dispute is active, the underlying booking / service-order is excluded from the automatic payout-release crons. Average resolution: 3-5 business days.

We operate primarily under UAE consumer protection + data protection law, with secondary compliance to GDPR and other applicable regimes where users are located. Financial records retained 7 years per UAE accounting standards. Audit logs retained per platform settings (default 12 months).

• In-platform — report any user / listing / message via the Report button.
• Email — trust@hashtagsstudios.com for safety concerns; privacy@hashtagsstudios.com for data concerns; contact@hashtagsstudios.com for everything else.
• Emergency — for ongoing harassment or safety threats, contact local UAE authorities at 999.

This content can be updated live by an admin from /admin/settings (key: legal.trust).