Welcome to Friendly Chat. Your friendly e-community.

Chat sites and online communities are like large cities. Just like a large city some areas are nice, cultured, safe; and some areas are dark, perverted and unsettling. Just like a large city some people are warm, kind, friendly, helpful; and some are nasty, cruel, bullies, perverted and evil.

Unfortunately, the latter describes 90% of chat sites and online communities. This is because the owners of such sites couldn't care less about their members or their safety. All they care about is their revenue. They do not care who uses their services, a user number to them is a user number - as long as it's making them money, why should they care?

We're different because we care, and this is our mission. My username is Smiley but any of our visitors may call me Tom. Chat rooms and online communities have bad press because of the above, but your experience needn't be like that. Just like a large city, all you need to do to stay safe in the world of online chat is to educate yourselves on the different areas of the internet, which kind of sites to avoid.

If you was was in an area of a large city where people were being loud-mouthed, bullying and being offensive - you'd simply move to the nice area. It's exactly the same on the internet.

At Friendly Chat, we try our hardest to make chatting as easy as possible for new users to the internet, so we believe in allowing people to login without having to register. All a new user has to do is type in a username and press login. Because of this, we cannot guarantee that the odd abuser or pervert won't make it here, but we can guarantee that we will take care of you and that they will be dealt with.

We report all cases of sexual harassment and threatening behaviour to the offender's Internet Service Provider. In serious cases, we may even contact the proper authorities.

I created Friendly Chat because there's a vacuum in the internet. You can search for weeks and weeks and weeks until you find a chat site that is professionally ran and is not full of abusers, perverts and other undesirables.

Some chat sites even allow adults and children to mix in the same chat rooms. As an ethical man with high morals, I believe this is wrong and so does the rest of the Friendly Chat management.

I plan to fill that vacuum and provide an online community for adults only that is welcoming, friendly, free, simple to use, caring and has a warm but banterful atmosphere.

Recent statistics have shown that the popularity of chat sites has fallen. Is it any wonder when they are largely unmoderated? Heartless? Unethical?

We may not be a mainstream site, and we may be running on a shoestring budget, but we actually care about you, our valued members. We care about your chat experience, your enjoyment, your comfort and your safety.

Of course, we can't keep Friendly Chat the clean, warm, banterful utopia it is right now by ourselves. As the community grows, so will its staff team. Any member may apply to become a staff member, but we will only pick those who we will would be right for the job. The customer support team is a tightly ran ship and do a great job at what they do.

There are things that you can do as a member though to help out. There are ways that you can discourage perverts and abusers, the support staff can only do so much. Only I have access to private logs and transcripts so support staff cannot deal with incidents that have occured in whisper or private message - as this would be taking action upon hearsay, which is unfair. My motto is fair but firm.

There aren't many communities out there that can say they care about their members, but I hope I have assured you that we really do. Here is a list of things you can do to help discourage perverts and abusers;

• Don't talk about subjects close to your heart that could be used as ammo.
• Don't reveal any illnesses (family or friends).
• Don't reveal the specific area you live.
• Never give out your surname.
• Never give out your residential address.
• Never give out your phone number, mobile or home.
• Never meet offline.
• Never give information out about your children.
• Never give out your place of work.
• If somebody is abusing you or being a pervert via whisper or private message, right click on their username then click "ignore" - AFTER you've done that click on the little white notepad icon and copy/paste the transcript via our contact form. I promise I will look into every case, only I have access to private logs and for your privacy they are only looked into when a complaint is received (for more information see our privacy policy) - advise everybody else in the room to put them on ignore.
• If you want complete privacy and freedom from whispers and private messages, simply turn them off via user options in preferences.

The ignore feature is a powerful weapon. If you simply block them they will go away. Here is a list of safety measures we have in place for your peace of mind;

• All IP addresses are logged. I know the IP address and username of every single person that logs into the client.
• All conversations, group and private, are logged. Only I (the founder) have access to these transcripts and they are only looked into after a complaint is received. Again, for further information please view our privacy policy.
• Our customer support team is dedicated, fully trained and we pick only the best regular members for the role.
• You have a block/ignore feature which prevents all further communication.
• You must click "accept" before a private message session is started. This obviously means you reserve the right to click "deny". Private message sessions cannot be forced upon you.
• Further to the above, you may go into preferences and turn whispers and private messages off completely.
• As a rule, we report all cases of sexual harassment and abuse to the offender's ISP.

For further information please read our safety advice article, our chat room advice article, and please never hesitate to contact us if you have any queries or concerns.