ප්‍රජා මාර්ගෝපදේශ සහ ආරක්ෂාව

They apply to every member, everywhere on Hamuwemu — your profile, your photographs, your bio, your messages, your voice notes, your calls, your business or professional listing, and anything you send us. They form part of our Terms of Use. Breaking them can cost you your account.

Hamuwemu is strictly for adults aged 18 and over. Everything about a minor is dealt with separately and far more severely in our Child Safety & CSAE Standards.

2.1 Be genuinely you

• Use recent photographs of yourself, clearly showing your face, where you are the only or the main person.
• Do not use another person's photographs, celebrity images, pictures taken from the internet, or heavily manipulated or AI-generated images of a person who is not you.
• State your real age, and do not misrepresent your name, marital status, occupation, education, qualifications, income or intentions.
• If you are married, separated or in a relationship and looking anyway, say so. Deceiving someone about your situation is a rule break, not a private matter.
• One account per person. Do not run duplicate or backup accounts.

2.2 What must not appear in a profile

• Nudity, underwear or lingerie shots, sexual poses, or sexually suggestive content.
• Photographs of children, except incidentally. A child may appear only incidentally in a family photograph — never as the subject of a photograph and never in your main profile photograph.
• Contact details in your public profile — mobile number, NIC, home address, email, bank or payment details, or social media handles. Share them privately, with people you have come to trust.
• Advertising, recruitment, links to other platforms, or any promotion of goods or services outside an approved business profile.
• Weapons, drugs, violence, gore, hate symbols, or political campaigning.
• Anything unlawful or anything designed to mislead.

3.1 Consent and boundaries

• Matching is not consent to anything else. Ask before you call, before you send photographs, and before you suggest meeting.
• If someone does not reply, stops replying, or says they are not interested — stop. Do not message from another account.
• Do not pressure anyone for photographs, contact details, a meeting, money or intimacy.
• Never send a sexual image to someone who has not asked for it.

3.2 Never allowed

• Sexual content — nudity, pornography, explicit sexual language or requests, and unsolicited sexual images.
• Sexual services and compensated arrangements — escorting, prostitution, “sugar” arrangements, or any relationship where one person is expected or implied to provide money, gifts, rent or financial support.
• Harassment and abuse — threats, intimidation, stalking, repeated unwanted contact, insults, body-shaming, or targeting someone after they have blocked you.
• Hate — attacking or dehumanising anyone because of their ethnicity, religion, caste, nationality, language, disability, age, gender or any other characteristic. Sri Lanka's communities live side by side here. Keep it that way.
• Violence — threatening it, glorifying it, or organising it.
• Scams and fraud — asking for money, loans, gift cards, mobile reloads, cryptocurrency or investment; fake emergencies; fake job, visa or migration offers; phishing for passwords, one-time codes, NIC or bank details; and any attempt to move you to an outside “investment platform”.
• Impersonation and catfishing — pretending to be someone else, using another person's images, or inventing a persona.
• Privacy violations — sharing another person's photographs, messages, screenshots, contact details or private information without their consent, including after a relationship ends. Sharing intimate images of a person without their consent will result in a permanent ban and may be a criminal offence.
• Spam and automation — mass or copy-paste messaging, bots, scripts, scraping, or collecting members' data.
• Illegal activity — drugs, weapons, trafficking, gambling, counterfeit goods, or anything else against Sri Lankan law.
• Evasion — new accounts to get around a block, a restriction or a ban; coded language to get past moderation.

Business profiles are for lawful services only and are covered in full by our Professional Services Policy. The core rules: describe your service and your qualifications truthfully, price it clearly, never use the feature to solicit sexual services or intimate companionship, and never present a personal profile as a business or a business as a person.

We use trained human reviewers, supported by a small number of automated checks.

• Before a photograph appears. Every profile photograph is reviewed by a trained person before other members can see it. A photograph that a moderator has previously rejected is recognised if it is uploaded again, and sent for review.
• Profile text and business enquiries. These are checked automatically for contact details, scam patterns and prohibited words, and anything flagged goes to a reviewer.
• Private messages. Private messages between members are end-to-end encrypted. They are encrypted on the sender's device and can only be read on the devices of the two people in the conversation — we hold the encrypted text and not the keys, so we cannot read your messages, and neither can anyone who obtained a copy of our database. That also means we cannot scan them. Reporting is the route for anything that happens in private chat — see section 6.
• When something is reported. A human reviewer looks at the report, the reported content and the account history, and decides. Reports involving a child, a credible threat, or the non-consensual sharing of intimate images go to the front of the queue and are looked at first.

Neither people nor automated checks are perfect. That is why every decision that seriously affects an account is made by a person, and why every decision can be appealed.

6.1 Report

• A single message or photo: press and hold it, then tap Report.
• A whole profile or chat: tap the ⋮ menu, then Report.
• Anything else, such as a safety worry, a bug, or a concern not tied to one profile: in Settings or Help, tap Report a concern.

Choose the reason, add anything that helps, and submit. When you report a message, a copy of it is sent to us from your device, so that a reviewer can read exactly what you saw even though messages are end-to-end encrypted. We check that the reported text belongs to a message the reported member actually sent.

Reports are confidential — we never tell the other person who reported them. You do not need to be matched with someone to report them, and reporting is free on every plan.

6.2 Block

Tap ⋮ then Block on any profile or chat. A blocked person cannot see your profile, message you or call you, and you will not see them. You can block without reporting, and you can unblock later in Settings → Blocked accounts.

6.3 Other ways to reach us

6.4 What we do with a report

• Every report is reviewed. Urgent safety reports are reviewed within 24 hours; others normally within 72 hours.
• We look at the content, the account and its history, and we may restrict the account while we look.
• We tell the person who reported that the report was received and closed. For privacy reasons we cannot always tell you what action we took against another person's account.
• Where there is a risk to someone's safety or a legal obligation, we escalate — see section 9.
• Deliberately false or malicious reports are themselves a breach of these guidelines.

We match the response to the seriousness of the behaviour, the harm caused and the account's history.

The tools we use, in increasing order of severity, are: a warning; removal of the content; a feature restriction such as losing the ability to message or share photographs; a temporary suspension; permanent termination of the account and a ban on returning. Where an account is banned, we keep a minimal record so the same person cannot simply register again.

We will tell you when we act against your account and, so far as we lawfully and safely can, why.

1. Open the in-app Appeal form in the notice we send you, or write to support@hamuwemu.lk with the subject line “Appeal”.
2. Tell us what happened from your point of view and include anything that supports it. You have 30 days from our decision.
3. A reviewer who was not involved in the original decision looks at it again. We aim to respond within 14 days.

If we were wrong, we restore the account or the content and remove the strike from your record. Appeals against a ban for child sexual abuse material or exploitation are reviewed by a senior member of the safety team, and the account is not restored unless the original conclusion was clearly mistaken.

We report to the police or another authority, and preserve the evidence to support it, where:

• there is any indication of child sexual abuse or exploitation — always, and immediately;
• we believe there is a credible risk of death or serious injury to someone;
• we are served with a lawful order, warrant or notice; or
• an offence such as trafficking, extortion, sexual extortion or serious fraud appears to have been committed.

How we handle these requests is set out in our Law Enforcement Request Guidelines.

10.1 Online

• Stay in the app while you get to know someone. Our chat and our in-app calls let you talk without giving out your number.
• Be sceptical of anyone who moves very fast, declares strong feelings early, or pushes to move to WhatsApp or another platform immediately. This is the most common opening move in romance fraud.
• Do a reverse image search of their photographs if something feels off.
• Be careful with details that identify where you live or work.
• Never share your password, your one-time code, your NIC, or your bank or card details. Not with anyone. Not for any reason.

10.2 Money

• Never send money — not a loan, not an emergency, not a flight, not a visa fee, not a customs charge on a gift, not a hospital bill, not an investment.
• Be sceptical of investment, trading or cryptocurrency “opportunities”, however credible the person seems and however long you have been talking.
• Do not accept money or parcels on someone else's behalf. That is how people are used as money mules.
• If you have sent money, tell your bank immediately, report it to the police, and report the account to us.

10.3 Meeting in person

• If you can, video call in the app before you meet, so you know the person matches their photographs.
• Meet in a busy public place. Not a home, not a hotel room, not somewhere isolated — not for the first few meetings.
• Arrange your own transport, both ways.
• Tell a friend or family member where you are going, who you are meeting, and when you expect to be back. Share your live location with them.
• Keep your phone charged, and keep your drink and belongings with you.
• Do not feel obliged to stay. If you are uncomfortable, leave — you owe no explanation.
• Afterwards, report anything that worried you, even if nothing happened.

10.4 If something has happened

If you have been harassed, threatened, defrauded or assaulted by someone you met on Hamuwemu, report the account to us and contact the authorities. We will preserve the relevant records and cooperate with any lawful request from the police. You are not to blame, and you will not lose your account for telling us.

10.5 Help in Sri Lanka

These are independent services, not operated by Hamuwemu. If you are outside Sri Lanka, contact your local emergency number.

We update these guidelines as the platform grows and as new kinds of harm appear. Material changes are announced in the app or by email at least 14 days before they take effect. The version and date at the top of this page tell you which version you are reading.