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If your teen is on eSPIN, or is thinking about joining eSPIN, we hope you'll take the time to
learn more about our site.
What eSPIN is all about.
eSPIN is a social gaming site for teens. Unlike sites like MySpace or Facebook, eSPIN isn't connected to teens' offline lives -- no one can search for them by their real names, email addresses or schools. We provide them with internal communication tools so they can connect with other users while keeping the experience totally virtual.
Learn more about our Community Rules here.
What's going on behind the scenes.
- No personally identifiable info is allowed in users' profiles. That includes full names, email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, URL's and screennames.
- Teens and adults are kept in totally separate pools of users. There is no contact between them as they cannot search outside their age group.
- Profile building is a game in and of itself, and is an almost 100% controlled experience. It's done through a series of fun non-open-ended activities like magnetic poetry, multiple choice questions and quizzes that let users profile themselves without it getting truly personal. The limited open-ended aspects of profiles (two questions that let users add "more about me" and "my look") are screened before made live for teens.
- We screen all teen photos before other users can see them, and attempt to delete anything that's inappropriate or contains contact information. All user photos have a "report this photo" link so users can police the site, too.
- Before two users can communicate, they have to mutually match (by sending pre-scripted notes or opting in on each other's profiles), which means no one can receive unsolicited messages.
- Even if users are mutually matched, filters are set up to attempt to keep them from passing email addresses and phone numbers through our match mail system.
- In multiple spots around the site -- like at the tops of pages, on mail messages and in IM windows -- we remind teens to keep it virtual. The Don't Be An Idiot Online campaign and Internet safety quiz provide teens with more instructions on how to be smart online.
- We do everything we can to ensure that adults aren't posing as teens and vice versa: we forbid users to change their birthdays; we screen all user-submitted content for suspicious behavior; we investigate all reports about suspicious users; we block deleted email addresses from being used again.
- On all profiles, IM windows and mail messages, there's a "block" button that users can click if they never want to hear from that user again, and a "report" link so they can alert us to suspicious behavior.
Get in touch.
If you have more questions about eSPIN, or if you have a safety concern, don't hesitate to email us at customer.service@ecrush.com.
More resources for parents
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