I really think PenPal gate should have age filters.
We can choose male or female while this is not supposed to be a tinder kind of place. And, on the other hand, there are lots of profiles of kids from 14yr and so and no filter for that. Doesn't seem right to me.
It's not practical for me as a 45 yr old user and it's not safe for them.
I'd suggest you think about this. Thank you.

Hello,

The search engine already tries to look for members around your age. If many results show much younger or older members, it means there aren't too many people matching your search parameters (or they haven't used the website recently). You can try to broaden your criteria to yield more results (ex: search for "Italy" instead of "Rome").

Hi, Etienne, thank you.
In fact, probably there are fewer people around my age than between 20 and 35, on penpal gate, so even with almost no search criteria i'll always find more young people, and it is perfectly ok.
Nonetheless, there is a safety issue. I'm a mother and that's why I have this in consideration. Of course you are not responsible for kids. Their parents are. But in the end, maybe we all are somehow responsible in the sense that we can all try to avoid risky situations.
I'm doing my part. I did a suggestion. Not sure it is a good idea to facilitate free contact with children, with photos, by anyone and believe kids will just block or tell you, or their parents know. Predators online are much, much smarter than that.
I don't need an answer to this. This is a suggestion and you can do what you feel it's appropriate. And thank you for everything, anyway. I'm sincerely grateful.

Thank your input. I will try to address some of your points 🙂 :

In fact, probably there are fewer people around my age than between 20 and 35, on penpal gate, so even with almost no search criteria i'll always find more young people, and it is perfectly ok.

There is a little bit of room for search engine improvement, and I will try to work towards this goal.

Nonetheless, there is a safety issue. I'm a mother and that's why I have this in consideration. (...) Not sure it is a good idea to facilitate free contact with children, with photos, by anyone and believe kids will just block or tell you, or their parents know.

You are correct it is always a risk, however every single website out there (especially other penpal services) will allow adults to search for younger members using age filters. In fact, Penpal-Gate makes it slightly harder by not showing such filters.

Predators online are much, much smarter than that.

I have actually spent the better part of the last 6 months working on security measures and detection of sketchy behaviours. Penpal-Gate is not the biggest community, but I do believe it is one of the safest. 🙂

Thanks! Suggestions and feedback are always appreciated.

I'm just putting this here. No site or real life can be 100% safe. This site is one of the safest penpal ones I use, the lack of age search is helpful and I have never seen anyone in search younger than 20, so this is working, the idea of screening for key words though, is the only way to attempt to protect someone's child, as anyone could create a false account for there intended target range, but they cannot hide key words or words that instigate there goals.

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