Staying safe on Highrise

At Highrise, our number one goal is for players to connect from around the world and come together to have fun in a safe and welcoming environment. To ensure the safety of our players, we have a host of tools players can use (and some working in the background) to keep them safe from bad actors. This guide will go through those tools and offer some general tips so that you can keep yourself as safe as possible while playing.

Minimum age requirements:

The suggested age to play Highrise is 17+, with the minimum being 13. We’ve chosen this recommended age because many of our players tend to be on the older side and may discuss topics or use language not suitable for young children. Please note that regardless of your age, sexual content is not allowed on Highrise.

If we have reasons to believe a player might be younger than 13 years of age, and they are not able to provide proof of their age, they will be removed from the app.

Sharing personal information:

When chatting with other players, it’s impossible to know who they really are or their true intentions, so please do not share your personal information with anyone for any reason. Things you should never share are your home address, phone number, real name, links to your social media, etc.

Sharing your account details:

Never share your account details with any other players for any reason. Even if they promise things like ‘free gold’ in return, these are tactics players will use to get onto your account and steal your items.

If a player sends you a link to any off-app website or form asking you to input your Highrise details, please do not follow the link as it may be malicious. Instead, report & block that player. These links are a common tactic known as phishing, and that player is attempting to gain access to your account to steal your items, or worse, install malicious software on your device.

For reference, Highrise staff will NEVER ask for your password or safety lock pin.

Keeping your account safe:

Here are some tips on keeping your account information safe:

1. Set an email address for your account that has not been involved in any database leaks. You can check if your account has even been breached here: https://haveibeenpwned.com/

2. Set up 2-factor authentication (2FA) if available on this email. This ensures no one can gain access to this email address and reset your password. For example, here is Gmail’s guide for enabling 2FA: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185839?

3. Use a secure password - Do not set a password that is easy to guess or that you've used on other applications. Set something unique with at least 8 characters. Make sure to include punctuation and random characters (@,!,&); doing this makes it nearly impossible for a player to guess your password. You can even use an application that can generate and store extremely secure passwords for you, and the best part is it's free - https://www.lastpass.com/

4. Enable our Safety Lock feature to prevent players who access your account from removing any items without knowing your pin.

Blocking & Reporting players:

If, for any reason, you no longer want a player to be able to contact you or interact with you in any way, you can block them using our block feature. Blocking a player will prevent them from messaging you, visiting your feed, tagging you in posts, and visiting your room. You can block a player by visiting their profile, clicking the ellipses (three dots) in the top right corner, and then clicking the ‘Block player’ option.

If any player is violating our guidelines, you can report them to us, and our team will review your report and take appropriate action against that player. You can report a player by visiting their profile, clicking the ellipses (three dots) in the top right corner, clicking the ‘report’ option, and then choosing the report reason. To report a player in a room without visiting their profile, you can click their avatar icon in the chatbox, then the flag in the top right corner of their mini profile view.

Uploading video and images:

The general rule is once something has been uploaded to the internet, it is there forever. Please keep this in mind when deciding what to upload to your feed. Players can repost your photos and videos, take screenshots, download them, etc. So make sure you’re okay with this before hitting the post button.

Our Safety Tools:

👶 Age Restrictions: Players are asked for their date of birth when they sign up. You must be 13 or older to play Highrise. Accounts from players younger than 18 years old have certain restrictions and are subject to more strict moderation to ensure their safety. When we identify a player that could be underage, or they are reported to us by other players, we investigate and have the option to remove them.

🚨 Community Guidelines: We have rules in place to keep Highrise safe. Everyone receives a link to our Community Guidelines when they join Highrise. If they break any of these rules, we take action. We want to engage and educate players, so the first step is often a warning message about their behavior. If they continue misbehaving, we may permanently suspend their account.

🤖 Technical Tools & Moderation: We use human moderators and an AI-powered moderation platform to detect content that may break our Community Guidelines. This includes:

Detecting underage players.
Filtering out inappropriate chat messages.
Filtering out inappropriate posts and photos.
Flagging bad actors for investigation.

We’re working hard to improve our technical tools and moderation techniques all the time.

🚫 Blocking & Reporting: We have a simple and effective report feature in the app (just tap on the flag icon!). We encourage our players to report suspicious activity and inappropriate behavior to us. This includes:

Sexually explicit and violent content.
Bullying and harassment.
Minor safety concerns.
Illegal activities.
Fraud and scams.
Fake profiles.

We prioritize reports of urgent threats and emergencies and pass the details to the relevant authorities when necessary. We also provide helpline contact details to our players.