Welcome to our brand new Safety Center!

We’re really excited about this: in the last few months, ASKfm has hired a whole new team dedicated to reinventing ASKfm from the ground up to build the best experience possible for our users – a much safer experience, a more fun experience, and the best way to express yourself through questions and answers on the Web.

We realized our completely revised safety philosophy deserves a fresh look, so we built a place that covers every aspects of being safe and smart on ASKfm and anywhere else online.  When ASKfm was acquired by search veteran Ask.com last August, we honed in on  a completely different approach to safety for our user community, which we’ve been rolling out in recent months, and this new Safety Center explains our vision in detail.

The new ASKfm fully owns up to its responsibility to the hundreds of millions of people who use our service, many of whom are under the age of 18. We are committed to educating and empowering our community – young and old – with the right tools and critical information to take control of their experience, and make it the safest, most fun, positive and fulfilling.

Three pillars serve as the foundation of our safety philosophy that we’re committed to and strive to communicate to our user community:

  • Safety requires collaboration.
  • Safety is personal.
  • Anonymity comes with responsibility.

To read more about this philosophy and how we are working to make these changes a reality, visit: http://ask.fm/our-philosophy/

But that’s not all. We are working hard on getting this right and are fortunate to have gathered a remarkable team of top global digital safety experts to help us provide the most essential and comprehensive guidance in this Safety Center for all of the different segments of our audience:  Parents, Educators, Law Enforcement and, of course, Teens.  Our experts are writing on challenges specifically related to ASKfm and as well as on a broad range of digital safety topics.  Don’t miss, Surprise! Six Things Teens say you Don’t “Get” About Social Media, by Theresa Payton,  Trust, Curiosity and Resilience: The Importance of Anonymity When Growing Up Online, by Dr. Richard Graham, A Message to Parents and Educators: Don’t Miss This Opportunity, by Marsali Hancock or Defining Bullying, by Dr. Justin Patchin.

We know it will take time, perseverance and ongoing collaboration from everyone involved to turn this vision into reality. But the entire team at ASKfm is up for the challenge and dedicated to transforming this uniquely fun and dynamic platform into a much more meaningful, compelling and engaging place for us all to connect, communicate and learn everything we could possible dream of about each other.

Sincerely,

Catherine Teitelbaum

Chief Trust and Safety Officer

ASKfm