Nobody here ever asks you for money
Safety · Money · 3 min ·
There are two rules on this site. One of them is be kind, which is what everybody is here for. The other is this one, and it is absolute.
Nobody ever asks anybody for money. Not for any reason, not once.
If somebody does, tell us and they are gone the same day.
There is no sympathetic version
Not a loan. Not petrol money. Not a phone that broke, a card that will not work abroad, a customs fee, a hospital, a nephew, a flight home. Not a small amount to prove you trust them, and not a gift card because it is easier.
The rule is stated this flatly because every one of those sounds reasonable in the moment it is asked, by design. A rule with an exception in it is a rule you will find yourself arguing with at eleven at night.
Why this rule and not some other one
Because a site about kindness is exactly where this works. The whole method is warmth, applied patiently, until refusing feels unkind.
It never opens with money. It opens with being the person who replies, who remembers what you said, who is there in the evenings. By the time money is mentioned, weeks have gone by, and the thing being spent is not really your money but the relationship you would have to damage to say no.
Knowing that in advance is most of the protection. Not because you are gullible, but because the whole apparatus is built to make a reasonable person say yes.
What it tends to look like
- Warmth that arrives faster and heavier than the acquaintance warrants.
- Moving off this site quickly, to somewhere with no rules and no record.
- A story that arrives some time before the request does.
- Urgency, and a deadline you did not choose.
- Being asked to keep it between the two of you.
- A reason that would make you feel unkind for refusing.
- A link, an app, or an account you would not have opened otherwise.
None of these on its own proves anything, and a real person can be badly off and clumsy about mentioning it. It does not matter. The rule here is not about their intentions. Asking is the thing that is not allowed.
What to do, and how little you need to be sure
Write to safety@freehug.me. You do not need to be signed in, you do not need evidence, and you do not need to have decided what you think. A sentence is enough.
You will not be asked to justify the report or to explain why you kept talking to them. That question is never useful and it is never asked here.
If money has already changed hands, tell us anyway. It is not too late to be useful, and the person it protects next may not be you.
And nothing here is behind a payment anyway
Asking for a hug, giving one, receiving one and replying are free and always will be. A membership is bought once for a period, from the site itself, and nothing ever renews on its own. Nobody will ever contact you asking for money to keep an account open, and there is no such thing to keep open.
How the money actually works, in full, is its own post.
The usual limit applies here too: this is not a helpline and nobody here is a professional anything. If this has happened to you and it has knocked you sideways, that is an entirely ordinary reaction to it, and there are people who can help properly.
More
- When you are the one with something to giveGiving a hug asks nothing of you beyond a kind minute. How giving works here, why you will not find out whether it helped, and when not to send one.
- Blocking somebody, and what they seeOne tap, no reason asked, and the other person is never told. What blocking does on freehug.me, what it ends, and why it is deliberately a quiet exit.
- Grief, and the company of strangersEverybody is kind for a fortnight and then the world resumes. Why grief gets harder to mention as it goes on, and what a stranger can offer that a friend cannot.
Not a helpline, and nobody here is a professional anything. If today is a serious one, there are people who can help properly.