Terms of use

1. What ChildTrace is

ChildTrace is a child-safety reporting and coordination platform. It lets the public report missing children, found or separated children, and sightings; it lets authorized professionals — social workers, police, hospitals, shelters, schools and partner organizations — review, verify, investigate and coordinate a response; and it supports supervised family tracing and reunification.

ChildTrace is not a replacement for emergency services, national civil registration, national identity systems, or an existing government child-protection case-management system. Where a government or institutional case-management system already applies to your jurisdiction, ChildTrace is designed to complement it, not replace it.

2. Emergencies

If a child is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services first. Submitting a report through ChildTrace does not substitute for an emergency call, and response times through the platform are not guaranteed.

3. Accounts

Public accounts

You may submit an emergency report — a missing-child report, a found-child report, or a sighting — without creating an account. Creating an account (as a parent or guardian) lets you track your own reports and receive approved updates. Possessing an account, or a verified phone number or email address, is never treated by ChildTrace as proof of parentage or legal guardianship on its own.

Professional accounts

Professional accounts are issued by an authorized organization (a government child-protection body, police unit, hospital, shelter, school or approved NGO partner) and are subject to that organization's own authorization and conduct policies in addition to these terms. Professional access is scoped by role, organization and case assignment — technical administration of the platform does not by itself grant access to case content.

4. Acceptable use

You must not use ChildTrace to:

• submit a report you know to be false, or make a report for the purpose of harassment, extortion, stalking or intimidation;
• attempt to identify, contact, confront or locate a person named or implied in a case outside the platform's reporting tools;
• scrape, harvest, bulk-download or systematically collect case, sighting or child information;
• attempt to bypass authorization controls, rate limits, or access case data outside your authorized role, organization or assignment;
• upload malicious files, or content you do not have the right to share;
• use the platform, or any data obtained from it, for advertising, profiling, or any purpose unrelated to child safety and protection.

We may suspend or close an account, or decline a report, where we reasonably believe these terms have been violated or the safety of a child or another person is at risk.

5. How reports are handled

Submitting a report creates a case record; it does not itself verify the report, and it does not trigger a public alert. Trained professionals review, verify and act on reports. A published public profile is a separate, deliberately generalized record created only after a documented safeguarding review — it never includes exact addresses, coordinates, reporter identities, or unapproved photographs, and it is withdrawn automatically once a child is located or a case is closed.

Matching between missing and found/separated cases uses a combination of professional review and decision-support scoring. A match score is a prioritization signal for human reviewers — it is never treated as proof of identity, and no automated process at ChildTrace establishes identity, parentage, or the safety of a reunification.

6. No guaranteed outcome

ChildTrace helps route, verify and coordinate reports. It cannot guarantee that a child will be found, that a report will be actioned within a particular time, that a match will be correct, or that any public or institutional alert will reach a particular audience. Response depends on the authorized organizations and personnel handling a case.

7. Wearable devices

Where a family uses an optional ChildTrace-connected wearable device, location, geofence and emergency (SOS) data is shared only with the guardians who manage the device and, during an active missing-child case, with authorized responders assigned to that case. Location accuracy can vary and may be delayed; the platform will indicate when data is stale rather than presenting it as live.

8. Content you submit

You are responsible for the accuracy of the information and any photographs or files you submit. You confirm you have the right to share any photograph or document you upload. Original evidence and reports are retained under our retention rules (see the privacy notice) and may be shared with authorized child-protection or law-enforcement partners strictly for purposes connected to the case.

9. Changes

We may update these terms as the platform evolves. Material changes affecting public reporting, professional access, or data handling will be reflected here with an updated date.