Community safety

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NWatch is designed to help trusted groups coordinate quickly during urgent situations. It is intentionally simple: sign in, join by invite, trigger an alert, and (for managers) manage membership, readiness and incidents.

Your group, your people

Every NWatch member belongs to an invited group managed by someone responsible for that community. There is no searchable group directory, automatic matching or automatic admission. A manual introduction request for a participating community group still requires the manager to decide whether to invite the person. Your manager:

• Controls who joins via invite codes they generate and share
• Monitors membership and can pause or ban anyone who misuses the system
• Is your first point of contact for support, questions, or concerns

Growth in the service does not create a global feed: membership remains scoped to invited groups.

Our intent

• Help communities share time-critical alerts when it matters.
• Reduce noise and confusion during stressful situations.
• Keep personal data collection to the absolute minimum.

What an “alert” means

An alert is a request for attention from your group. It can be used for things like:

• a person in immediate danger
• a suspected break-in
• a missing vulnerable person
• a major hazard in the area (e.g., fire, flooding)

NWatch is not a replacement for emergency services.

Call emergency services when appropriate

If you or someone else is in immediate danger, contact the relevant emergency number first. NWatch can ask push services to notify your group, but it is not a dispatch service and delivery cannot be guaranteed.

Respect and safety rules

• No vigilantism: do not encourage confrontation or violence.
• No harassment: do not target individuals or groups.
• No doxxing: do not share exact home addresses in public channels.
• Use the smallest audience: alerts go only to your invited group.

Managers may pause or ban accounts that misuse alerts.

Privacy by design

We aim to minimise sensitive information:

• We do not persist saved home addresses as plaintext profile fields. A sent address snapshot is retained only inside encrypted incident envelopes.
• Optional precise GPS is retained only when a sender includes it in an encrypted alert.
• Alert fan-out is based on active group membership; coarse zones help define and organise community groups.
• The sender's own phone stays silent when they trigger an alert — protecting them if under duress.
• GPS coordinates are opt-in and shared only in encrypted form during an alert.

Accessibility and reliability

• Alerts should be readable quickly, even under stress.
• GPS coordinates in alerts are tappable — one tap opens the location in your maps app.
• Alerts request the strongest platform-appropriate presentation that the user and operating system permit.
• iOS Critical Alerts require Apple entitlement approval and user permission. Android alarm presentation depends on notification, full-screen intent and Do Not Disturb access settings; NWatch does not change the user's system volume or DND mode.

If you’re unsure

If something feels urgent but unclear, keep the message factual and brief:

• What happened
• Where (include only the location detail your group needs to respond safely)
• What help is needed (if any)
• Whether emergency services have been contacted