Practical safety guidance

Stay on Amana until you have reason not to

Everything the platform provides — blurred photos, blocked screenshots, reporting, moderation, the ability to end contact instantly — stops at the point you move to a personal number or another app.

There is nothing wrong with moving on eventually. The question is timing. Someone pressing to move off Amana in the first few messages is worth noticing: it is the single most common step in almost every scam that starts on a platform like this, precisely because it removes the protections.

If someone gives a reason for the hurry that sounds urgent and slightly unusual, treat the urgency itself as the signal.

Protect your information

• Keep contact details out of your profile. It is visible to people you have not chosen. Share directly, with someone you have chosen, once you have decided to.
• Be careful with your address and workplace. Your general area is on your profile and that is plenty. A street name, a building, or a photograph that shows your front door is more than anyone needs before meeting you.
• Watch what is in your photographs and recordings. House numbers, car registrations, work passes, school uniforms in the background.
• Never share financial details. Not your bank details, not card numbers, not your account access. There is no legitimate reason for a prospective spouse on a matrimonial app to need any of these.
• Consider what a search would find. If your Amana photograph also appears on a public social media account, sharing it links the two.

Recognising romance fraud

Romance fraud is a real and organised crime, and UK losses run into tens of millions of pounds a year. It works by building genuine emotional trust first and asking for money later — which is exactly why intelligent, careful people fall for it. It is nobody's fault for being deceived.

Never send money to someone you have not met. If it has already happened, please do not be ashamed into silence — report it to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 (in Scotland, call Police Scotland on 101), tell your bank immediately, and report the account to us. Acting quickly genuinely matters.

Involve your family

Amana is built for this rather than around it, and using it is a real safety measure as well as a religious and cultural one.

• Invite a chaperone. Either person can invite a third Amana member to read one conversation, with the other person's agreement. A conversation someone you trust can see is a conversation that is much harder to manipulate.
• Use the guardian option if you would rather a wali or family member ran the profile from the start.
• Tell someone anyway. Even without a formal role — telling a sibling or a friend who you are talking to means somebody else has a view of it.

Video call before you meet

A video call is the most useful single step between messaging and meeting. It confirms the person matches their photographs, gives you a sense of how they speak and behave, and is very difficult for someone using a false identity to get through.

Calling is included with membership and works between matched members, so there is no reason to move to another app for it. If someone consistently avoids a video call while making conversation easy, take that seriously.

Meeting for the first time

• Somewhere public, and busy. A café, a restaurant, a community venue. Not a home — theirs or yours — and not somewhere isolated.
• Bring someone, or have someone nearby. Many families would meet together first, and that is an entirely reasonable way to do it.
• Tell someone where you are going, who with, and when you expect to be back. Arrange to message them at a set time.
• Arrange your own travel, both ways. Do not be collected from home or dropped off there on a first meeting, and make sure you can leave whenever you decide to.
• Keep your phone charged and with you.
• Stay in control of your food and drink. Order it yourself and do not leave it unattended.
• You can leave at any point. You owe nobody an explanation, and no amount of correspondence beforehand obliges you to stay somewhere you are uncomfortable.

Trust the feeling

People are often quicker to notice that something is off than to let themselves act on it — particularly when the other person is polite, has verification badges, and has been kind for weeks. Verification is a check on documents. It is not a character reference, and it does not oblige you to override your own judgement.

If someone makes you uneasy, you can unmatch without explaining. They are not told why, and they cannot restore the conversation.

Report it

Use the report action next to the person in the app. It reaches a human moderator with the context attached. You do not need proof, and you do not need to have been harmed — if something felt wrong, that is reason enough.