Community Guidelines

1. The short version

DUNE exists so you can find someone to do a thing with. A wedding you don’t want to walk into alone. A concert nobody in your circle wants to go to. A trek, a gallery, a gym session, a long conversation over coffee in a city you just moved to.

Every booking names the activity. That’s what you’re both agreeing to, and it’s why this works — you each know what the evening is before it starts.

So: be real, be respectful, be honest, do what you booked, and keep it platonic.

DUNE is a product of Vauxer Enterprises Private Limited. Vauxer operates the service, publishes the app, arranges for payments to be collected and disbursed through a third-party payment partner, and is responsible for your data — it is the company you deal with for everything.

Everything below is the detail of what that means in practice. The Code of Conduct is the enforceable rulebook — it is what we cite when we restrict, suspend, or ban an account, and where the two documents ever seem to differ, it is the one that governs. This page is the plain-language version of the same rules. The commercial terms are in our Terms of Service, and what each booking commits the two of you to is set out in the Companion Agreement.

2. Your photos

Your photos are how someone decides whether to spend an evening with you. They need to actually be you.

Do:

• Use recent photos — taken within the last 2 years.
• Make your cover photo a clear shot of your face, well lit, looking at the camera.
• Show your interests in your other photos — where you go, what you do.

We’ll remove photos that:

• Aren’t you, or are of a celebrity, model, or stock image.
• Hide your face in the cover slot (sunglasses, masks, heavy shadow, back to camera). Other slots are fine.
• Are group shots in the cover slot — we can’t tell who you are.
• Include children, even your own. This is a safety rule, not a judgment.
• Include other adults who haven’t consented to appearing on your profile.
• Show nudity, underwear, or swimwear presented suggestively.
• Contain contact details or handles — phone numbers, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, email — written, overlaid, or in the background.
• Are watermarked with another platform’s branding, or advertise another service.
• Are so heavily filtered or edited that you’re not recognisable — which will also fail identity verification.
• Contain weapons, illegal drugs, or violence.
• Are screenshots, memes, or images belonging to someone else.

3. Your bio and profile

A good bio says what you’re actually like and what you’d enjoy doing. Specific beats generic — “I’ll talk about films until the restaurant closes” tells someone more than “fun and easygoing.”

We’ll remove bio content that:

• Contains contact details — phone, email, or any social handle. Chat unlocks after a booking is paid for; that’s where you share these if you want to.
• Advertises services, prices, or bookings outside DUNE.
• Contains anything sexual, or coded language implying sexual availability. This is the rule we enforce most strictly — see section 8.
• Is discriminatory about caste, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or any protected characteristic — including as a “preference.”
• Names or describes another user, positively or negatively.
• Is spam, gibberish, or copy-pasted promotional text.
• Misstates your age or identity.

3.1 Interests and activities — the most important part of your profile

This is what people actually search by. Someone looking for company at a wedding on Saturday sees the people who listed themselves as available for weddings. If your list is wrong, you get the wrong bookings.

• Only list what you’d genuinely turn up for. Selecting everything to appear in more searches backfires — you’ll get requests you decline, and declining hurts your standing.
• Be specific. “Concerts” and “Live music” tell someone more than “Going out”.
• Keep it current. If you’ve stopped wanting to do 6am treks, take it off.

If you’re booked for an activity you didn’t list, decline the request. That’s what declining is for.

3.2 Accepting a booking

Only accept a booking you mean to keep. The moment you accept, the other person pays — and from then on they’ve arranged their day around you.

Things genuinely go wrong, and one cancellation isn’t a problem. But we count cancellations made after payment, and a pattern of accepting bookings and then cancelling gets your account reviewed.

If you’re not sure you can make it, decline. Declining costs nobody anything. Accepting and then pulling out costs the other person DUNE’s Platform Fee on what they paid, and their evening. The current rate is in our Cancellation & Refund Policy.

4. Messaging

Chat unlocks once a booking is confirmed and paid. Use it to sort out the practical things — where exactly to meet, what to expect, anything either of you needs to know.

• Keep it about the booking. You’ve got a meetup to plan.
• Take no for an answer. About the plan, the place, the timing, anything.
• Don’t send sexual messages or images. Not once, not “as a joke.”
• Don’t push for contact details if the other person hasn’t offered them. You’re allowed to exchange numbers; you’re not allowed to pressure someone into it.
• Don’t ask to move the payment off DUNE. You lose every protection the booking gives you — the dispute window, the PIN record, support — and it’s a removable offence for both of you.
• Don’t share screenshots of a conversation or profile outside the app.

5. Meeting in person

This is the part that matters most, so it’s worth reading properly.

Before you go:

• Re-read the booking. It says what the activity is, where, and for how long. That’s the agreement — the Companion Agreement sets out what each of you is committing to.
• Meet in the public area agreed in the app. If it needs to change, change it in the app first so there’s a record.
• Tell someone you trust where you’re going and when you expect to be back.
• Read the other person’s profile, verification badge, and reviews.

When you arrive:

• Verify the start PIN in the app. This is what starts your session timer and creates the record that you both showed up. Do it in person, with each other — never in advance, never over chat.
• We recommend keeping location on. Your session works either way — but if location is on, we record that the two of you were together, and that makes any later dispute far quicker to settle. If you can’t show you were there and the other person can, you’re on the weaker side of that conversation.
• Keep live location sharing on for the duration. It’s shared only with the person you’re meeting, and it stops automatically when the session closes. What we do with that data is set out in our Privacy Policy.

During:

• Do the activity you booked. If plans genuinely change and you both want that, fine. If one person is pushing and the other is going along to avoid awkwardness, that isn’t both of you deciding — and it’s a violation by the person pushing.
• Stay in public unless you both actively decide otherwise — and understand that if you leave a public place, you’re outside the safety design of the platform.
• Pay for your own food, drinks, and travel unless you’ve agreed otherwise.
• You can leave at any time. If something feels off, go. You will not be penalised for leaving early on safety grounds, and you should report it afterward.

When you finish:

• Verify the close PIN. This ends the session and starts the payout clock.
• Leave an honest review.

If you’re in immediate danger, contact emergency services first (112 in India) — then tell us at support@dunexplore.com so we can act on the account.

6. Hosting and attending events

How an event works. You set a start time and an end time — at least 30 minutes, at most 6 hours — and open up to 10 seats. Everyone who joins gets a 4-digit PIN. At the event, they show you theirs and you enter it to check them in. There’s no check-out — the event ends when you said it would.

DUNE events are small on purpose. 10 is the number one person can greet at the door, keep track of, and actually be present for.

You can start one event a day. The count resets at midnight, so an 11pm event on Tuesday runs its full length into Wednesday, and you can list your next one for any time after it finishes.

If you’re hosting:

• Describe it accurately — the venue, the timing, what’s included, what isn’t, and anything people need to bring or wear.
• Set the times honestly. People plan their day around them, and the end time is what closes the event and starts your payout — a 2-hour dispute window follows, and your payout then settles T+2 business days after that window closes, excluding bank holidays and other holidays.
• List only the seats you can actually seat — up to the limit of 10, and fewer if the venue can’t take 10.
• Make sure you’re allowed to host there. Venue permission is your responsibility.
• Check people in as they arrive. You’re paid for the seats you check in. If you don’t collect PINs, there’s no record anyone came.
• Check-in opens at your start time, not before. If your event starts at 6pm, the first PIN you can enter is at 6pm — anything earlier is rejected. People who arrive at 5:45 get checked in once the event starts.
• Never ask for a PIN in advance. Not over chat, not “to save time at the door.” It won’t work anyway — early PINs are rejected — and asking for one is a violation in its own right.
• Don’t turn away someone who paid. If you genuinely have to — they’re intoxicated, or being abusive — report it in the app the same day so there’s a record on your side too.
• Post updates in the app if anything changes. Don’t leave attendees guessing.
• Be there. Hosting and not showing up is the fastest way to lose hosting access.

If you have to cancel, cancel properly. Every host cancellation is reviewed before attendees are refunded, and what you told them is part of that review. Cancel as early as you can and message everyone who has a seat, explaining what’s happened. A host who does that is treated very differently from one who cancels an hour before and says nothing.

There’s no fixed strike count. We look at your ratings, the pattern over time, and how you handled things — then decide. That might be nothing at all, a warning, hosting paused for somewhere between 3 and 30 days, or hosting removed for good.

We won’t pause hosting for longer than 30 days. If something is serious enough that 30 days isn’t the answer, we’ll say so rather than leaving you waiting.

Losing hosting doesn’t cost you your account: you can still book companions, be booked, and attend other people’s events.

If you’re attending:

• Turn up, or cancel in time for the host to release your seat. Cancelling closes at the start time — after that the seat is used.
• Keep your PIN to yourself until you’re standing at the event. It’s your proof you turned up. Don’t send it ahead, and don’t give it to anyone who isn’t the host.
• We recommend keeping location on for the length of the event. If a host doesn’t check you in and you need to show you were there, that record is what you’ll have.
• If the host doesn’t check you in, tell us within 2 hours of the end time.
• Everything in sections 4 and 5 applies at events too.

7. Reviews

• Review the session you actually had.
• Be specific and fair. “Great conversation, arrived on time” is useful; a one-word rating isn’t.
• Don’t review to retaliate — for a declined request, a cancellation, or a report filed against you.
• Don’t mention someone’s contact details, workplace, address, or anything else private.
• Don’t ask anyone for a review they didn’t earn, or offer anything in exchange for one.

We remove reviews that break these rules. We don’t remove reviews for being negative.

8. The line we don’t move on

DUNE is not a dating app and not a platform for sexual services.

That means no offering, requesting, hinting at, or negotiating sexual activity in exchange for money or anything else — in a profile, a photo, a bio, a message, an event listing, or in person. Coded language counts.

This is a first-offence permanent removal, not a warning. Companionship on DUNE is platonic, and protecting that is what keeps everyone else on the platform safe.

If a conversation or a meetup turns sexual, that’s a violation by whoever started it. Report it — you’re not in trouble for having been on the receiving end.

9. How moderation works

We check content before it goes live. Every profile photo and bio is screened automatically when you upload it — for nudity, contact details and handles (including text written into an image or hidden in a QR code), and the other things listed in sections 2 and 3. Most uploads clear in a few seconds.

Anything the screening flags goes to a person, which takes longer — usually a few hours. You’ll be told if something is rejected, and why.

Automatic screening isn’t perfect in either direction. It occasionally rejects something harmless, and occasionally misses something it shouldn’t. If yours was wrongly rejected, appeal — see section 11.

We review reports from users. Every profile, chat, and booking has a Report option. Reports go to a human.

What happens when someone is reported:

1. We look at the report, the account, the booking record, and any history.
2. For anything involving safety, we may restrict the account immediately while we look.
3. We decide: no action, content removal, warning, feature restriction, suspension, or permanent ban.
4. We tell the reported user what rule is alleged to have been broken — unless telling them would compromise a safety investigation.

What we aim for:

We never tell someone who reported them.

Being reported is not itself a violation. People report things that turn out to be fine. We look at what actually happened.

10. Blocking

You can block anyone, at any time, for any reason. Blocking:

• ends any open conversation immediately,
• prevents future bookings between you,
• removes them from your discovery feed and you from theirs.

You don’t need a reason, and we don’t tell them.

If someone’s behaviour breaks these Guidelines, please report as well as block — blocking protects you, reporting protects everyone else.

11. If we get it wrong

If we’ve removed your content or restricted your account and you think we’ve made a mistake, appeal at support@dunexplore.com or through in-app support. Tell us what happened from your side. A different person reviews appeals from the person who made the original decision.

We do reverse decisions. Tell us.

12. Contact

• Urgent reports, appeals, and everything else: in-app support, or support@dunexplore.com