Safety FAQ

First, contact our Trust and Safety Team and give us a direct link to your profile. Once you do this, we will shut down your profile immediately in order to prevent the hacker from accessing it. Please note: all of your data will be preserved. We’ll then work with you to help restore your profile.

Always have a unique, strong password and don’t share it with anyone. When checking your account from public computers, be sure to sign out before closing the page.

If your other online accounts have been hacked, please change your Couchsurfing password immediately if is the same password associated with one of your other accounts. Note: Your Couchsurfing password should always be different from your other passwords.

If the email address that you used to create your Couchsurfing profile has been hacked, you should also change the email that is associated with your account. If a hacker has access to your Couchsurfing-related email, they can use it to reset your password and gain access to your account.

Yes. All member concerns are confidential. We will not discuss your specific issue with anyone outside of the Trust and Safety Team unless we need to work with law enforcement or obtain legal advice. We will not tell a member that you reported them, but if we need to take action based on your report, the member may make the logical assumption that you have been in contact with us. For example, if we need to flag an inappropriate reference that a member has left for you, the person will be contacted to edit the reference.

We may choose to share anonymous information from a member report if it can help a group of members protect themselves from a specific risk. For example, on occasion we have notified members in certain regions when we have received evidence of scammers targeting those areas. In these circumstances, we never reveal the name of the person who contacted us or the incident that prompted the report.

First of all, if you are in any immediate risk, please get yourself to a safe place before anything else. Then, call the local authorities so that people who are trained in these situations can help you. When you are in a safe location, please report any safety related incidents to our Trust and Safety Team.

If you are having a dispute that does not affect your personal safety, then please read on. Negative experiences are rare, but they’re upsetting and stressful. If you would like help related to your experience, we encourage you to contact us.

To address the situation, we recommend these steps:

• Reflect. Before anything else, first consider the experience carefully. Did a difference in culture or personality contribute to the disagreement? Was there a breakdown in communication before or after that could have led to the dispute? What resolution do you hope to achieve?
• Communicate. Express your feelings clearly to the other person. For many reasons, including culture, personality and differences in lifestyle, they may not be aware of how you feel, or may not understand your feelings well, until you discuss the issue directly.
• Remove yourself from the situation. If the issue cannot be resolved after a discussion, and you are currently Hosting or Surfing with the other person, you should end the interaction. If you are the Host, it is your right to ask your Surfer to leave. If you are the guest, you can leave at any time (it is always important to have a back up plan just in case of a situation like this). If the member with whom you have a conflict is a member of your local community, you may have to agree to avoid one another.
• Leave a reference. Leaving a negative or neutral reference is not an act of revenge, and it’s not a statement that you think the other member is a “bad person.” It’s an act of support for the reputation system that keeps our community safer and helps prevent other people from having negative experiences. Please don’t avoid writing a negative reference out of fear of receiving one yourself, or offending the other person our community relies on members sharing information openly with one another.

No, hospitality on Couchsurfing is free. A host should never ask a guest to pay for their lodging, and a guest should not offer. We do recommend that a guest show their appreciation by cooking a meal, taking the host out, bringing a small gift or offering some other gesture. Hosts should only offer what they are able to offer freely, and say what those things are clearly in the Couch Information in their profile. If there are some things that can’t be offered unless the Couchsurfers agree to share the cost, this should be discussed between the host and surfer (and should never be a requirement for hosting).

Couchsurfers may use the website to look for roommates (what better way to find someone who won’t mind that you host?), and many of the city groups have special subgroups for apartment hunters. Postings from brokers or real estate agents are not allowed.

Couchsurfing is an all-inclusive community, and in the spirit of being a diverse worldwide community, we do not exclude people from membership for controversial views, political activity, personality, communication style, etc.

We will remove a profile if the member breaks our Terms of Use or if we receive information indicating that the person is a scammer or otherwise a danger to the community.

Remove yourself from the situation as quickly as possible and report the situation to the local authorities in your area. They can provide you with immediate help and document the situation. If you are hosting the person, ask them to leave.

When you are in a safe location, please also report the incident to our Trust and Safety Team. We will need you to provide us with a link to the profile of the other member involved, a description of what happened and any documentation you can provide (such as a police report) which can allow us to take action against the other member. Also, please leave a reference for the other member so that the community is immediately aware of what occurred. While we will process your report and take action as soon as possible, a reference is an instant warning that can prevent others from being victimized.

We can also speak with law enforcement directly; please encourage them to contact us if we can be of any help.

Sometimes people, especially newer members, don’t understand the reference system. They may confuse references with messages or wall postings. If you receive a reference from someone who you have never interacted with, then we can remove it.

If a reference is from someone whom you’ve interacted with online, via message, Couchrequests or in the groups, then we still consider that to be information that can be relevant to the community. Although we discourage people from leaving references in this case, we do allow it.

No. Couchsurfing is a self-moderating community, and we believe that each member of our community has the ability and the responsibility to make decisions about who they would like to meet. References, even negative ones, share information with the community. A behavior that one person finds offensive may not bother others, which is why we believe our role is not to make judgments in the case of disputes but rather to encourage both parties to share information openly with the community.

If you would like to make a formal complaint against another member due to a violation of our Terms of Use or Privacy Policy, please contact us directly.

We rarely remove references. We do not consider it appropriate for us to intervene in member descriptions of their experience. The most common instance in which we will completely remove a reference is if it is clearly from someone who you have never met or interacted with.

We will, however, flag a reference if it is outside of our guidelines. A flagged reference is hidden from view and will not be visible again until the member who left it has edited it to meet the guidelines.

If you are concerned about a negative or neutral reference on your profile that does not break our guidelines, please remember that anyone who reads it will also be able to read your response. In your reference for that person, clearly and calmly explain your side of the story. People who visit your profile will be able to read both references and decide for themselves what they think.

If you receive a message that is outside of our Terms of Use, use the “Report Abuse” button to alert us to it and we will read it to determine if it is in fact against our guidelines.

In the case of disputes between members, we generally will not read messages. On very rare occasions we may check messages upon request, if we believe that doing so can prevent a crime or otherwise protect the safety of the community.

Couchsurfing has thousands of events hosted by Couchsurfers all over the world. To find an event near you, go to https://www.couchsurfing.com/events.

If any posts are outside of the Terms of Use, please use the “Report Abuse” button to report it for review. If it is abusive, we may either warn the member or remove the content.

If you are in a dispute with someone in a group, we recommend trying to resolve the issue privately or simply ignoring their posts. If they are starting arguments just for the sake of it, ignoring them is frequently the only way to get them to stop. The Events page on Couchsurfing is meant to be a forum where travelers and locals can meet up and explore the city or countryside together. It is not meant to be used to find hosts, surfers, or for commercial or business use. Learn more here. A Hangout may be closed if it violates our Terms of Use or Couchsurfing Policies.