The Australian Online Safety Act 2021 (Online Safety Act) is designed to keep Australians safe from online harm. Learn more about the Online Safety Act.
Here is what you can do if you or someone you know sees distressing content online or experiences online harm or abuse, or if you are looking to keep you and your family safe online.
Report online harm to eSafety
The eSafety Commissioner is Australia's independent regulator for online safety and can investigate and help you deal with serious online abuse and illegal and restricted online content. You can report a complaint about cyberbullying, adult cyber abuse, image-based abuse (sharing, or threatening to share, intimate images without the consent of the person shown) or illegal and restricted online content to eSafety directly.
How we protect users
At Google, we aim to balance delivering information with protecting all users, including children. We take this responsibility seriously.
Our Safety Center outlines our approach to protecting you from illegal and harmful content.
We have developed and rely on various measures to prevent, detect, and respond to abuse, including illegal content and content harmful to children. In particular, our product policies set clear guidelines around what content is and is not allowed on our services. We detect potentially violative content through a combination of human review and automated processes. We also rely on the Google community to help us identify such content by reporting it directly to us. More information on reporting content is set out below.
On Search, our systems are designed to prioritise what appears to be the most useful and helpful content on a given topic, and not surface content that violates our content policies. We have systems to prevent potentially unhelpful and policy violating auto-complete predictions from appearing (including in connection with self-harm material). If someone searches for terms related to suicide, domestic violence or sexual assault, they’ll see prominent links to crisis hotline providers, in dozens of countries and languages.
Visit the Google Transparency Center, the Google Help Center, the Google Terms of Service, and our product policies to learn more about our efforts to protect users from violative content. You can also learn more about our approach to fighting child sexual abuse online across Google on our Protecting Children page. You can find YouTube’s policies and enforcement approach in its Transparency Report and the YouTube Help Center.
Our Google Families site outlines the tools available to help you protect your family online, choose the right parental controls, and empower your children to safely explore the online world.
Some Google content and features are age restricted. Visit the Google Account Help Center for more information about accessing age-restricted content and features.
How we use proactive technology to protect users
Our Safety Centre explains our approach to using proactive technology to prevent, detect and respond to violative content. You can also learn about the proactive technologies we use to fight child sexual abuse online on our Protecting Children page.
How to report harmful content
If you see content on Google services that you think is illegal, harmful or violates our policies, please tell us! Here’s how:
To learn more about Google’s rules and how to report content under our product policies, check out:
When you submit a request through one of our legal webforms to remove content that you believe is illegal, harmful or violates our policies, the request is routed to the team best positioned to help. Occasionally we might ask you for some more details.
Once we have made a decision on the request, we will typically inform you of the outcome which may include taking the action requested, denying your request or taking some additional action that we deem appropriate.
If you find harmful content on a non-Google service you should contact the content provider directly, or alternatively eSafety (see above). To report content on an App downloaded from Google Play you may also contact the app provider, or you can report it to Google.
Appeal a decision
If you have filed a request to remove allegedly illegal content and we decided not to take action, you may have the opportunity to file an appeal. If you are eligible to do so, you will receive the necessary information in the notice informing the outcome of your original request. Learn more about the registered Industry Online Safety Codes and Standards.
For users reporting illegal content who are eligible to file an appeal, appeals should be filed within one month of receiving a decision on a notice. Once we have made a decision on the appeal, we will inform you of the outcome and provide a reason for the decision.
Visit the Google Transparency Center or the Google Legal Help Center to learn more about Google policies and how to appeal a decision.
Online safety resources
The Google Safety Center provides information on how to keep you and your family safe online, including information on tools to manage access to what your children can discover online.
For additional resources on how to help you and your children learn how to stay safe online and build healthy digital habits, visit our Google Families site.
For information on YouTube, you can also visit the YouTube Privacy and Safety Center.
For all other product specific information on tools or settings, visit the Google Help Center.
Support services
If you or someone you know has experienced serious online harm or have seen distressing content, you do not need to deal with it alone. The organisations below are dedicated to helping those in need:
- Lifeline Australia: 13 11 14
- Kids Helpline: 1800 55 1800
eSafety also provides helpful resources for parents, carers and young people on what to do and how to get support if you see distressing content online.
Google’s compliance with the Online Safety Act
Google is subject to certain obligations under the Online Safety Act. Learn more about the registered Industry Online Safety Codes and Standards.
Google takes its obligations to comply with the Online Safety Act seriously. If you are an Australian user and believe Google does not comply with the Online Safety Act (or in respect of Google Cloud Platform and Kaggle, its customers), report it here.