How Block works

Verification, corroboration, and what's behind the design.

Block's privacy and safety choices are structural — built into how the system works, not just promised in a policy.

The corroboration model

Corroborations required3Before any report reaches the broadcast feed

Corroborations areindependentEach account submitted without seeing prior ones

Reports without 3stay privateThe reporter can see their status; no one else does

Why the corroboration threshold matters

Most neighborhood safety apps broadcast immediately, which amplifies anxiety and false alarms. Block requires 3 independent observations before anything broadcasts.

Report lifecycle

SubmittedUNCONFIRMED

A neighbor posts a report. It's block-level only — no addresses, no people.

CorroboratingUNCONFIRMED

Other neighbors independently add their own accounts. Each submits without seeing the prior accounts.

ConfirmedCONFIRMED

3 independent accounts reached. The pattern appears in the community feed.

ResolvedRESOLVED

The pattern is no longer active, or the underlying issue was addressed.

Resident verification

Block verifies that a person is a resident of a block — not who they are. The verification is a proof of block-membership, not an identity credential.

What verification does NOT do

Verification does not create a named account, store a physical address, link to any identity document, or build a profile of the resident. Block doesn't know who you are — only that you're on the block.

Sample · Block verification modelVerification flow in this demo is illustrative — full implementation uses on-device cryptographic tokens.

What Block will never do

✗Profile individuals or assign scores to people or addresses

✗Accept camera feeds, license-plate data, or person-tracking data

✗Monitor any individual's movements or activity

✗Share any report containing personal information

✗Tell you that you are safe — that's theater, not safety

HOA / Property-manager coordination

Residents are free. A paid coordination tier adds tools for HOAs and property managers — still privacy-walled, never individual tracking.

Viewing as:

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HOA / Property-manager coordination tier

Multi-property aggregate feed, maintenance escalation, municipal liaison tools, and official open-data overlay. Available on the paid coordination plan — residents are always free.

Municipal partnership — official data (Socrata)

Block supports an optional municipal-partnership layer: city open data (via Socrata) can be overlaid on the community feed as an official source — labeled clearly with Official · city open dataso residents always know what's corroborated-neighbor vs. what's official. This layer is part of the coordination tier and requires a municipal partnership agreement.