--- title: "What is Chat Control, and does it affect Fluxer?" description: "Chat Control is a nickname for two EU laws about child sexual abuse online. As of October 2026, neither requires apps to scan your messages. Fluxer doesn't scan for child abuse material, and fluxer.com's only automated checks look for spam, coordinated abuse, taken-over accounts, harmful links and explicit images." url: "https://fluxer.com/help/chat-control" language: "en" last_updated: "2026-11-01" category: "Policies and legal" --- > Index of Fluxer's official pages for AI agents: https://fluxer.com/llms.txt > Links to Fluxer pages go to their Markdown versions when they have one. For other Fluxer help, policy or blog links, remove any #section part and add .md to the end. # What is Chat Control, and does it affect Fluxer? Chat Control is a nickname for two EU laws about child sexual abuse online. As of October 2026, neither requires apps to scan your messages. Fluxer doesn't scan for child abuse material, and fluxer.com's only automated checks look for spam, coordinated abuse, taken-over accounts, harmful links and explicit images. "Chat Control" is a nickname for two different European Union laws about child sexual abuse online. As of October 2026, neither of them requires apps to scan your messages. Fluxer [doesn't scan your messages or files](https://fluxer.com/help/content-scanning.md) for child abuse material, and fluxer.com's only automated checks look for spam, coordinated abuse, taken-over accounts, harmful links and explicit images, as [our article on content scanning](https://fluxer.com/help/content-scanning.md) explains. ## What is Chat Control? People use the nickname for two separate laws. "Chat Control 1.0" is a temporary EU rule that lets messaging and email services look for child sexual abuse material on their services if they choose to, and it doesn't force any service to do that. "Chat Control 2.0" is the proposed [Child Sexual Abuse Regulation](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52022PC0209), which the European Commission put forward in May 2022, and as of October 2026 it isn't law. ## Is Chat Control 1.0 still in force? A new version is in force, and it still doesn't force any service to look for this material. The first version, [Regulation (EU) 2021/1232](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/1232/oj/eng), made a temporary, voluntary exception to the EU's privacy rules for messaging and email services. The European Parliament [voted against extending it](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20260325IPR39207/child-sexual-abuse-online-voluntary-detection-measures-will-not-be-extended) on March 26, 2026, and it expired after April 3, 2026. In July 2026, the EU adopted [Regulation (EU) 2026/1881](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2026/1881/oj/eng), which brings back the same kind of voluntary exception until April 3, 2028, as the [Council of the EU announced](https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2026/07/23/fighting-child-sexual-abuse-online-interim-measure-protecting-children-now-reinstated/). Its first article says it doesn't apply to audio or to messages that are end-to-end encrypted. ## Has Chat Control 2.0 passed? No, it's still being negotiated. The European Parliament agreed on its position in November 2023, and the Council of the EU [agreed on its own](https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2025/11/26/child-sexual-abuse-council-reaches-position-on-law-protecting-children-from-online-abuse/) in November 2025. They began talks on the final text in December 2025, as the [European Parliament's tracker](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/spotlight-JD22/file-combating-child-sexual-abuse-online) shows. The two sides met for the sixth time on September 29, 2026, according to the [Council's summary of the meeting](https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/WK-15082-2026-INIT/en/pdf). They agreed in principle on some parts, such as orders to search public content for known abuse material, but not on searching private messages. As of October 2026, the next meeting is planned for December 2026. ## Would Chat Control 2.0 scan end-to-end encrypted messages? Both positions in the negotiations leave end-to-end encrypted messages out of any scanning, as an [April 2026 Council note](https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-8048-2026-INIT/en/pdf) says. The Council's position also says the law must not weaken, undermine or get around encryption, and unlike the Parliament's position, it has no orders that would force a service to scan private messages. The Parliament's position allows orders to scan only in narrow cases and as a last resort. As of October 2026, the two sides still disagree about scanning private messages that aren't encrypted, and the final text could differ from both positions. ## Does Chat Control change anything on Fluxer? Fluxer doesn't scan your messages or files for child abuse material and doesn't use the voluntary exception in Regulation (EU) 2026/1881. [Our article about scanning and Chat Control](https://fluxer.com/help/chat-control-scanning.md) lists the automated checks fluxer.com uses, and they look only for spam, coordinated abuse, taken-over accounts, harmful links and explicit images. Your messages, files and calls are encrypted between your device and our servers, and messages and files are also encrypted on our servers. Nothing on Fluxer is end-to-end encrypted yet, so Fluxer's servers can access the content of your messages, files and calls. [Our encryption article](https://fluxer.com/help/encryption.md) says when we expect encrypted calls, DMs and group DMs. Nobody at Fluxer reads your messages or files, and nobody else does it for us. [An authorized person on our team opens specific messages](https://fluxer.com/help/can-fluxer-read-my-dms.md) only when someone reports them, when we investigate a specific rule break, when there's a credible safety issue or when we respond to a valid legal request. Every access is recorded in an audit log. ## Can I keep my messages off Fluxer's servers? Yes, you can [run Fluxer on your own server](https://fluxer.com/help/self-hosting-fluxer.md), and [our article about scanning and Chat Control](https://fluxer.com/help/chat-control-scanning.md) explains what Chat Control means for a self-hosted instance. --- Canonical page: https://fluxer.com/help/chat-control Last updated on November 1, 2026