Is random video chat safe? An honest answer
The answer that would be easiest to write is "yes, absolutely, we have moderation". That answer is not useful and is not quite true. Here is a more honest one: the risks are real, most of them are avoidable with about four habits, and the rest come down to who you are talking to.
What the actual risks are
The three that matter are: seeing something you did not want to see, being recorded without knowing it, and giving away more about yourself than you meant to.
The first is what moderation exists for, and it is the one that is genuinely being worked on — reports get acted on, and blocking is immediate. The second cannot be prevented by any video product on earth, because a second phone pointed at a screen is not something software can detect. The third is entirely under your control and is the one people actually get burned by.
The part nobody can promise you
Anyone who tells you their random chat product is completely safe is either not thinking about it or hoping you are not. Moderation is a filter, not a wall. Reports are handled after something has happened, not before.
What a product can honestly promise is: leaving is instant and needs no explanation, blocking works, reporting goes somewhere a person reads, and nothing forces you to stay in a conversation for a moment longer than you want.
The four habits that remove most of the risk
None of these are clever. They are just the things people skip in the first five minutes and regret in the twentieth.
- Do not say your surname, your school, your employer or your neighbourhood — not as a rule, just as a default you have to consciously break
- Look at what is behind you before you turn the camera on; a visible address, a school uniform or a distinctive window is more identifying than your face
- Assume anything on camera could be recorded, and let that set what you are willing to do on camera
- Leave the second something feels off, before you have talked yourself into being polite about it
And one that is structural
Using something in a browser tab instead of an installed app removes a whole category of risk that has nothing to do with the other person: a web page cannot read your contacts, cannot keep running after you close it, and leaves no icon in your app list.
That does not make the conversation safer. It makes everything around the conversation smaller, which is a real and under-rated thing.