- There are no accounts, ads, analytics or tracking tools in either app.
- Your child's rules, app usage and browsing are checked on their phone and stay there.
- When the two apps are paired, they send each other status updates, alerts and setting changes. These are encrypted on one phone and can only be decrypted on the other.
- Messages pass through a relay we run on Cloudflare, and Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging wakes the receiving phone. Neither can read the messages.
- We don't sell or share data with anyone.
Who we are
Grounded and Grounded Parent App are made by Dash-Apps in the United Kingdom, which is responsible for this data. You can contact us at GroundedApp@outlook.com.
Grounded, on your child's phone
Grounded needs several Android permissions to enforce the rules you set. Here's what each one lets it see, and what it does with it.
| Permission | What Grounded uses it for |
|---|---|
| Accessibility service | Notices which app is opened so it can show the block screen, and recognises Android settings screens that could be used to switch Grounded off. It doesn't read, record or share what's on the screen. |
| Usage access | Reads how long each app has been used today, for daily time limits and the usage summary. |
| Notification access | Silences notifications from chosen apps during quiet hours. Notification contents aren't stored or sent anywhere. |
| VPN (website blocking) | Checks each website address against your blocking rules, on the phone. Web traffic doesn't pass through us, and addresses aren't recorded or sent anywhere. |
| Device admin | Stops Grounded being uninstalled without your PIN. |
| Display over other apps | Shows the block screen straight away when a blocked app opens. |
| List of installed apps | Lets you choose which apps to block or limit. |
Grounded also stores your rules, a record of recent alerts, and your PIN on the phone. The PIN is stored only as a one-way hash, so it can't be read back.
What paired phones share
If you pair Grounded with Grounded Parent App, the child's phone sends the parent's phone:
- Whether blocking and the other protections are working, every few hours
- Alerts, such as blocking being switched off, rules being changed on the phone, or several wrong PIN attempts
- The current rules, and the names of installed apps so you can choose what to block
- Today's usage time for the most-used apps
- The phone's make and model, to label it in the parent app
- Requests to approve a PIN reset
The parent's phone sends the child's phone the name you choose to be shown as, and any setting changes you make.
All of this is encrypted on the sending phone with keys created during pairing, which never leave the two phones. Unpairing, or uninstalling either app, stops it.
Grounded Parent App, on your phone
Grounded Parent App stores the name you entered, the pairing keys, and the latest status, alerts and rules received from your child's phone. This stays on your phone.
How messages travel
Our relay
Messages between the phones pass through a small relay service we run on Cloudflare Workers. The relay only ever handles encrypted messages it can't open. It keeps:
- Pairing messages for up to 10 minutes, deleted as soon as they're collected
- Messages meant for the parent's phone until that phone collects them, for up to 7 days
- Messages too large to deliver directly until they're collected, for up to 1 day
Each phone has a push token, a code from Google that lets messages reach it. The relay uses push tokens to deliver messages and stores them only as a one-way hash. It uses your IP address briefly to limit how often requests can be made, and doesn't record it. Cloudflare processes connection details such as IP addresses to run its network, under Cloudflare's privacy policy.
Firebase Cloud Messaging
To wake the receiving phone, the relay uses Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging. Google receives the phone's push token and the encrypted message. When a notification is shown, Google sees only the general text "There's an update from your child's phone". Google handles this under Firebase's privacy information.
Cloudflare and Google may process this data outside the UK, under their own safeguards for international transfers.
Children
Grounded is installed on a child's phone by their parent or guardian, who sets the rules and chooses whether to pair it with Grounded Parent App. Grounded Parent App is meant for adults. We don't knowingly collect information from children: the data described above stays on the family's own phones, apart from the encrypted messages and push tokens the relay passes between them.
Keeping and deleting data
Data on a phone stays until you change it, unpair, or uninstall the app. Uninstalling removes it. Data on the relay is deleted on the schedule above. Because we can't read relay messages and don't hold accounts, we can't look up or identify you or your child from what passes through.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask to access, correct or delete personal data we hold about you, or object to how it's used. As we hold almost nothing, most requests are met by unpairing or uninstalling. For anything else, email GroundedApp@outlook.com. If you're unhappy with our response, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.
Changes
If this policy changes, we'll update it here and change the date at the top. Significant changes will also be mentioned in the apps' release notes.