Privacy policy

Who we are

Owl is a family organiser app made by Yarqat (SMC-Private) Limited (“Owl”, “we”, “us”). We decide how and why the information described here is used. That makes us the operator under the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Our contact details are in Contact us.

What this policy covers

This policy covers the Owl apps for iPhone and Android, including Kids mode on a child's device. It also covers the website owlbell.com and the emails and support we provide. It explains what we collect about:

• you, if you create a family or are invited to one (we call you an adult or a parent);
• the children in your family. Our Children's privacy notice gives more detail, including our COPPA notice to parents;
• other people whose details appear in things you add, such as a coach whose message you paste in;
• visitors to our website.

Owl is offered to families in the United States. You must be 18 or older, or the age of majority where you live if that's higher, to create a family or join one as an adult. Children can only use Owl through a parent's family, never on their own.

The information we collect

We collect only what Owl needs to do what you ask. Most of it you type or add yourself.

Information from you and your family

Information from a child's device (Kids mode)

We collect this only after a parent has given consent. See the Children's privacy notice.

Information collected automatically

Information from others

• From Apple and Google, through our subscription provider: whether you have Family Plus and when it renews. Never your card details.
• From other adults in your family: what they add to shared plans.
• From people who email your family's forwarding address. We only accept senders you allow, if you turn that on.

What we don't collect

• Payment card or bank details. Apple and Google handle all payments for subscriptions, and Owl never moves money for school or club fees.
• Advertising identifiers (such as Apple's IDFA or Google's advertising ID), or anything that tracks you across other apps or websites.
• Your phone's whole address book or photo library. When you pick a contact or a photo, we receive only what you pick.
• Recordings of your voice. See Voice commands.
• Anything that makes information public. Nothing in Owl is public; your family's information is visible only inside your family.

How we use information

We use information to:

• provide Owl and the features you choose to turn on;
• send the notifications and emails you ask for, and the service messages we have to send (sign-in codes, security alerts, changes to our terms);
• keep Owl and your family's information secure, and prevent fraud and misuse;
• help you when you contact us, and respond to privacy requests and complaints;
• understand, in aggregate, which features are used so we can improve Owl. We never do this at the level of what a child does;
• manage your subscription;
• meet our legal obligations, such as keeping tax records, and protect people's safety and rights.

We never:

• sell or rent personal information, or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising;
• show advertising in Owl, or let advertising or analytics companies collect information through Owl;
• use children's information to build profiles, or for anything other than running your family's Owl;
• use your information, or your children's, to train artificial intelligence models, ours or anyone else's;
• make decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects based only on automated processing.

Owl's AI features

Owl can read a message you paste, share or forward, such as a coach's message about a tournament, and suggest the dates, things to bring and payments it finds. Owl can also answer questions about your family's plans (Ask). To do this:

• We send the message, or your question and the relevant parts of your family's plans, to our AI provider, OpenAI, through its API. OpenAI processes it for us under a data processing agreement and returns the result.
• Before anything is sent, Owl replaces the names you've saved for your family with placeholders such as "Child 1", and puts them back when the result returns.
• We switch these features on only under OpenAI's zero data retention, so OpenAI doesn't store what we send once it has returned the result. OpenAI doesn't use information sent through its API to train its models, and our agreement doesn't allow it to.
• We never send your care card or your stored documents to OpenAI, only the messages you choose to share and the questions you ask.
• The first time you use these features, the app asks for your permission, and you can stop using them at any time.
• Nothing is added to your family until you check it and tap Add. The suggestions can be wrong, so please check dates and amounts.
• We delete the original message 30 days after you review it, or 30 days after it arrives if you never review it.
• Information collected from a child in Kids mode is never sent to our AI provider.

Voice commands

Voice commands are an optional feature of the parent app; they aren't available in Kids mode. Your phone's own speech recognition (Apple's on iPhone, Google's on Android) turns what you say into text. Depending on your phone's settings, that happens on the phone or on Apple's or Google's servers, under their privacy terms. Owl never receives the audio.

Owl receives the text, carries out the command once you confirm it, and keeps the text in your Voice history for 30 days so you can see and undo what happened. Read-out uses your phone's built-in voice. You can turn voice off in Settings, Voice & read-out, and clear your Voice history at any time.

Location and screen time

These features are for family safety and healthy routines, and they're designed so that nothing happens in secret:

• They're off by default. A parent turns them on for a specific child, and the child's device clearly shows when they're on.
• A live view of a child's location lasts 15 minutes, and the child can see that a parent is viewing.
• During a live view we keep only the latest position, and delete it when the view ends (within 24 hours at most). Location starts at approximate accuracy, and we keep arrivals and departures for 7 days unless a parent chooses 30 days or no history. We keep help alerts for 90 days.
• We keep screen-time data for 30 days (individual app sessions) and 90 days (daily summaries).
• Location features are for children only. Owl never tracks adults.
• You may not use Owl to monitor anyone without their knowledge, or any adult without their consent. See our Terms.

Maps, address search and drive times are provided by Mapbox. When you open directions, the destination is handed to Apple Maps or Google Maps, which use it under their own terms.

Health information

The care card is optional. If you add a child's allergies, medical conditions or medicines, you give us your explicit consent to store them so the adults you choose can see them. No one else sees them until you turn it on for that person. We use them for nothing else, never share them outside your family except with our storage provider, and you can edit or delete them at any time.

You can also send a babysitter who doesn't use Owl a link to the care card for one evening. The link only opens with a 4-digit code that you give them separately, stops working within 24 hours, leaves out your plans and places, and shows you when it was opened. You can stop it at any time.

In some US states this counts as consumer health data. Our Consumer health data privacy policy sets out how we handle it under those laws.

Who we share information with

• Within your family. Adults you invite see the children and information you allow, and can do only what you allow. A child in Kids mode sees their own day. You can change or remove anyone's access at any time, and a babysitter's access can end on a date.
• Service providers who run parts of Owl for us: hosting and storage, email, AI reading, maps, subscriptions, notifications and crash reports. They may use information only to provide their service to us, under written contracts that require them to keep it confidential and secure. The current list is on our Service providers page.
• Apple and Google, when you buy a subscription through them (they handle payment under their own policies), and when your phone uses their services, such as speech recognition, maps or push notifications.
• For legal reasons: when the law requires it, to respond to valid legal requests, or to protect the rights, property or safety of our users, children or others. We challenge requests that are too broad, and we tell you unless the law or a safety risk prevents it.
• If our business changes hands in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, information may transfer to the new owner. The new owner must keep protecting it as this policy describes. We'll tell you before that happens, and children's information will be used only as described here unless parents consent again.
• With your consent, for anything else.

We don't sell personal information, and we don't share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, as California and other US state laws define those terms. We don't disclose personal information to third parties for their own direct marketing.

How long we keep information

We keep information only for as long as it's needed for the purpose we collected it for, then delete it. Within these limits, you can delete anything sooner yourself.

When you delete your account, we delete your family's information within 30 days. It drops out of our encrypted backups within a further 35 days. We keep only subscription transaction records, records of privacy requests and complaints, and sign-in records, for the periods above and for no other use.

Inactive accounts: if no one in a family signs in for 24 months, we email the account holder. If there's still no sign-in 60 days later, we delete the family.

Your rights and choices

Everyone

In the app, or by emailing privacy@owlbell.com, you can:

• see and download your family's information (Settings, Privacy & data, Download your data);
• correct it;
• delete individual items, a child, or your whole account (Settings, Privacy & data, or owlbell.com/delete-account);
• turn off optional features such as location, screen time, voice, AI reading and notifications;
• withdraw any consent you've given. This doesn't affect anything done before you withdrew it.

We'll check it's really you, usually with a code sent to your account email. We'll reply within 45 days, and tell you if we need more time, as the law allows. Using your rights is free, and we won't treat you differently for using them.

If you're in the US

Depending on your state, you may have the right to know, access, correct, delete and receive a copy of your personal information, and to opt out of its sale, targeted advertising and certain profiling. We don't sell personal information, target advertising or profile, and we give every US user the rights above wherever they live.

• You can use an authorised agent. We may ask the agent for proof of your permission, and ask you to confirm your identity with us directly.
• If we turn down a request, you can appeal by replying to our decision or emailing privacy@owlbell.com with “Appeal” in the subject. We'll answer within 45 days. If you're not satisfied, you can contact your state attorney general.
• We use sensitive information (children's information, precise location and health information) only to provide the features you ask for, and only with the consent the law requires.

Children

Children can't create an Owl account. A parent adds their children and chooses whether a child uses Kids mode on their own device. Before we collect any information from a child under 13, we give the parent a notice and get their verifiable consent, as COPPA requires. We follow the UK Age Appropriate Design Code for all children under 18.

The Children's privacy notice explains exactly what we collect from children and why, how long we keep it, who we share it with, and how parents can review it, delete it or stop further collection.

Security

We protect information with safeguards suited to how sensitive it is. They include:

• encryption in transit (TLS) for everything between the apps, the website and our servers, and encryption at rest by our hosting provider;
• sign-in with a one-time email code, Apple or Google, or a password of at least 10 characters that we check against known leaked passwords (only a short fragment of its scrambled form is used for that check, never the password); optional two-step verification with an authenticator app or a passkey (never a second email or text message); and Face ID or a PIN to lock the app;
• staff access only when it's needed to support you or run the service. Access is limited by role, protected with two-step sign-in, and recorded in an audit log;
• a written information security program that we review at least once a year, with a named person responsible for it, as the COPPA Rule requires;
• written contracts requiring our service providers to protect the information they handle for us.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, we'll notify you and the authorities as the law requires.

International transfers

Owl is made by a company in Pakistan. Our team may access information from Pakistan, only when needed to support you and run the service, with the same access controls, encryption and audit logs described in Security.

Owl's own servers and databases are in [United States: confirm the production servers are there]. Most of our service providers are in the United States too, and a few, such as the push notification, email and network services, operate worldwide.

Apple's push notification service offers no data processing agreement, so we give it only what it needs to deliver a notification: a push token and encrypted content that only the Owl app on your phone can read. We do the same with Google's push service.

Website, cookies and Do Not Track

• owlbell.com doesn't use advertising or analytics cookies, and doesn't let third parties collect information about your activity over time or across other websites. We only use storage that's strictly necessary for the site to work: two small settings in your browser's local storage, that you closed the cookie message and whether you picked light or dark mode. They stay on your device and are never sent to us.
• If you join our early-access list, we use your email only to tell you when Owl opens, and every email has an unsubscribe link.
• Because we don't track visitors across websites, we respond to “Do Not Track” and Global Privacy Control signals the same way we treat everyone: without tracking. We treat a Global Privacy Control signal as a request to opt out of sale and sharing, which we don't do anyway.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we'll post the new version here with a new date. If a change is significant, we'll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect. If we want to collect, use or share children's information in a materially different way, we'll ask parents for consent again first.

Contact us

For questions about privacy or to use your rights:

• Company: Yarqat (SMC-Private) Limited (registered in Pakistan, number 0355440)
• Post: 304, Plaza 11, Sector C, Bahria Enclave, Islamabad, Pakistan
• Email: privacy@owlbell.com
• Phone: +92 339 0800030

We can provide this policy in other formats, such as large print, on request. For help with the app itself, email support@owlbell.com.