Privacy

Controller

The controller under the GDPR is ANTICIPATER GmbH, Alter Schlachthof 39, 76131 Karlsruhe, represented by Thorsten Reiser. Contact: hallo@anticipater.com · +49 (0) 721 619 025 28.

The app

On the devices, the app stores: the names you choose for yourself and your child, your schedules, app groups, approval requests and decisions from the last 30 days, as well as the cryptographic keys for the pairing. Only the child’s iPhone itself knows which apps in a group are blocked – Apple does not pass this selection on to other devices or to us.

Between the devices, this data is transmitted end-to-end encrypted: directly over the local network or via Bluetooth when the devices are nearby, and otherwise via the iCloud service of the Apple IDs involved. Apple stores only encrypted messages, which it cannot read, and delivers notifications via the Apple Push Notification service. To ensure that a notification is displayed, the sending iPhone also places an empty “wake-up ping” in the app’s public iCloud database. It contains only a random recipient identifier derived from the pairing and no content; each new ping replaces the previous one. Apple is responsible for iCloud; Apple’s privacy policy applies.

Screen Time: The app uses Apple’s Screen Time interface (Family Controls). The reporting under “Usage & Activity” (Screen Time, unlocks and most-used apps) is provided by a sandboxed Apple extension directly on the iPhone. This data never leaves the device, and neither the rest of the app nor we can read it.

Movement: If you allow this in your iPhone’s Settings (Motion & Fitness), the app reads the current day’s steps, distance and activity minutes (walking, running, cycling and driving) from the motion sensors. On the child’s iPhone, daily summaries – containing only numbers, no locations – are sent end-to-end encrypted to the paired parents’ iPhones, where they are retained for 30 days. The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), which you can revoke at any time in your iPhone’s Settings.

Places: Parents can create places such as “Home” or “School” on their iPhone, either through an address search (Apple Maps) or using their current location, with a radius around it. If you allow “Always” location access on the child’s iPhone, iOS monitors these areas on the device. The app reports only arrivals and departures (place, timestamp) end-to-end encrypted to the paired parents’ iPhones; no coordinates are transmitted. If-Then rules can react to these events. The legal basis is the consent of the child’s custodial parents (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). Deleting a place in the app or withdrawing location access in your iPhone’s Settings ends the processing.

Movement profile (optional, off by default): If parents enable it for a child, the child’s iPhone records significant location changes and places where the child stays (Apple Location Services, not to the minute), retains them for 30 days, and sends them end-to-end encrypted to the paired parents’ iPhones, which display the day’s route on a map. The child can see in their app that the movement profile is switched on. Turning it off deletes the history on both iPhones. The legal basis is the consent of the child’s custodial parents (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR), which can be revoked in the app at any time. We receive none of this data.

Network: If network monitoring is enabled (automatically on children’s iPhones when Screen Time approval is granted), a content filter directly on the iPhone tracks the number of connections and amount of data used by each domain and app. The content of connections is not read or stored. The filter also records when the child’s iPhone was unlocked and subsequently locked again (times only, kept on the device for 30 days), and sends today’s and yesterday’s times end-to-end encrypted to the paired parents’ iPhones. The child can see this under “What your parents see”. The counts are kept only on the device. Children’s iPhones send a daily summary (total volume, most-used domains and apps) end-to-end encrypted to the paired parents’ iPhones. We receive none of this data.

Protection list and ad blocker: The iPhone compares the domains accessed with bundled lists and blocks matches – on children’s iPhones via the network filter. The protection list for malware, phishing and scam domains (HaGeZi Threat Intelligence Feeds) is enabled until the parents turn it off; the ad and tracker blocker (Steven Black Hosts) is optional. The comparison takes place exclusively on the device. The lists are bundled with every version of the app and, from iOS 26 onward, are also updated through Apple’s App Store (additional app data hosted by Apple, identical for all users and containing no information about you or your child). If there is a match, the iPhone displays a notification with the blocked domain, and Safari displays a block page. The page’s “Why is this blocked?” link opens familydevice.com/blockiert without any information about the domain or you – and only if you tap it. The count records only how many times each domain was blocked. Children’s iPhones send these counts with the daily summary end-to-end encrypted to the parents’ iPhones, so that parents can see when an app or website makes connections to malware domains.

Updates are distributed by Apple via TestFlight or the App Store. The devices tell one another which version is running on the other paired iPhones over the encrypted connection – the app does not ask any server for this information.

Purchases and subscriptions are handled by Apple. We only receive anonymized sales reports from Apple, no payment data and no names.

Crash reports: If you have allowed analytics data to be shared with app developers in your iPhone’s Settings, Apple makes anonymous crash reports available to us. You can turn this off there at any time.

The familydevice.com website

When you access the website, our hosting provider, Vercel Inc., processes technically necessary server logs (IP address, time of access, page accessed, browser) to deliver and secure the site. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; the transfer to the USA is based on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or the Standard Contractual Clauses. The website uses no cookies, does not require a login and does not include any analytics tools. We have a data processing agreement in place with Vercel (Art. 28 GDPR).

The website suggests a different language version if your browser is set to prefer one of our languages. To do this, the page reads your browser’s language preference—which your browser already shares with every website—solely in your browser; nothing is stored or transmitted to us in the process.

If you contact us by email—for example, to request beta access—we process your message and email address so that we can reply (Art. 6(1)(b) or (f) GDPR) and delete them once they are no longer needed.

Children and young people

familydevice is designed for families in which parents accompany their children as they use their iPhone. The features that share information about the child—location, movement profile, movement and network—are either enabled by default or require permission in the child’s iPhone Settings. None of this is hidden: As long as it is switched on, the app on the child’s iPhone shows parents what is currently being sent to them under “What your parents see”.

Parental consent does not replace a conversation with the child. The older the child is, the more important their own opinion becomes; from the age of 16, they should have a say in features such as location or the movement profile. We have carried out a Data Protection Impact Assessment for these features (Art. 35 GDPR).

Recipients at a glance

APPLE

iCloud (encrypted messages between your iPhones), push service, Apple Maps (address lookup for locations), TestFlight/App Store (updates, current protection lists, purchases, subscriptions, voluntary crash reports)

VERCEL

Only the familydevice.com website: technically necessary server logs

WE

Only emails you send us—we receive nothing from the app

What we deliberately do not do

• No Google Analytics, no Plausible, no Matomo, no Facebook Pixel—neither in the app nor on the website.
• No advertising tracking, no third-party cookies, no advertising SDKs.
• We do not create profiles of your children’s app use, browsing activity or movement behavior—everything stays within your family.
• We neither sell nor share data.

Deletion

App data is stored on your devices and in your iCloud. “Disconnect” in the app deletes keys, rules and history from the device and the corresponding iCloud areas; deleting the app removes the remaining data from the device.

Your rights

You have the right to request access to and correction of your data, to have it erased, to request restrictions on processing, to request data portability and to object. Write to us at hallo@anticipater.com—we will respond within 30 days. You can also lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority responsible for us: Landesbeauftragter für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit Baden-Württemberg.