Legal

Privacy Policy

How SafeWingsChat collects, uses, and protects information — including your family's and your children's.

📅 Effective date: [PLACEHOLDER — fill in] 🔄 Last updated: [PLACEHOLDER — fill in]
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Before you publish this

This is a starting draft, not legal advice, and not a finished policy. It's structured to cover what Google's OAuth review checks for and what a children's chat app typically needs to disclose — but this app collects children's data, which carries real regulatory exposure (COPPA in the US, and likely equivalent rules elsewhere depending on where your families are). Have an actual lawyer review this — and fill in every [PLACEHOLDER] below — before it goes live or gets linked from your OAuth consent screen.

1. Overview

SafeWingsChat ("SafeWingsChat", "we", "us") is a parent-supervised messaging app that lets children communicate with family members and specific, parent-approved contacts. This policy explains what information we collect from parents and children, why we collect it, and the choices you have.

SafeWingsChat is operated by [PLACEHOLDER: legal entity name and address]. If you have questions about this policy, see Contact us below.

2. Information we collect

2.1 From the registering parent

  • Email address and password (used only for signing in — we never see your password itself, only what our authentication provider, Firebase Authentication, uses to verify it)
  • Name

2.2 About each child added to a family

  • First name and, optionally, last name
  • Gender, if provided — used only to choose an icon and pronoun within the app, never shared or used for any other purpose
  • A generated sign-in code, and whether they use a shared family device or their own

2.3 Messages and contacts

  • Message content sent between approved contacts, and the time each message was sent
  • Whether a message was automatically flagged for containing certain keywords, and which keywords matched (visible only to that child's parents)
  • Contact requests: who requested to connect with whom, the message included with the request, and its approval status

Photo sharing is planned but not yet active — see Google user data & Google Drive below for how it will work once it launches.

2.4 Technical information

  • A device push-notification token, so we can notify you of new messages and requests
  • Standard app diagnostic and crash information

3. Children's privacy

SafeWingsChat is designed to be used by children under the supervision of a parent, and we've built the app so a parent is involved at every step that matters:

  • Parental consent. A child's account can only be created by a parent, who registers the family and adds each child themselves. This is our mechanism for verifiable parental consent before any of a child's information is collected.
  • No new contact without approval. A child cannot add or be added by anyone — inside or outside the family — without a parent approving the request first.
  • No behavioral advertising. We do not show ads, and we do not use any child's information to build an advertising profile.
  • No selling of data. We do not sell or rent any child's personal information to third parties, ever.
  • Parental access. A parent can view their child's contacts, review their message history, and request deletion of their child's account and data at any time — see Your rights & choices.
  • Minimal collection. We only collect what's needed for the app's core safety and messaging features — see Information we collect above.

[PLACEHOLDER: if you operate in or serve users in the United States, confirm whether this app falls under COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) and add any additional required disclosures — e.g. a direct notice mechanism, FTC-compliant consent verification method, and contact details for a parent to review/delete their child's data. If you serve the UK or EU, similarly confirm requirements under the UK Children's Code / GDPR-K and add here.]

4. How we use information

We use the information described above only to:

  • Operate core app features — signing in, delivering messages, showing contacts, and processing contact requests
  • Let parents supervise their children's use of the app, including flagged-message alerts and chat history review
  • Send push notifications for new messages, new contact requests, and their approval status
  • Maintain and improve the security and reliability of the app

We do not use any information collected through SafeWingsChat for advertising, and we do not build profiles of children for any purpose beyond operating the app itself.

5. Google user data & Google Drive

This feature is planned but not yet active. Photo sharing does not currently work in the app, and SafeWingsChat does not yet request access to any family's Google Drive. This section describes how it's designed to work once it launches, so parents know what to expect in advance.

  • We will request Google's drive.file scope, which only ever gives SafeWingsChat access to files that SafeWingsChat itself creates. We will not be able to see, read, or modify anything else in that Google Drive account.
  • We will also request the connected account's email address, shown in the app so a parent can confirm which account is connected.
  • When a photo is sent through the app, it will be uploaded directly to the sending family's own connected Google Drive, and shared with view-only access so the recipient can see it. SafeWingsChat's own servers will never store the photo — only a reference to it.
  • The access token used to upload on a family's behalf will be stored securely and used only for this purpose. It will never be visible to any parent, child, or other family — including your own.
  • Once available, a parent will be able to disconnect Google Drive at any time from Account settings, or by revoking access directly from their Google Account's security settings. Disconnecting will not affect photos already sent — it will only stop new ones until reconnected.

Once this feature is active, the use of information received from Google Workspace scopes will adhere to the Google User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. This policy will be updated to reflect the feature's actual launch before it goes live.

6. Sharing of information

We do not sell any personal information. We share information only with:

  • Service providers who operate the app on our behalf — currently Google Firebase (authentication, database, cloud functions, and push notifications). Once photo sharing launches, this will also include a connecting family's own Google Drive.
  • Other approved contacts, strictly limited to what's necessary for the app to function — e.g. a child's name is visible to their approved contacts, and messages are visible only to the two people in that conversation and that child's parents.
  • Legal or safety reasons, if required by law or necessary to protect the safety of a child using the app.

[PLACEHOLDER: list any additional third-party services you use — e.g. analytics or crash reporting — with links to their own privacy policies, or state explicitly that none are used.]

7. Retention & deletion

We retain account and message information for as long as the family's account remains active, so that parents retain access to their children's chat history for supervision purposes. A parent can request deletion of their family's account and all associated data at any time — see Contact us.

[PLACEHOLDER: specify exact retention timelines, and how quickly a deletion request is processed.]

8. Security

We use industry-standard practices to protect information, including encrypted connections, access controls limiting who can read what data, and Firebase App Check to help ensure only the genuine SafeWingsChat app can communicate with our backend. No method of transmission or storage is ever 100% secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security.

9. Your rights & choices

  • Access and review. Parents can view their children's contacts and chat history directly in the app at any time.
  • Correct or update. Names, photos, and other profile details can be edited from within the app.
  • Delete. A parent can request deletion of their family's account and data — see Contact us.

[PLACEHOLDER: if you operate in jurisdictions with specific statutory rights — e.g. GDPR's right to portability, or state-level US privacy laws — list them explicitly here.]

10. International users

[PLACEHOLDER: state where your servers/data are located, and add any required disclosures for international data transfers if you serve families outside that region.]

11. Changes to this policy

If we change how we access, use, or share information — including Google user data — in a way that's materially different from what's described here, we'll update this page and, where required, ask for your renewed consent before the change takes effect.

12. Contact us

Questions about this policy, or requests to review or delete your family's data, can be sent to [PLACEHOLDER: support/contact email].