Privacy Policy

Effective September 2026

Chore Lock is a family app, and much of what it touches belongs to kids. So we hold ourselves to a simple standard: collect as little as we can, protect what we collect, and never make money from your family's data. This page explains, in plain English, exactly what we store, who touches it, and what you can do about it.

The short version. No ads. No third-party analytics or trackers. We never sell your family's data. Kids don't have accounts, don't give us an email address, and can't sign up on their own. Chore photos delete automatically 7 days after they're submitted. On paid plans, a chore photo can be checked by an AI service, Anthropic's Claude, which sees the photo, any “what done looks like” photos you added, the chore's name, and your child's age range — never your names or anything else that identifies your family. Which apps your child uses, and for how long, never leaves their device. And you can delete everything, for good, from inside the app.

Who we are and what this covers

Chore Lock is made and operated by ACED LLC, a Missouri limited liability company, at 1911 S National Ave, Suite 104, Springfield, MO 65804, United States, phone (417) 425-1395. If you have any question about this policy or your data, email support@getchorelock.com. A real person reads it.

This policy covers the Chore Lock app for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, its home-screen widgets, and the getchorelock.com website, including the free School Calendar Finder.

How signing in works

Parents sign in with Apple. That's the only way to create a Chore Lock account. There is no Chore Lock password to invent or forget. Apple gives us a stable account identifier and, if you allow it, your name and email address. If you choose Apple's Hide My Email, we only ever see the relay address Apple creates, never your real one. Your sign-in record is held by Firebase Authentication, the sign-in service we use from Google. Apple also hands us a sign-in token for your account, which we keep only on our servers, never on any device, for one purpose: so we can tell Apple to disconnect Chore Lock from your Apple account when you delete your account.
Kids never make an account. There is no kid sign-up, no kid email address, and no kid password. A parent pairs each kid's device with a short code from the parent app. The device then holds an anonymous credential that only means "this device belongs to this kid in this household." It carries no name, no email, and nothing that identifies your child outside your own family.
Co-parents and guest caregivers join the same way a parent does: Sign in with Apple, plus an invite from a parent in your household.

What we collect

Everything below exists to make Chore Lock work for your family. We don't collect anything for advertising, and we don't buy data about you from anyone.

About parents and other adults

Your Apple sign-in details: the identifier Apple assigns, and your name and email if you shared them at sign-in.
Your household: its name, its time zone, and the settings you choose (schedules, always-free apps, school hours, Sleep Time, rollover and streak rules, quiet hours, notification preferences, the AI strictness setting, and whether the family leaderboard is on).
Adult names and roles: the name you give each adult in the household and whether they're a parent or a guest caregiver.
Your parent PIN, which stays on your own phone. It is never sent to us.
Subscription status: which plan your household is on and when it renews or lapses, as reported to us by Apple. We never see your payment details.

When we ask an adult to confirm their birth year during setup, the answer stays on that phone as a simple "confirmed" flag. We don't store a parent's birth year on our servers.

About kids

First name and birth year. The first name labels their chores. The birth year picks the kid-mode experience for their age and, on paid plans, gives the AI photo check a coarse age bracket (see below). We don't ask for a last name, an exact birthday, a school name, or a photo of your child's face.
Their profile: the emoji and color they picked for their avatar, their kid-mode level, and their current streak.
Chores and history: the chores assigned to them, what they claimed, submitted, and completed, who approved or sent back each one and when, and any notes an adult wrote.
Proof photos: the photos a kid takes inside the app to show a chore is done, kept for 7 days as described below.
Time and rewards: minutes earned and used, requests for more time, Chore Bucks balances, what they bought from your family's Market, grounding periods, and Family Jackpot contributions.

About kid devices

A paired kid device checks in with our servers regularly so the parent dashboard can be honest about whether protection is working. Each check-in records: when the device was last seen, whether Apple's Screen Time permission is still granted, whether an app selection is configured, whether monitoring is running, what the device currently has locked, the Chore Lock version installed, whether notifications are allowed, whether a grown-up PIN exists on the device, whether Apple's Communication Safety is switched on, and a count and fingerprint of the app lists so we can tell a parent if the lists changed. We do not record the device's name or model. We never record which apps are on the device or which apps your child opens (see "Screen time" below).

We also store the anonymous notification token Apple issues for each phone, watch, or iPad, so we can deliver push notifications to the right device.

Reference photos parents add

On paid plans a parent can add up to two "this is what done looks like" photos to a chore, chosen from the parent's own photo library. They're processed with the same hygiene as proof photos (hidden camera data stripped, downscaled) and stored with the chore. They are kept until you remove them, delete the chore, or delete the household. They're not on the 7-day schedule because they're yours, not your child's.

How we use it

We use your family's data to run Chore Lock: showing chores, approving them, paying out minutes and Chore Bucks, locking and unlocking apps on the schedule you set, sending the notifications you asked for, keeping the parent dashboard truthful, and running the AI photo check on paid plans. We also use it to keep the service safe (for example, to stop someone from reaching another family's data), to answer your support emails, and to count how many families use the app. That's the whole list. We don't use it for advertising, and we don't build profiles of your children.

The AI photo check

On Premium Solo and Premium Family, including during the free trial of Premium Family, a chore photo can be checked automatically so your kid's minutes land right away instead of waiting for you. This is the one place a photo goes beyond our own servers, so here is exactly what happens.

When it runs. Only for chores that need a photo, only on paid plans, and only after the on-device check described below has allowed the photo and it has reached our servers. On the free plan it never runs.
What is sent. The proof photo, any reference photos you added to that chore, the chore's title, your household's strictness setting (Lenient, Balanced, or Strict), and a coarse age bracket worked out from your child's birth year: "under 6", "6–9", "10–12", or "teen". That's the entire request.
What is not sent. Your child's name, your name, your email, your household name, any account or device identifier, and your location. The check sees a picture and a chore title, nothing more. One thing to know: the chore title is whatever you typed. If you put your child's name in a title, that name travels with the photo. Keep titles generic if you'd rather it didn't.
Who processes it. Anthropic, PBC, through its Claude API, under our own commercial account and our own key. A fast model looks first; if it isn't confident, a second, more capable model takes a look. We tell the model that the photo is untrusted content and that any text or instructions visible in the picture are scenery to judge, never commands to follow.
What comes back. One of two answers: "pass" or "unsure". The AI can never reject a chore. A "pass" auto-approves the chore and pays the reward; an "unsure" sends the chore to a parent for review, exactly as it would have gone without AI. We record the verdict on the chore's history. No description of the photo, and nothing else from the provider, is stored.
You can take it back. A parent has 24 hours to overturn any automatic approval and send the chore back for a redo. Once you've overturned one, the AI leaves that chore alone and it goes to you from then on.
How long each side keeps it. On our side, the photo follows the 7-day rule below whether or not the AI looked at it. On Anthropic's side, what we send is never used to train Anthropic's models, and it is deleted within 30 days. One exception, in their published terms: if their automated safety systems flag something as breaking their rules, they can keep it for up to two years, and the score behind that flag for up to seven.
How to turn it off. AI photo checks are part of the paid plans. If you'd rather a person reviewed every photo, turn AI photo checks off in Household Settings, or stay on the free plan, where they never run. The strictness setting lives in the same place.
If it can't run. If the AI service is unavailable, or a household sends an unusually large number of photos in one month (our fair-use ceiling is currently 2,500 checks per household per month), photos simply go to a parent for review. Nothing is ever blocked.
We don't train on your family. We do not use your family's photos or chores to train AI models of our own, and we don't let anyone else do so.

Chore photos and how long we keep them

Proof photos exist so a parent can check a chore was really done. They're encrypted in transit and at rest, and visible only to the adults and kids in your household. We keep each photo for 7 days and then delete it automatically. The 7 days start when the photo is submitted. If it was taken with no internet and uploaded later, they start when it actually reaches our servers, so a parent always gets the full review window. After that, the chore stays in your history and the photo simply reads "photo expired." A parent can delete any photo sooner, instantly, at any time, and a kid can ask a parent to delete a photo of theirs from inside the app. Deleting a chore deletes its reference photos; deleting your household deletes every photo you own. Approving, sending back, or overturning a chore never changes how long a photo is kept. We never sell photos and never use them for advertising.

The one exception: if the law requires us to preserve a specific file (for example, a legal preservation request, or our duty as an online service to report suspected child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children), we preserve only what we're required to preserve, for only as long as the law requires.

Before a photo ever leaves your kid's device

People are blocked. If the camera sees a person in the frame, the photo is not uploaded. Your kid gets a friendly "try again without anyone in the picture." Where Apple's operating system offers it, the device also screens for sensitive content the same way.
Nothing is recorded about that check. The result stays on the device. It is never sent to us, never shown to a parent, never counted, and never logged. A blocked photo is never stored anywhere, and your kid is never penalized. It's a free retake.
Hidden camera data is stripped. Photos are downscaled and re-encoded from scratch before upload, which drops GPS coordinates, device details, and every other hidden tag a camera writes into a file. Chore Lock never trusts a photo's own timestamp; the app stamps the time itself.
Camera only, never the camera roll. Proof photos must be taken inside the app, so nothing else in your child's photo library is ever involved.
No face recognition. We never run face recognition and never create face signatures, on the device or on our servers.

Screen time: what stays on your kid's device

The locking is done by Apple's own parental-control technology, the system behind Screen Time, running on your kid's device. That matters for privacy: which apps your child opens, and for how long, stays on their device. When you pick which apps are earnable or always free, Apple hands the app anonymous tokens, so Chore Lock cannot see which apps you chose, and neither can we. Usage is metered on the device; what reaches our servers is the bookkeeping you'd expect: minutes earned, minutes used, and whether the device is currently locked.

We never collect your child's location, contacts, browsing history, messages, or the contents of anything they type outside the app.

Widgets and Apple Watch

Home-screen widgets read a small snapshot the app writes on the same device (today's chores, the time ring, the next lock). That snapshot never leaves the device. The parent Apple Watch app receives what you'd see on your phone, including a proof photo you're about to approve, directly from your own iPhone.

School calendars

On paid plans, a parent can connect a kid's school calendar by giving us the school's public subscribe link, or by pasting a school web page so Chore Lock can find the link. Our servers then fetch that feed on a schedule. We store the link, when we last fetched it and whether that worked, and only the handful of items that can affect a school-hours lock: days off, half days, and delayed starts, together with the school's own wording so you can see why we flagged a day. Everything else in the feed is discarded. The calendar is public information published by the school. A connected calendar can only ever relax a lock, never add one, and you confirm the dates yourself.

Subscriptions and payments

All billing runs through Apple and your App Store account. We never see or store your card, your billing address, or your Apple Account details. Apple tells us that a household's subscription is active, renewed, refunded, or lapsed, and we store that status so the app knows which features to unlock.

Children's privacy

Chore Lock is built for families and is operated by parents from start to finish. A parent creates the household, adds each kid, pairs each device, decides what gets locked, and can see and delete everything a kid's profile contains. Children cannot create accounts, cannot sign up, and cannot give us information a parent hasn't set up for them. Chore Lock is not directed to children as its audience; it's a parenting tool that a child uses on a device their parent paired.

What we collect from a child. Once a parent adds a child and pairs their device, the child's use of the app creates: proof photos (kept 7 days), chore claims and completions, requests for more time, and the anonymous device credential and check-ins described above. The parent supplies the child's first name and birth year. That's the complete list. We collect no more than we need to run the app, and we never ask a child for anything else, including a last name, address, phone number, email, location, contacts, or browsing history.

How we get consent. Under the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the parent is the account holder and the person who directs every piece of collection about a child. By adding a child to your household, you confirm that you are that child's parent or legal guardian and you consent to the collection, use, and handling described in this policy, including the AI photo check on paid plans. We use the information only to operate Chore Lock for your family, and we share it only with the service providers named below, who may use it only to provide their service to us. We never disclose a child's information to anyone else, never sell it, and never use it for advertising.

How to reach us about your child. ACED LLC, 1911 S National Ave, Suite 104, Springfield, MO 65804, United States; phone (417) 425-1395; email support@getchorelock.com.

Your rights as a parent. At any time you can review what we hold about your child (it's all visible in the app), correct it, delete any of it, or delete all of it. Deleting a kid's profile removes their data; deleting the household removes everything. You can also refuse any further collection by unpairing the device or deleting the profile. If you'd rather we did any of this, or you want a copy of your child's data, email support@getchorelock.com from the address on your account and we'll take care of it. We'll confirm you're the parent on the account before we act.

Who we share with

We don't sell your data, and we don't share it with anyone who wants it for their own purposes. The only companies that touch it are the ones that run the service for us, under contract, on our instructions:

Google (Firebase and Google Cloud): our database, file storage, sign-in, push-notification delivery, and the servers our code runs on. This is where your household's data lives, in Google's data centers in the United States.
Apple: Sign in with Apple, push notifications, and App Store billing.
Anthropic: the AI photo check described above, on paid plans only, and only when the check is on.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it (for example, a valid subpoena or court order), to comply with a legal duty to report, or to protect someone's safety. We'll tell you unless the law forbids it. If Chore Lock is ever sold or merged, your data would move with it under this same policy, and we'd tell you first.

What we never do

No ads. Not on the free plan, not anywhere.
No third-party trackers or analytics. No ad networks, no data brokers, no analytics companies, no crash-reporting companies inside the app. The only code from outside our company that runs in the app is Apple's and the Firebase libraries we need to talk to our own servers. Our own simple counters (how many chores got done, how many families signed up) run on our own servers.
No face recognition. Ever.
No selling, renting, or "sharing" of your data for anyone else's marketing. Not yours, and especially not your kids'.

This website

getchorelock.com sets no cookies and runs no third-party analytics. We count page views anonymously: a single number per page per day, with nothing recorded about who you are, so we can tell how many people are interested. If you join the waitlist, we store your email address and the date you signed up, for one purpose: sending you one email when Chore Lock launches. We don't share it, and we'll delete it on request; just write to support@getchorelock.com.

Our free School Calendar Finder searches public government school directories. To keep it healthy we apply a daily lookup limit per visitor. That works by storing a scrambled version of your IP address (a salted hash we can't turn back into the address) alongside the date and a count, nothing else. That record is marked to expire 7 days later and is then deleted. We never store the school you searched for alongside it. When you use the finder from inside the app, the same daily limit applies to your account instead of your address.

Your choices and your rights

Most of what you'd want to do, you can do yourself in the app: see and change your kids' profiles, chores, and every household setting; delete any photo; turn notifications on or off by type (except tamper alerts, which stay on, because a parental-control app that can go quiet isn't one); turn AI photo checks off; unpair a device; remove an adult; delete a kid; and delete the whole household.

For anything else, email support@getchorelock.com. Whether or not a particular law applies to you, we'll honor these requests from anyone: tell you what we hold about your family, give you a copy, correct it, delete it, or stop a particular use. We'll verify that you're the parent on the account first, we won't charge you, and we won't treat you differently for asking. We aim to answer within 30 days.

California and other U.S. states. We do not sell personal information, we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, we do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for anything beyond running the service, and we have no financial-incentive programs. Because we never sell or share it, we knowingly sell or share no personal information of anyone under 16. Rights to know, access, correct, delete, and to be free from retaliation apply as described above, and you can use an authorized agent by having them email us with your written permission.

European Economic Area, United Kingdom, and Switzerland. Chore Lock is built and operated in the United States for families in the United States. If you use it from the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland, this is where we stand. ACED LLC is the controller. We process your family's data to provide the service you signed up for (performance of a contract), to keep it secure and prevent abuse (our legitimate interests), and, for the optional AI photo check and for a child's data, on the basis of the parent's consent, which the parent can withdraw at any time by turning the feature off or deleting the data. Your data is stored and processed in the United States by the providers named above; we rely on the safeguards in their data-processing terms, including the European Commission's standard contractual clauses. You have the rights to access, correct, erase, restrict, port, and object, and to complain to your local data-protection authority. We don't currently have a representative in the EU or the UK. Email us and we'll help.

Deleting your account

You can delete everything from inside the app: Settings → Account & PIN → Delete household & account. It is a real delete, not a hide. When you use it we remove your household and everything under it: every kid profile, every chore and its history, every photo submission, the time and Chore Bucks ledgers, requests, lock instructions, device records, notification tokens, and every adult and kid-device session, together with the stored photo files themselves, any unused invite or pairing codes, your household's subscription record, and the sign-in accounts of everyone in the household: yours, any co-parent's or guest's, and each paired kid device's. We also tell Apple to disconnect Chore Lock from each adult's Apple account, so it no longer appears under Sign in with Apple in your Apple ID settings, and we discard the sign-in token that let us do that. Deleting your household also signs out and cuts off every paired device.

Three honest caveats. Cancelling your subscription is separate and happens in your Apple account settings; deleting your data doesn't cancel a subscription, and Apple handles any refund. Copies in our database provider's encrypted backups expire on their own schedule shortly afterwards rather than in the same instant. And if an adult in your household first signed in before we began keeping the Apple sign-in token described above, we have nothing to hand Apple for that sign-in, so Chore Lock may stay listed under Sign in with Apple in that person's Apple ID settings until they remove it there themselves (Settings → your name → Sign in with Apple); their account with us is still fully deleted either way.

If you'd rather we did it, or you want confirmation it's gone, email support@getchorelock.com.

Keeping it safe

Your family's data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Access is enforced household by household on our servers, so one family's data can't be reached from another family's account. Photo uploads are accepted only from a paired kid device or a parent in that household, only as images, and can only be deleted from within the household that owns them. Kid devices can never change chores, reward amounts, or settings. Your household's plan is set on our servers from what Apple reports, never by the app itself, so a plan can't be faked. No system is perfect, but we treat kids' data as the most sensitive thing we hold, and we build like it. If we ever learn of a breach affecting your family's data, we'll tell you, and any regulator the law requires, without undue delay.

Where your data lives

Our servers and storage are in the United States, run by Google. Anthropic processes AI photo checks in the United States. Apple processes sign-in, notifications, and billing wherever Apple operates. If you use Chore Lock from outside the U.S., your family's data is transferred to and handled in the U.S. under this policy.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your data, we'll update this page and change the date at the top. For a meaningful change, anything that affects what we collect about your family or how it's used, we'll tell you in the app before it takes effect, and where the law requires it we'll ask for your consent again.

Contact

Questions, requests, or worries about privacy: support@getchorelock.com, call (417) 425-1395, or write to ACED LLC, 1911 S National Ave, Suite 104, Springfield, MO 65804, United States.