Privacy Policy
Draft, not yet reviewed by a lawyer.
Family Circle is a family app for Muslim families: prayers, Quran reading, stars and jobs for the children, a family chat and calendar, and games. This policy explains, plainly, what the app keeps, where, who can see it, and what you can do about it.
In short
- We keep what your family puts into the app, so it's the same on everyone's phone.
- It's stored on Family Circle's server (Supabase, in Sydney, Australia). It's encrypted at rest but not end to end: the people who run Family Circle can technically access it.
- Only members of your family see it in the app.
- We never sell it and never use it for ads. There are no analytics, no tracking and no advertising code in the app.
- You can export or delete your data in the app's Settings.
Who we are
Family Circle is run by REPLACE-ME: owner's name or company, and country ("we"). We decide how your data is used (the "controller"). Contact: privacy@REPLACE-ME.
What we keep and why
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| Email address (or Apple's private relay address) and a user ID, for parents' and teens' logins. Children can join with a code or QR code from a parent instead. | To sign in, to keep each login's family on its devices, and to reset a password. |
| Names (or nicknames), birthdays, roles (parent, teen, kid, little one), colours, hearts and outfits | To show the family, and to pick the right screens for each age. |
| Moods | Shared with the family on the Today screen. |
| Prayers ticked | The family's prayer tracker. |
| Quran pages read | The family's Quran goal. |
| Memorisation progress: which sūrahs of Juz ʿAmma each person is learning, has asked a parent to hear, or has memorised, which parent confirmed it, and the hearts of encouragement a parent sends a child for a sūrah | Learning Juz ʿAmma together, and the stars for each sūrah memorised. No recording of anyone's voice ever leaves the device (see below). |
| Stars, jobs, rewards, weekly goals, milestones and treat votes | The children's stars and rewards. |
| Pocket money amounts | The children's money jars. |
| Chat messages | The family chat (Everyone, Parents, Kids). |
| Calendar events and pickups, and the children's school timetables (lessons, rooms, teachers, term dates and holidays) | The family calendar. |
| Bingo and game results, and answers in a live Quiz Night game | Family games. Quiz Night answers are shared with the family playing, shown after each reveal. |
| Little ones' notes and privacy choices | Parents' notes about very young children who don't use the app themselves. |
| Little ones' care log: feeds, naps, nappy changes, medicine given (and its name, if someone writes it), notes and milestones such as first steps, each with the time and who logged it | So the parents, and the teens they choose to help, can look after a little one together. Brothers and sisters see it only if the parents allow. Everyday entries are deleted after 90 days; milestones are kept until the family deletes them. |
| The city used for prayer times, with its coordinates (rounded to about 1 km) and the calculation settings | To work out prayer times and the Qibla. The app asks for your location once, only if you tap "Use my location"; you can type a city instead. |
| Invite codes, with the invited person's first name and role | So a family member can join. |
| The parent's agreement to this policy (version and time) | A record of parental consent. |
| Sign-in records kept by our login provider (time, IP address, device type) | Security of your account. |
What stays on your device only
- Photo hunt pictures: kept in memory while you play, never uploaded.
- Juz ʿAmma's "Repeat after": the microphone records only while the button is held (the app asks for permission the first time). The recording is played back once and deleted straight away. It is never saved, uploaded or sent, and we never receive it. Without the microphone, the button works without recording.
- Juz ʿAmma practice: each person's three stars for a sūrah, practice days, repetitions and test mistakes, and which celebrations and hearts they have seen.
- Face ID: checked by your iPhone or iPad; the app never sees it.
- A place chosen for one phone's prayer times (Settings → Prayer → "Prayer times on this phone": that phone's own location, rounded to about 1 km, or a city): kept on that phone only, for that login. It is never sent to us or shared with your family; the family's location above is used everywhere else.
- Crash and performance reports (Apple MetricKit): kept on your device. They're sent only if you choose Settings → Privacy & legal → Send diagnostics, and then only where you send them (for example, by email to us). They contain technical information, not your family's content.
- The app's language, calendar and similar settings.
What we don't do
- No advertising, no ad identifiers, no tracking across apps or websites, no analytics.
- No selling or renting of data, ever.
- No sharing outside your family, except with the service providers below who run the service for us.
Legal bases
- Contract: we use your family's data to provide the app you asked for (syncing your family across your devices).
- Consent: a parent or legal guardian agrees, in the app, before children's data is added. Sending diagnostics is also your choice. You can withdraw consent at any time (see "Your rights").
Sensitive data. Prayers ticked, Quran pages read and memorisation progress can show a person's religious practice, and the medicine in a little one's care log is health information. The GDPR, the Saudi PDPL and other laws treat both as sensitive. We use it only to show it to your family in the app, with explicit consent, and never for anything else.
Children's data
Family Circle is made for families with children, so children's data is at its heart. See the Children's privacy notice for the details. In short:
- Parents first. A family is started by a parent, signed in with their own account. Before adding any child, the parent reads what we keep and confirms they are the parent or legal guardian and agree. That is how we get verifiable parental consent under the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and the parent's consent for children under the age of digital consent in the EU and UK (GDPR Article 8, "GDPR-K", from 13 to 16 depending on the country).
- Children join only through a parent, with a code or QR code a parent made. Little ones never sign in.
- We collect only what the family features need, and never use children's data for ads or profiling.
- A parent can see, change or delete their child's data, and remove the child from the family, at any time.
Where your data is stored, and who processes it
| Provider | What they do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase, Inc. | Hosts the database and the logins (our "processor", under a data processing agreement). | Sydney, Australia (region ap-southeast-2) |
| Apple | Sign in with Apple, the App Store and TestFlight (beta testing). Apple's own privacy policy applies to these. | Apple's servers |
| Cloudflare | Hosts these web pages. No cookies or trackers; Cloudflare may log IP addresses for security. | Global |
If you live outside Australia, your data is transferred to Australia. REPLACE-ME (lawyer): transfer safeguards, e.g. Supabase's DPA and standard contractual clauses for EU/UK users; conditions for transfers outside the Kingdom under the Saudi PDPL.
Who can see it
- Your family: members of your family see your family's data in the app. Some things are shown only to parents in the app (for example the Parents chat and little ones' notes).
- Nobody else in the app: another family can never read your family's data. The server checks this on every request.
- The people who run Family Circle: the data is encrypted at rest, but not end to end, so we can technically access it. We only do so to run the service, fix problems you report, or when the law requires it.
- Supabase, as our hosting provider, under its data processing agreement.
How long we keep it
- Your family's data is kept until you delete it.
- Deleting your account removes your login and your membership. Deleting the family (a parent, in Settings) removes all of the family's data for everyone. When the last member leaves, the family is deleted.
- Database backups expire after about 7 days (once our paid hosting plan is on), so deleted data is gone from backups within about a week.
- The record of a parent's consent is kept with the family, as proof of consent, and goes when the family is deleted.
- Data on a device stays there until the app is removed or you choose "Remove this family from this phone".
Your rights
Depending on where you live (for example under the GDPR, UK GDPR, the Saudi Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL), the Australian Privacy Act or US state laws), you have the right to:
- Access and export your data: Settings → Your data shares your family's data as a file.
- Correct it: edit names, birthdays and the rest in the app.
- Delete it: Settings → delete your account, or (for a parent) delete the whole family.
- Withdraw consent: a parent can remove a child from the family, or delete the family, at any time. Withdrawing consent doesn't affect what was done before.
- Object or restrict, and complain to your data protection authority (for example the Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA), your EU/UK supervisory authority, or the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner).
For anything you can't do in the app, email privacy@REPLACE-ME. We answer within 30 days.
Security
- All traffic uses HTTPS. Your login is kept in the device's Keychain.
- On the server, row level security lets each login read only its own family. Data is encrypted at rest.
- Only the app's public key is in the app; the server's secret keys never leave the server.
- No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your data, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.
Changes to this policy
When this policy changes in a way that matters, the app asks a parent to read and agree again before going on.
Contact
privacy@REPLACE-ME · REPLACE-ME: postal address, if required