Kids privacy & COPPA
Most family tech asks kids to trade privacy for convenience. Gathr is built so there's almost nothing to trade. This page says exactly what exists about a kid, what never will, and what kids control themselves, in plain words, because parents and kids should both be able to read it.
Kids don't have accounts
A kid in Gathr is a first name a parent typed and the devices that parent paired. There is no kid sign-up, no kid email, no kid password, no kid profile beyond that name. Because a parent creates everything and pairs every device by hand, parental consent isn't a checkbox bolted on; it's how the product works at all. That is our approach to COPPA's consent requirement: the parent is the account, and nothing about a child exists unless that parent creates it.
Everything that exists about a kid
- Their first name (whatever the parent typed; a nickname is fine).
- Their devices: names and whether each is reachable, including whether headphones are connected (plus the technical push token that lets messages wake the device). Never location. Not "at school," not "at Jack's house". Gathr does not know or care where anyone is.
- Voice messages sent to them, held just long enough to deliver, written out once — on the sending parent's own phone, never on a server — so the words can be shown, then deleted (delivery confirmation or 24 hours, whichever is first).
- Their replies: a tap like "coming," or a short phrase they wrote, carried as text on the delivery receipt, deleted on the same clock.
That's the whole list.
What never exists
- No recordings of your kid's voice. Kid devices cannot record voice messages — there is no button, and our servers refuse audio from kid devices even if an app were modified to try. Live calls are never recorded (the capability doesn't exist in our system). The only voice recordings in Gathr are the parents'.
- No location tracking of any kind.
- No contacts, photos, browsing, or app usage collection.
- No ads and no ad SDKs; nothing in the kid experience talks to an ad company.
- No analytics SDK in the kid app at all.
- No analysis of anyone's voice or words; the single transcription happens on the sender's own device, exists to display the message, then dies with it. No AI service ever hears your family.
- No public anything: a household can't be found, joined, or messaged from outside the family.
If you're the kid reading this
Fair enough: you should check. Here's the deal, straight:
- Your parents can talk into your headphones. It knocks first, and your music comes right back.
- They can see if your stuff is reachable. They cannot see where you are, what you're playing, or what you're saying to your friends. Gathr doesn't know any of that either.
- You can pause it. The pause is real: it shows your parents "paused until 8:47" instead of pretending you're offline. If they override it for something urgent, you get told they did. No silent spying, ever.
- Your custom replies live on your device. We never see the list, only a reply you actually choose to send, which is deleted after it's delivered.
Retention, honestly
Clips, transcripts, and sent replies exist to be delivered and shown, are held only until delivery is confirmed, and are deleted after delivery confirmation or within 24 hours, whichever comes first. The cleanup is automatic and live: audio is deleted the moment delivery is confirmed, and an hourly sweep enforces the 24-hour ceiling on the rest. What a kid's profile amounts to — a first name and paired devices — lives as long as the household does and is deleted when a parent deletes it. The full retention policy, category by category, is on the privacy page.
Parents' rights
- Review everything that exists about your kid: it's all visible in the app's Family page.
- Rename or delete kids and devices any time; deleting a device signs it out on the spot.
- Delete the whole household by emailing hello@gathr.family from your account address.
- Ask us anything about children's data at the same address; a person answers.