Privacy Policy
The short version. Chorelie has no ads, no analytics, and no tracking of any kind. A parent signs in once — with Apple, with Google, or with an email address — and that is the only personal detail we ever hold. We never ask for your phone number, and we never ask a child for anything. We do not sell, rent or share your family's information with anybody, and there is no way for a stranger to see it. Everything else in the app is typed in by a parent, and a parent can change or delete all of it at any time.
Who we are
Chorelie is made by Small Ponds Software, a one-person software studio in Illinois, USA. In this policy "we" and "us" mean Small Ponds Software, and "you" means the parent or guardian who sets up and runs the app.
This policy covers the Chorelie app on iPhone, iPad and Apple TV.
What Chorelie stores
Chorelie keeps one private record per family so that the phone and the TV in your house show the same thing. That record holds only what a parent has entered:
- A family name — whatever nickname you type when you set up.
- Each child's first name or nickname, an emoji or a photo you choose for them, and optionally their age. Nothing else about the child — no birth date, no school, no contact details.
- Your chores and rewards — the names, emoji, point values and prices you set, plus any photos you take or choose of a reward.
- Gem balances and an activity history — what was earned, spent, saved or given, and on which day.
- Your settings — the look you picked, the weekly bonus rate, and what a gem is worth if you turn on Big Kid Mode.
- Your parent PIN, scrambled — the PIN is never stored as you typed it. We store a one-way fingerprint of it (a SHA-256 hash) that cannot be turned back into your PIN.
- An anonymous device ID — a random identifier that Firebase creates for each device so it can be recognised as belonging to your family. It is not your Apple ID, your name, or anything that identifies you as a person.
Plus, for the parent only, the sign-in you chose. Starting a family needs a parent account so the family survives a lost or replaced phone. You can use Sign in with Apple, a Google account, or an email address and password. If you sign in with Apple and choose to hide your address, we only ever see Apple's relay address. We use it for one thing — recognising you when you sign in again — and we never email you marketing. Children never sign in and are never asked for anything.
What Chorelie never does
- No advertising, no ad networks, and no ad identifiers (no IDFA, no App Tracking Transparency prompt, because there is nothing to track).
- No analytics, no usage tracking, no third-party measurement or attribution SDKs. The app contains only Firebase Authentication and Cloud Firestore, and nothing else that talks to the internet.
- No selling, renting or sharing of your family's information with anyone, for any purpose, ever.
- No location, no contacts, no microphone, no health data, no calendar, no browsing history.
- No messaging, chat, comments, or any way for one family to see or contact another.
- No links out to the open web from anywhere a child can reach.
- No purchases inside the app, and no connection to any bank, card or payment system. Gems are points. "Cash out" simply writes a note in the history — a parent hands over real money themselves, offline.
Photos
Chorelie lets a parent add two kinds of picture: a photo of a reward, so a child who cannot read yet can see what they are saving for, and optionally a photo used as a child's avatar instead of an emoji. Both are chosen by the parent, from the camera or the photo library.
Photos are shrunk on the device and stored inside your family's own private record. They are visible only on the devices you have paired to your family. We never look at them, never use them to train anything, and no face recognition or image analysis of any kind is performed on them.
If you would rather not store a picture of your child at all, use an emoji avatar — the app works exactly the same way, and photos of rewards are the more useful half of the feature.
Where the information lives
Your family's record is stored using Google Firebase (Cloud Firestore and Anonymous Authentication) on servers in the United States. Google acts purely as our service provider — it processes the data on our behalf and is not permitted to use it for its own purposes. You can read Google's commitments at firebase.google.com/support/privacy.
Information travels encrypted (HTTPS/TLS) and is encrypted at rest by Google. Access rules on the database mean only devices you have added to your family can read or write your family's record, and nobody — including someone with the app installed — can browse or list other families.
New devices join by typing a six-letter code shown on a device that is already in the family. Codes expire after fifteen minutes and contain nothing but the new device's anonymous ID.
We keep your family's record for as long as you use the app, so that your history is still there when you open it. See "Deleting everything" below.
Children's privacy
Chorelie is a tool for parents that children are meant to look at and tap. We take that seriously.
- Everything in the app is set up and entered by a parent or guardian. Children are never asked for any personal information, and there is nowhere for a child to type free text.
- Kid Mode is a locked-down view. A child can tap "I did it" on a chore and look at their gems; leaving Kid Mode needs the parent PIN. Settings are behind the same PIN.
- We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children. We rely on the parent to decide what goes in, and a child's name in Chorelie can just as easily be a nickname.
- Parents can see, edit and delete every piece of information about their child from inside the app at any time.
If you believe a child has entered something into Chorelie that you would like removed, email us and we will take care of it.
Your choices and deleting everything
Inside the app, a parent can edit or delete any chore, reward, child or history entry, and can reverse any gem transaction.
To have your family's entire record permanently deleted from our database, email betas@smallpondssoftware.com from a device that has the app, tell us the family name you set up with, and we will delete it. We may ask you to confirm a code shown in the app so we know the request comes from your household. Deletion is finished within 30 days and cannot be undone.
Please note: removing the app from your devices does not delete your family's record — that is on purpose, so a lost or replaced phone does not wipe your children's history. Ask us to delete it if you are finished with Chorelie for good.
Your rights
Depending on where you live you may have the right to see, correct, export or delete the information we hold about your family, and to object to how it is handled. Because the only account is the parent's sign-in, the app itself already gives you direct access to every piece of it. For anything else, write to us at the address below and we will help — we do not charge for this and we will not ask you to jump through hoops.
We do not sell personal information, and we do not "share" it for cross-context behavioural advertising as those terms are used under California law.
Changes to this policy
If we change how Chorelie handles information, we will update this page and change the date at the top. If a change is significant — for example if we ever added a paid plan — we will say so in the app before it takes effect.