Privacy Policy

We provide the Kinuvo app for parents, the Kinuvo Kids app for children’s Android phones, the service that connects them, and this website. In this policy, “Kinuvo”, “we” and “us” mean KINUVO INTERACTIVE (SMC-PRIVATE) LIMITED. “You” means the parent or guardian who uses a Kinuvo account, including anyone you let sign in to it.

Questions about privacy are always welcome: email support@kinuvo.net or use our contact page.

This policy covers:

• parents and guardians who use the Kinuvo app (Android);
• children whose Android phones run Kinuvo Kids;
• people who visit this website or send us a message.

It doesn’t cover other companies’ apps and websites, including the apps on your child’s phone and the websites Kinuvo blocks or allows.

Kinuvo has two apps that work together. You use the Kinuvo app on your phone to set rules, answer your child’s requests, and see alerts, reports and location. Your child’s Android phone runs Kinuvo Kids, which applies those rules on the phone itself and sends only what your features need. The two phones never connect directly: everything travels through Kinuvo’s service over encrypted connections.

You connect your child’s phone by pairing. The Kinuvo app shows a single-use code, valid for 10 minutes, and Kinuvo Kids scans it or your child types it in. Your child’s name, avatar and age are entered on their phone at that point.

Kinuvo Kids is a visible app. Your child can see which rules apply to them, and before each sensitive permission is switched on, Kinuvo Kids explains in plain words what it’s for (see Children’s privacy).

Kinuvo collects only what its features need. This table lists all of it: why we need it, who can see it and how long we keep it. More about each kind of information follows.

Your account

When you create an account, you give us your name, your email address and a password of at least 8 characters. We send a verification email to that address, and we store your password only as a one-way hash, never in readable form. You can add an avatar and choose a language preference. Each phone you sign in on gets a notification token, stored encrypted, so that alerts reach it.

You can instead create your account or sign in with Google or Facebook. If you do, that provider confirms your identity to us and shares your email address and a sign-in identifier for your account; we don’t receive your provider password, and the provider handles the sign-in under its own privacy policy. Signing in with Apple isn’t available.

Your child’s information

Your child’s profile is created on their phone when it pairs with your account: their name, one of eight avatars, their age (1 to 17), and a confirmation that a parent or guardian is setting it up. You can add a date of birth, gender, email address, phone number or time zone later; email addresses and phone numbers are stored encrypted. Everything Kinuvo Kids records about your child’s phone, described below, is linked to this profile.

Location

Kinuvo Kids shares your child’s location with your account, including when the app is closed. Normally it’s movement-aware: it checks now and then while the phone is still and more often while your child is travelling. These locations are sent in batches. Those recorded while the phone is offline can wait on the phone for up to 7 days and upload when it reconnects, though some may not arrive. Each one is time-stamped, with its accuracy and, when the phone can look one up, a street address.

From them, you see your child’s latest location with how recent it is, their Trip History, and arrive and leave alerts for your Saved Places. Arrivals and departures are detected on your child’s phone and sent without coordinates. Notifications never contain coordinates or street addresses: a place alert names the place, for example “Arrived at School”.

Trip History

Your child’s phone groups their location into trips — a journey’s start, end, approximate route and stops — which you browse by month, week or day. On Android 10 and newer, Kinuvo Kids can also use the phone’s physical activity signal (the Activity Recognition permission) to tell when a journey starts and ends, so trips group more cleanly. It reads movement type, such as still or walking, not what your child does in any app, and it’s optional: denying it doesn’t stop location or Trip History.

Trip History is designed to show up to the most recent 30 days of recorded journeys. Older trips become unavailable and are removed through our automatic retention process, which runs on a schedule rather than at the exact moment a trip turns 30 days old. The location points behind Trip History are kept for up to 30 days as well. Child Tracker updates aren’t added to Trip History.

Child Tracker

When you open Child Tracker in the Kinuvo app, Kinuvo asks your child’s phone to send its location more often, aiming for about every 15 seconds while you have the screen open, using precise location where it’s allowed. GPS, the connection and the phone can delay or prevent an update. Tracking stops when you leave the screen, switch apps or lock your phone, after 30 minutes unless you choose to continue, or if you sign out. These updates replace your child’s latest location; they aren’t added to their location history, and they aren’t saved for later if a phone is offline. The message that wakes your child’s phone contains no location or other personal details.

While your child’s phone is updating its location, including during Child Tracker, Kinuvo Kids’ notification on their phone says “Updating your recent location for your family.” We keep a record of each Child Tracker session (when it started and ended, and which of your signed-in phones opened it) with your account. It contains no locations.

Your own location

If you allow it, the Kinuvo app uses your own phone’s location only while you use two screens: to centre the map while you choose a Saved Place, and to show how far away your child is in Child Tracker. Your location is worked out on your phone and isn’t sent to Kinuvo, stored or logged.

App usage and installed apps

Kinuvo Kids measures which apps your child uses and for how long, to apply the Daily Limit and App Limits and to show the App Usage report. It also lists the apps installed on the phone, with their names, icons, versions and the category each developer gives them, so you can choose apps to block or limit and decide about new ones. App icons are public artwork, so each is stored once and shared across families.

Web Protection and blocked websites

Web Protection and Internet Schedules work on your child’s phone through Network Protection, a VPN that runs on the phone and that your child approves during setup. It checks the names of websites the phone tries to reach and blocks the ones your rules don’t allow. Your child’s internet traffic isn’t sent through Kinuvo’s servers, and Kinuvo doesn’t keep a history of the websites your child visits, page contents, full web addresses, searches, or which app tried to reach a site.

When a website is blocked, Kinuvo records its name, the reason and the time, for the Web Blocked Attempts report.

Your child’s phone

To show you the phone’s status and keep protection working, Kinuvo Kids sends the phone’s make and model, Android version, Kinuvo Kids version, language, time zone, battery level, network type, which Kinuvo permissions are on, and the name of the Wi‑Fi network it’s connected to. The Wi‑Fi name is readable only when the phone allows precise location. Kinuvo never reads Wi‑Fi hardware addresses, saved networks or nearby networks.

Emergency SOS

When your child sends an SOS, Kinuvo alerts every phone you’re signed in on and records when it was sent, your child’s location and street address when available, and when a parent acknowledged it. Kinuvo’s SOS reaches you, not emergency services.

Requests, alerts and security records

When your child asks for more time or to use a blocked app, or a new app waits for your decision, Kinuvo keeps the request and your answer so your child can see the outcome. Alerts tell you about the events that need you.

To protect your account, Kinuvo keeps records of sign-ins, Parent PIN changes and pairing. IP addresses and device details in these records are stored only as one-way hashes. Kinuvo’s logs never contain passwords, PINs, codes or exact locations.

Kinuvo is built for guidance, not surveillance. It never collects:

• Messages, chats or emails
• Calls or contacts
• What your child types
• Screenshots or recordings of the screen
• The websites they visit (only blocked attempts are recorded)
• Page contents, full web addresses or searches
• Photos, files, camera or microphone content
• Your own location as a parent (it stays on your phone)
• Advertising identifiers

The camera is used only to scan the pairing QR code, on the phone itself. The Kinuvo apps contain no advertising software, and neither you nor your child is shown ads. The Kinuvo app for parents uses Google Firebase Analytics to help us improve the app (see Analytics and service improvement); Kinuvo Kids, on your child’s phone, has no analytics software.

• From you: your account details, anything you add to your child’s profile, your Saved Places, and your rules and decisions.
• From your child’s phone: Kinuvo Kids measures and sends the information described in Information we collect, using the permissions below.
• From your phone: a notification token for each phone you’re signed in on.
• From this website: only what you choose to send us (see This website).

Permissions on your child’s phone

Kinuvo Kids asks for these during setup and explains each one to your child in plain words before Android’s own screen appears. The optional physical-activity permission (the last row) is requested together with Location on Android 10 and newer, and setup finishes whether or not your child allows it.

On your phone, the Kinuvo app asks to send notifications, so that alerts reach you, and, if you choose, for location while you’re choosing a Saved Place or using Child Tracker (see Your own location).

We use information to:

• run Kinuvo’s features: apply your rules on your child’s phone, show you reports, location and alerts, and let your child ask and you answer;
• keep protection working, and tell you when key protection is switched off;
• deliver notifications to the phones you’re signed in on;
• keep your account and Kinuvo’s service secure, for example by limiting repeated sign-in, PIN and pairing attempts;
• send you emails about your account, such as email verification and Parent PIN recovery;
• understand how the Kinuvo app is used and improve it (see Analytics and service improvement);
• reply when you contact us.

The Kinuvo apps contain no advertising software, and neither you nor your child is shown ads. The Kinuvo app for parents uses Google Firebase Analytics to improve the app, described below; Kinuvo Kids has no analytics.

We use Google Firebase Analytics in the Kinuvo app for parents to understand how our service is used and to keep improving it. It helps us see which features parents engage with, follow the onboarding and child-pairing journey, find where setup is difficult, improve usability, judge how the app is performing, and measure how well our outreach works. Building a better product and experience is the main purpose; measuring outreach is one part of that, not the point of it.

Analytics covers two things. The first is a fixed set of app-interaction events we choose: for example creating an account or signing in, starting and finishing onboarding, starting, completing or failing to pair a child, and which feature screens you open (such as Screen Time, Reports, Trip History or Child Tracker). These events carry only set categories, set no custom identifier for you, and are designed to leave out children’s names, precise locations, trip routes and the details of what Kinuvo monitors. The second is technical information that Firebase Analytics collects automatically, such as app and device information and general usage, which Google receives as our analytics provider.

Some honest limits: not all of this information is anonymous, and Firebase’s own automatic collection stays on (we have turned off Android advertising-ID collection). Analytics shows us how features are used, not whether you liked them — we don’t collect ratings or satisfaction scores. Kinuvo Kids, on your child’s phone, has no analytics, and this website uses no analytics cookies (see This website). We’re still reviewing Firebase’s retention and sharing settings and the choices we offer; for any question about analytics, contact us.

• You, and anyone you let sign in to your Kinuvo account. Everyone signed in sees the same information and gets the same alerts. Separate co-parent accounts aren’t available.
• Your child sees their own rules, the answers to their own requests, that their location is shared, and when you’re on your way after an SOS. They don’t see your app, your reports, your alerts or other children’s information.
• Other families never see your family’s information.
• Our service providers handle information to run parts of Kinuvo for us (see Sharing and service providers).

We use other companies to run parts of Kinuvo for us:

• cloud hosting and databases that run Kinuvo’s service and store its data;
• storage for Web Protection lists and app icons;
• delivery of notifications to your phones;
• maps and place search in the Kinuvo app;
• on your child’s phone, Android’s location services, which find the phone’s location and street address;
• email delivery for account emails, such as verification, and for replies to your messages;
• if you choose it, Google or Facebook to create your account or sign you in (see Your account);
• product analytics for the Kinuvo app for parents, Google Firebase Analytics (see Analytics and service improvement);
• for this website, web hosting, and the form service Web3Forms for messages you send us.

Each handles the information needed for the service it provides. The apps carry no advertising software, so no advertising company receives information from them; the one analytics provider is Google Firebase Analytics in the Kinuvo app for parents, described above. If you’d like to know which companies we use, contact us.

Kinuvo is designed for parents and guardians to use with their children, openly.

• Children don’t create Kinuvo accounts. A child’s profile exists only after a parent pairs the child’s phone with their account, and the person setting it up confirms they’re the child’s parent or guardian.
• Kinuvo collects only what its features need about a child, all listed in Information we collect. It never reads messages, captures typing, records the screen or keeps browsing history.
• Kinuvo Kids is visible, and tells your child in plain words what each sensitive permission is for before it’s switched on. Its Dashboard always shows that location is shared, and its notification says when their location is being updated.
• Your child’s information is visible only to the parent account their phone is paired with.
• Kinuvo Kids shows no ads and contains no advertising, analytics or crash-reporting software.
• As the parent, you can review your child’s information in the Kinuvo app, edit their profile, change any rule and remove your child (see Removing a child). For anything else, including deletion requests, contact us.

• Everything travels over encrypted connections.
• Passwords and Parent PINs are stored only as one-way hashes, never in readable form.
• Sensitive details, such as your child’s email address and phone number, notification tokens and recovery codes, are additionally encrypted.
• Sign-in sessions are short-lived and renew automatically. If an old session key is reused, every related session is signed out.
• Repeated attempts at sensitive actions, such as PIN checks, pairing codes and verification emails, are limited.
• A 6-digit Parent PIN protects removing a child, disconnecting or replacing a phone, and unlocking protection on your child’s phone.
• Your child’s phone keeps its sign-in key in Android’s secure key storage, and leaves it and its copy of your rules out of backups. On Android, the Kinuvo app’s data is also kept out of phone backups.
• Logs never contain passwords, PINs, codes or exact locations.

No system can be made completely secure. If you think your account has been misused, contact us.

These periods apply while your child is in your family on Kinuvo. The table of everything Kinuvo collects gives the period for each kind of information. Removing a child deletes their information whatever these periods say, as explained next.

You can remove a child, or disconnect or replace their phone, in the Kinuvo app. Each needs your Parent PIN.

When you remove a child

• Straight away: your child is removed from your account. Every phone connected to them is disconnected and released from Kinuvo’s protection, and can no longer send or receive anything for them. Anything waiting to be sent to or about them is cancelled, and their alerts, Emergency SOS records and new-app decisions are deleted.
• Then, in the background: everything else Kinuvo holds about your child is deleted: their profile, their latest location and location history, the Saved Places and place alerts you set up for them (including places you deleted) and the records of their arrivals and departures, their app usage, installed apps and new-app records, their requests, their rules, schedules and Web Protection settings, their blocked website records, and the records of their phones and pairing. This runs after you remove them rather than in the same instant, and needs nothing more from you.
• What remains: only minimal records that the deletion took place, without your child’s profile, location or activity.

Disconnecting or replacing a phone

Disconnecting a phone releases it from Kinuvo’s protection and returns Kinuvo Kids to its setup screen. Replacing a phone moves every rule to the new one. Your child’s information belongs to their profile, not to their phone, so in both cases it stays with your account.

You can permanently delete your Kinuvo account yourself, from the Kinuvo app (Account → SECURITY → Delete Account) or from the web at kinuvo.net/account-deletion — no app required. Both ask you to confirm, and the in-app path asks for your Parent PIN.

Deletion is scheduled with a 7-day grace period: you’re shown when it is due to begin, and you can cancel in the app before processing starts. In the app, you can also choose Delete permanently now to skip the wait. While deletion is pending, normal account actions are locked and existing sign-ins may be ended.

When deletion completes, we permanently delete your account and all associated data: your profile, login and sign-in methods, Parent PIN, sessions and notification tokens, and every child and connected device with all their rules, schedules, app usage, location history, alerts, SOS records, requests and approvals. This cannot be undone. Shared reference data that isn’t about your family (for example our website-category lists) is not yours to delete and remains.

What may remain outside Kinuvo: our email provider may retain delivery records, including recipient email addresses, under its own retention policy.

• See and change: review your child’s information and reports in the Kinuvo app, edit their profile and change any rule at any time.
• Saved Places: delete a place at any time, or pause all place alerts with one switch without deleting your places. A deleted place disappears from your app and your child’s phone; its record is deleted when you remove your child.
• Location sharing is part of how Kinuvo works, so it can’t be switched off for one child while their phone is connected. Disconnecting the phone or removing your child stops it.
• Notifications: you control them in your phone’s settings. If they’re off, alerts, including an SOS, can’t reach that phone.
• Child Tracker: it runs only while you have it open. Leave the screen to stop it.
• Your own location: the Kinuvo app works without it; Child Tracker then shows no distance.
• Questions and requests about your family’s information: contact us.

If a permission is switched off

Permissions on your child’s phone can be changed in Android’s settings. Kinuvo protects its own settings with your Parent PIN, and you get an alert if Accessibility or Usage Access is switched off. Turning off location, notifications or Network Protection doesn’t alert you; instead, Kinuvo Kids asks your child to switch it back on. While a permission is off, the features that depend on it stop working: without location, for example, there’s no Child Tracker update, location history or place alerts, and you see the last known location and its age.

This website tells you about Kinuvo. Its typeface is served from our own site, so no font requests go to other companies. Like any website, it’s delivered by a web host, which receives the technical information needed to send pages to your browser, such as your IP address and browser type.

Cookies

This website uses no analytics or advertising cookies, and it doesn’t set cookies of its own.

Ask Kinuvo

Questions you type into Ask Kinuvo, the help panel on this website, are answered in your browser and aren’t sent anywhere, unless you choose to send a message to the Kinuvo team.

Messages you send us

A message you send through our contact form or Ask Kinuvo is delivered to us by the form service Web3Forms: your email address, your name if you give it, the topic or subject, and your message. We use it only to reply to you. You can also email us directly at support@kinuvo.net.

When we change this policy, we publish the new version on this page and update the “Last updated” date at the top. This page is always the current version.

For questions about privacy, or a request about your family’s information, email support@kinuvo.net or use our contact page. A real person reads every message.