EarnIt privacy policy

The short version

You never create an account with us, and we never see your family’s data. There’s no analytics, no advertising, no tracking, and no third-party code in the app. Everything lives on your devices and, if you turn syncing on, in your own iCloud. This website doesn’t use cookies or analytics either.

Who this covers

This policy covers the EarnIt app, which has a grown-up side (used by a parent or guardian) and a child’s side (used by a child), and this website. Both sides of the app handle information identically.

What the app holds

Everything in EarnIt is typed in by the family. Nothing is gathered from the device, and nothing is inferred about anybody.

Household	A name, which day the week starts, which day is payday, and the six-digit grown-up PIN
Children	First name, a chosen symbol and theme, an experience level, and optionally a four-digit PIN stored only as a salted hash. EarnIt never asks a child’s age or date of birth.
Jobs	Titles, weights, values, schedules, and any step-by-step guides written by the family
Money	A ledger of amounts earned, paid, saved and given, in pence
Values	Moments a grown-up has noticed, if the values feature is switched on
Photos	Optional photos a child takes to show a job is done

There’s no location data, no contacts, no calendar, no health data, no advertising identifier, and nothing about what else is on the device.

Where it is kept

On the device

By default everything sits in a single file inside the app’s container on your device. It never leaves it.

In your iCloud, if you turn syncing on

To put the household on more than one device, EarnIt shares that file through your own iCloud account using Apple’s CloudKit. It is stored under your Apple Account, subject to Apple’s privacy policy, and counts against your iCloud storage. We can’t read it.

One exception, stated plainly

Pairing a second device needs a way for two devices to find each other before they share anything. EarnIt does that with a six-character code that lasts ten minutes and works once. While it is live, a record holding the household’s identifier, a randomly generated household key, the role being granted and the expiry time is stored in the app’s shared CloudKit database. It carries no names and no amounts, and it is deleted the moment the code is used or expires.

If the ordinary sharing route is unavailable on a child’s device, which can happen with a child Apple Account, EarnIt falls back to a route that keeps the household file in that same shared database, under a record name derived from a random 128-bit key that only ever travels between two phones by QR code. Without the key the record cannot be named, and without the name it cannot be fetched.

Photos stay put

Photos taken as proof of a job stay on the device only. They are never uploaded or synced, and they’re deleted automatically a few weeks after the job they belong to was approved.

Children

EarnIt’s child side is meant to be used by children, and the design assumes it. The child’s side can claim a job but can’t approve one, can’t change what anything is worth, and can’t invite anyone. Only a grown-up can.

A child can’t create an account, because there are no accounts. Nothing a child enters is sent anywhere except the family’s own household file. There’s no chat, no social feature, no way for anyone outside the household to see anything, and no external links or purchases on the child’s side.

The grown-up who set the household up can see, change, export or delete everything in it at any time.

What the app never does

No analytics or crash reporting of any kind.
No advertising, and no advertising identifier.
No tracking, in this app or across others.
No third-party SDKs. EarnIt uses only Apple’s own frameworks.
No data sold, shared, rented or transferred to anybody.
No email address, phone number or postal address is ever asked for.

If you ask us to notify you

If you use the Notify me form on this website, we keep your email address for one purpose: sending you a single message when EarnIt is available. It’s stored on our own web hosting, not with a mailing-list company, and it isn’t shared with anyone. After that launch email, we delete the list. You can ask us to remove your address sooner at any time by emailing [email protected].

This website

This site sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and loads nothing from third parties. The only thing it ever collects is an email address you choose to give us through the Notify me form (see above). Its fonts are hosted here, not by Google. Pages are delivered through Cloudflare, which provides the site’s secure (HTTPS) connection. Cloudflare handles visits only to deliver and protect the site, under its own privacy policy. Our web host keeps standard server logs (such as IP address and pages requested) for security and to keep the site running. We don’t use them to track anyone.

Getting rid of it

In the app, Settings → Your data → Erase everything removes the household from the device. Deleting the app removes what is on the device. Backup and restore exports the whole household as a single readable file you keep, and nobody else receives a copy.

Changes to this policy

If this ever changes in a way that affects what happens to your family’s information, the date at the top will change with it, and the change will be described in the app’s release notes.

EarnIt is made by Mark Heath. Questions about anything above go to [email protected].

Privacy policy