LOUD OWL

Privacy policy

Effective October 1, 2026

Loud Owl is a read-aloud trivia app for iPhone and iPad, for families and curious people of all ages, from The Bridge to AI, LLC, doing business as Loud Owl (“we”). This policy covers the app, its optional family accounts, and this website, loudowl.app. The short version:

• You can play without an account. Then everything Loud Owl saves stays on your iPhone or iPad, and we don’t receive it.
• With a family account, we keep only what’s needed to bring your family to each device you sign in to: an ID from Sign in with Apple, your first name, your PIN’s salted hash, each child’s nickname, owl color, age band, and profile settings, and which of our sets your family has added. Game results stay on your device.
• No ads, no analytics, and no tracking, in the app or on this website.
• Children never enter an email address or full name, and we don’t sell or share personal information.
• You can see what we keep about your family, change it, or delete all of it, from Settings in the app.

What the app saves on your device

The app keeps the following in its private storage on your iPhone or iPad.

• Libraries: the question sets each person has added, with their narration and pictures, so they work offline, and whose library each set is in.
• Settings and player names: your settings, such as whether sound is on, and the names last typed for guest players and teams.
• Your family account, if you have one: the identifier Apple gives the app for your account and the name and email address Apple shares with the app when you sign in. The app shows the email address only in Settings, under Family & account. Apple lets you hide your real email address.
• Your PIN, kept only as a salted one-way hash in the device’s keychain, never as the PIN itself.
• Each child’s profile: a nickname you choose, an owl avatar color, an age band such as 8–9, and whether the child sees sets made for older ages.
• Game results for family profiles: the set, the date, the score, and which questions were missed. Rounds played by guests or without an account aren’t saved.

When you sign out, everything the app saved leaves this device: your family, your question sets, and your game results. Your family and the sets you added from Discover stay in your account, and come back when you sign in again. Game results and sets you imported are kept only on the device, so they don’t. Like other apps’ data, what’s on your device can be included in your own iCloud or computer backups.

What we keep for family accounts

A family account is optional. It keeps your family in step on each iPhone and iPad signed in to it, and brings it back if you reinstall the app. For that, our server keeps:

• An account ID from Sign in with Apple: a random string Apple makes for Loud Owl, not your Apple ID or email address. It’s how we know it’s you on another device.
• Your first name, if Apple shares it the first time you sign in, for your player chip in family games.
• Each child’s profile: the nickname, owl color, age band (6–7, 8–9, 10–12, 13–17, or 18+), and profile settings, such as whether the child sees sets made for older ages.
• Your PIN’s salted hash, so the same PIN works on each of your devices, even offline. We never have the PIN itself.
• Which of our sets your family has added from Discover, as one list for the family, so your other devices get the same ones. Whose library each set is in stays on each device.
• Your agreement to Family privacy: which version of its words you agreed to, with a fingerprint of the exact text, when, and your device’s language setting, to show we asked a parent before keeping anything about a child.
• Sign-ins: for each device signed in to your account, a hash of a random secret the device makes, and whether it’s an iPhone or an iPad.

When you sign in, Apple gives the app a signed token, which may include your email address or a Hide My Email address. The app sends it to our server to confirm the sign-in; the server doesn’t keep your email address. Game results, player and team names, settings, sets you add with Scan QR Code, and whose library each set is in aren’t sent to us.

What we never collect

• No ads, analytics, or tracking. The app contains no advertising or analytics code, and nothing follows you across other apps or websites.
• No child email address, full name, photo, voice recording, contacts, or location.
• Children can’t message or share with anyone through the app.
• We don’t sell or share personal information.

If you’ve turned on Share With App Developers in your device’s Analytics & Improvements settings, Apple may share crash reports with us that don’t identify you.

The camera

Loud Owl asks to use the camera only for Scan QR Code, which reads a code that links to a question set. What the camera sees is processed on your device to read the code, and it’s never saved or sent anywhere. You can turn camera access off in your device’s Settings; the rest of the app works without it.

What the app downloads

• Question sets, narration, and pictures come from loudowl.app, which we host with Amazon Web Services. As with any download, the request includes your device’s IP address. We don’t keep logs of these requests.
• Sets you add with Scan QR Code download straight from the web address in the code, along with any narration or pictures the set links to, and those sites’ own privacy policies apply. We don’t review those sets.
• Links in a Deep Dive, a set’s Created by link, and Support and Privacy Policy in Settings open in an in-app Safari browser, and those sites’ own policies apply. On a child’s profile, these links are turned off.
• Sign in with Apple is run by Apple, under Apple’s privacy policy.

Who helps us run it

We don’t sell, rent, or share personal information with anyone for their own purposes. These companies handle it for us, only to run Loud Owl:

• Amazon Web Services runs our server, database, and website, in the United States.
• Apple runs Sign in with Apple. When you delete your account, we ask Apple to end Loud Owl’s access to your Apple sign-in.
• Google Workspace hosts our email. If you write to us, we use your address and message only to answer you.

Loud Owl is offered in the United States, and what we keep is stored there. We’ll share information if the law requires it, such as in response to a valid court order.

Children’s privacy

Loud Owl is trivia for families and curious people of all ages. Many of its question sets are written for children, and a family account lets a parent add profiles for their children, so we follow the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

• Only a parent can add a child. Before the first child profile is created, the parent signs in with Apple, agrees to what’s saved on the Family privacy screen, and sets a PIN. If those words change, we ask again before keeping anything more.
• The parent, not the child, enters each child’s nickname, owl color, and age band. A nickname can be a first name or a made-up one; please don’t use a last name.
• A child’s profile holds only what’s listed above. It’s kept in your account so it’s on each device you sign in to, and it’s used only to show the right profile, suggest sets that suit the child’s age, and keep their game results on your device.
• While a child is playing, grown-up actions need the parent’s 4-digit PIN: adding sets from Discover and seeing a set’s questions first, Scan QR Code, deleting sets, and family settings. Links out of the app are turned off, and Discover shows the child the sets made for their age band unless a parent turns on Show all sets.

As a parent, you can:

• review what we keep: Settings › Family & account › Account › Your family’s data gives you a file of your family’s information on our server, including your first name, each child’s profile, your family’s sets, and your agreements to Family privacy (for your PIN, it says only whether one is set);
• see and change a child’s profile in Settings, under Family & account;
• stop us from keeping anything more about a child by removing their profile, which deletes it from our server and your devices, and deletes their library and game results;
• delete your account, in Settings › Family & account › Account › Delete account, which deletes your family from our server, removes everything the app saved on this device, and ends your sign-ins on your other devices, which are cleared the next time the app opens on them;
• email us to ask about, or delete, anything we keep about your child.

How long we keep it

• Your family account (your account ID and first name, the children’s profiles, the PIN hash, and the list of sets): until you delete it. Deleting starts at once and usually finishes within minutes; if a step fails, we keep retrying until it’s done. Our backups keep deleted information for 7 more days, then it’s gone.
• A child you remove: deleted at once. For a year, we keep the profile’s random ID, with no name, so a device that was offline can’t bring the profile back.
• Your agreements to Family privacy: while your account exists. After you delete it, we keep only which versions were agreed to and when, with no names, for 3 years, to show we asked.
• Sign-ins: until you sign out, after 30 days without using Loud Owl on that device, or after 180 days at most.
• Server logs: 30 days. They record the kind of request, when, whether it worked, and your family’s random ID, never names, nicknames, email addresses, or IP addresses.
• IP addresses: not kept. To stop abuse, the server counts sign-in attempts from each address in a scrambled form, not the address itself, and deletes the counts within a few days.

If you stop using your Apple ID with Loud Owl, in your Apple ID’s settings, the app signs out and clears what it saved on the device, and your family stays in your account until you delete it. If Apple tells us your Apple ID has been deleted, we delete your Loud Owl account the same way.

This website

loudowl.app has no accounts, forms, cookies, analytics, or tracking. Its narration sample plays only after you turn it on, and it streams from loudowl.app. We don’t keep logs of visits.

Security

Everything between the app and our server travels over HTTPS, and our database is encrypted. Each device signs in with its own random secret, which our server keeps only as a hash, so there are no passwords to steal. Only the people who run Loud Owl can reach its systems, and they’re built so that names and nicknames can’t end up in logs. On your device, the app’s data sits in its private storage, protected by iOS and iPadOS, and your PIN is stored only as a salted hash in the keychain. If something went wrong that affected your family’s information, we’d tell you as the law requires.

Changes to this policy

When what Loud Owl saves or shares changes, we’ll update this page and its effective date first. If we want to keep anything new about children, we’ll ask for your agreement in the app before we do.

Contact us