About the app and who runs it
Bank of Dad is an Android app for families to record children's pocket money: deposits, withdrawals, weekly or monthly pocket-money schedules, and a child's requests to take money out. It is made and run by an individual developer, called "we" below. You can contact us at pcholt@gmail.com.
What we store, and why
The app needs these things to work. We do not collect anything else.
| Information | Whose | Why we need it |
|---|---|---|
| Email address, name, and a password | Parents | To sign you in and to show other parents in the family who you are. Your password is held by Google's Firebase Authentication in hashed form; we never see it. |
| Family name, currency and time zone | The family | To format money and decide when scheduled payments fall due. |
| A child's display name, a colour, balance, and whether the child is archived | Children, entered by a parent | To show whose account is whose. We suggest a first name or nickname; please do not use a full name. |
| Ledger entries: type, amount, date, any note a parent writes, who recorded it, and whether it was reversed | Children, entered by a parent | The record of the pocket money. Entries are never edited in the app, only reversed by a new entry. |
| Pocket-money schedules: label, amount, frequency and dates | Children, entered by a parent | To post payments on the right days. |
| Withdrawal requests: amount, note, status and who answered | Children and parents | So a child can ask and a parent can approve, change or decline. |
| A random sign-in identifier for the child's phone, and the date it was linked | Child phones | So the phone can read its own child's records. It is created anonymously: no email, no name and no password. |
| Invitation codes and phone-link codes | Parents | Single-use codes that expire shortly after they are made, used to add a second parent or link a child's phone. |
| A small record that holds the server's time | Each signed-in user | To check that the phone's clock is right, so payments are dated correctly. |
On the child's phone only: the 4 to 6 digit PIN a child chooses is kept on that phone, in Android's protected storage. It is never sent to us. The app also keeps a cached copy of the child's records so the balance can be shown offline.
What we do not collect: your location, contacts, photos, files, microphone or camera, advertising ID, or any payment-card or bank details. The app asks Android for only two permissions, internet access and the ability to see whether the network is up.
Who can see it
- Parents in the family can see all of the family's children and records.
- A child's phone can read only that child's own records, and can send only withdrawal requests. Other children's records are not visible to it, and these limits are enforced on the server, not only in the app.
- Us. We can technically see stored records when we run the service, for example to fix a fault or answer a deletion request. We do not look at families' data otherwise.
- Google processes the data on our behalf (see the next section).
Where it is kept, and who processes it
The app uses Google's Firebase: Firebase Authentication for sign-in, and Cloud Firestore to store the records. Google acts as our processor, and handles data under its Firebase privacy information. Data is stored on Google Cloud servers, which may be outside your country. To run the network connection, Google may receive technical details such as your IP address and device type. We do not use Firebase Analytics, Crashlytics, advertising or any other third-party tracking in the app.
We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with anyone for marketing.
Children
Bank of Dad is a tool for parents and carers. It is not a place for children to make accounts. A child never enters an email address or a password: a parent creates the child's profile, using at most a first name or nickname, and links the child's phone with a one-time code. If a child uses the app, they can see only their own balance, history, scheduled payments and requests. There are no adverts, chat, purchases or links to other sites in the child's part of the app.
Parent accounts are for adults. If you believe a child has made a parent account, please tell us and we will remove it. If you are a parent or guardian and want to see, correct or delete what we hold about your child, see Your choices.
The app does not currently collect or use age-range information from Google Play.
Your choices
- Deletion. Use our account deletion page, or email pcholt@gmail.com from the address you signed up with, and say what to delete: a child, or the whole family and your account. We will confirm by email and delete it from our database within 30 days. Because ledger entries cannot be removed inside the app, deletion is done by us directly.
- Archiving. A parent can archive a child in the app. That hides the child and ends their linked phones but keeps the records until you ask for deletion.
- Access and correction. Ask us for a copy of what we hold about you or your child, or for a correction. Parents can also correct a child's name in the app.
- Stop using the app. Uninstalling it removes the phone's cached copy and the child's PIN. It does not delete the records on our servers, so ask us to delete them if you want that.
Depending on where you live (for example under Australia's Privacy Act, the UK and EU GDPR, or Brazil's LGPD), you may have further legal rights, such as to object to or restrict our use of your data, or to complain to your data-protection authority. Email us and we will help.
How long we keep it
We keep a family's records for as long as the family uses the app, so that the history stays complete. If a family stops using it, or asks us to delete it, we delete the records as described above. Single-use invitation and link codes expire shortly after they are made.
Security
Data travels over encrypted connections. The database's access rules allow each person to read and change only what their role allows, and these rules are checked by automated tests. A child's PIN is kept in Android's protected storage on their phone. No system is perfectly secure, but we take care to protect what you give us.
This web page
Like most web servers, the server that hosts this page keeps a standard request log: your IP address, your browser type, the page requested and the time. We use it only to keep the server running and secure. It is not shared, and is deleted automatically after 14 days. This page uses no cookies, analytics or trackers.
Changes to this policy
If the app changes in a way that affects your privacy, we will update this page before that version is released, and the date at the top will change.
Contact
Questions, deletion requests or complaints: pcholt@gmail.com.