Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 2026

Effective Date: October 18, 2026.

Last updated: October 2026.

Owlbert is a learning app for kids, run by Bare Metal Labs. We built it with privacy first, because it is used by children. This page explains what we collect, why, and the choices you have.

Parents are in charge

The parent or guardian is the account holder. Children do not create accounts or give us their email.
By signing up, you give consent on behalf of the children you add, and you confirm you are their parent or legal guardian.
Kids sign in on a device you have already signed in, by picking a profile. Everything about a child is visible to, and controlled by, you.

What Owlbert Collects

About you (the parent):

Your name, email address and a password (stored only as a salted hash). We ask you to confirm your email address, and you can turn on two-step login (2FA) with an authenticator app.
Your parent PIN (stored only as a hash).
When you agreed to our Terms and this policy.
Feedback you send us (the message, an optional screenshot, and the page you were on, our app version and a short browser summary). It contains no child names or lesson content unless you type them. You can see what you sent in Send feedback, and ask us to delete it any time. Your feedback and screenshot are stored in Owlbert and sent to our team's inbox so we can read it.
When you sign in, we record the time, your IP address and a short description of your browser or device, to keep your account secure and show you where you're signed in.
If you turn on notifications in the iPhone app, we store your device's notification token so we can send them. Turning notifications off or signing out deletes it. We keep a short log of which notifications we sent (no content), for at most 2 days, so we never send too many.
If you let a browser remember you for PIN unlock, we store a device record (for example "iPad (Safari)") and when it was last used. A remembered device unused for 30 days stops working, and you can remove any device in Account, then Privacy.
Rewards you set up: their names, prices and any photo you add. If you paste an Amazon link or wish list, our server reads that page and keeps only the product's title, picture, price and a clean link. Your child's device never contacts Amazon.

About each child you add:

Name or nickname, avatar and grade level, so we can pick the right lessons. We do not ask for a birth date or birth year.
Answers and progress: what they answered, how long each answer took, hints used, which skills they are strong or weak on, points and badges.
How they practice: small events during practice, such as when a question was shown, answered or a hint opened (never what they typed), kept for 180 days. From these we work out simple patterns about pace, so Owlbert can slow down, review or change what it asks. You see a short daily recap for the last 30 days, including the questions your child did that day. It may mention when your child seemed to hurry through some questions. Your child never sees these patterns, and they are never used for ads or shared.
Scans: homework photos or PDFs that you (or your child, if you allow it) upload. We use homework scans to tailor practice to how your child is taught. Every upload is checked automatically, by the same AI step that reads homework, to confirm that it is homework and safe for children. If it isn't, Owlbert deletes it straight away, keeps nothing from it except a note that an upload was declined, and shows you "This upload didn't look like homework, so Owlbert didn't keep it."

We count how often each feature is used, as anonymous daily totals with no account, family or child identifiers, to see what helps families most.

We use this only to run Owlbert: choose practice, mark answers, show you progress, and keep the service working.

AI Processing and Service Providers

Some features use AI: marking written answers, reading homework scans, and writing hints. For those, the relevant text or image is sent for processing. We add no names, emails or family identifiers; anything written on the homework itself (such as a name on the page) is visible to the model.
Anthropic (Claude), United States. Requests go to Anthropic, using your own API key if you add one. Under Anthropic's API terms, that data is not used to train their models. Anthropic keeps API data for a limited period under its own retention terms.
Fly.io, United States. Hosts the app and its database.
Cloudflare. Receives homework you email to your family address and passes it to us, and checks new passwords against known breaches using only a short, anonymous fragment of a hash (never the password).
Resend, United States. Sends our emails: sign-in and verification links, confirmations, your children's progress reports (which include their first names and highlights), and occasional "What's new" and "What's coming" emails about Owlbert. You can turn off reports and product emails from the link in any email or in Account. It also delivers your feedback to our team, including any screenshot you attach.
Apple, United States. If you use Sign in with Apple, Apple tells us your name and email address (or a private relay address). If you turn on notifications in the iPhone app, Apple delivers them; it receives your device's notification token and a short fixed message such as "Your homework scan is ready." Notifications never include a child's name, scores or lesson content.
Google, United States. If you use Sign in with Google, Google tells us your name and email address.
GitHub, United States. Our anonymous error reports (described below) are filed as tickets in our private GitHub project.
Google Cloud (Cloud Trace and Cloud Monitoring). Only if the service operator turns it on, it receives anonymous performance timings, described below, so we can make Owlbert faster and more reliable.
We send only what is needed for the task. We do not send your password.

Anonymous Performance Measurements

Unless the service operator has turned it on, Owlbert sends none of this. When it is on, Owlbert sends anonymous measurements of how fast it runs to Google Cloud, acting as our processor, only to find slow screens and errors and make Owlbert faster and more reliable. Google Cloud keeps them under its standard retention for monitoring data. There is no setting for this in the parent portal. The operator can turn it off at any time, and the measurements are only ever looked at in aggregate, never per family.

When something breaks, Owlbert sends an anonymous error report (the error type, where in the code it happened, the page type, the app version and timing) to Google Cloud, and files it as a ticket in our private GitHub project, so we can fix it. Reports never include error messages from your device, names, emails, your child's answers or homework, IP addresses, or any account, family or child ID. Your own 'Something's broken' notes and screenshots are stored in Owlbert and sent to our team's inbox so we can read them.

What is sent:

How long pages and server steps take (for example, how long a scan takes to read).
The kind of error, if something fails, but not the error message.
Which AI model was used and how many tokens it used.
A rough device type (phone, tablet or desktop) and connection type (such as 4g).
The type of page, such as "kid session page", never the actual page address.

What is never sent:

Names or email addresses.
Your child's answers, or the contents of homework and scans.
What we ask the AI, or what it replies.
Account, family or child identifiers.
IP addresses or browser fingerprints.
Exact page addresses.

What We Do NOT Do

No ads, ever.
We do not sell or rent your or your child's data.
No third-party trackers or analytics scripts in your browser. We use only the cookies needed to keep you signed in and remember which profile is selected.
We do not build advertising profiles of children.
Our emails have no tracking pixels. We count how many times links in an email were clicked, as totals only, not who clicked.

Helping Improve Owlbert (optional)

A parent can choose, separately from signing up, to share pseudonymised learning data with Bare Metal Labs (Account → Help improve Owlbert, shown only when sharing is available on your Owlbert). The parent picks what is shared (homework scan readings, written answers, practice history and learning signals, reports; photos of homework only if separately turned on, because they can show names, school and teacher) and for what period. Names are replaced and emails, phone numbers and web addresses are removed on your device before anything leaves it, and the data is locked so that only Bare Metal Labs can open it. It is pseudonymised, not anonymous: handwriting, context and timing can still point to a child. We use it only to improve Owlbert's teaching and reading, including testing and possibly training the AI models we use, and we never sell it. You can stop with one click and delete what was shared at any time; deleting removes it from our storage but cannot recall a copy already opened for analysis, which we delete within 90 days. Each choice is recorded as a separate consent.

Data Retention

We keep your account, your children's profiles and their progress while your account is open. Some things are kept for less time:

Homework photos, scan text and your child's written answers: deleted after the period you choose in Account, then Privacy (30, 90 or 365 days, or until you delete them). New accounts start at 90 days. What we learned from them (which skills were practiced, right or wrong) stays with your child's progress.
Uploads that are not homework are deleted straight away.
Practice timing events: 180 days. The daily recap shows the last 30 days.
Notification log: 2 days. Remembered devices: removed after 30 days unused.
The record of when Owlbert opened your family's content: 400 days.
Sign-in records, the log of emails we sent, the log of homework emailed to us, a record of account actions (such as changing a setting) and a usage log of AI requests (no homework or answers): kept while your account is open.

You can delete a scan, a child or your whole account at any time. Deleting your account permanently deletes your family's data, including children's progress and scans. Our backups are daily snapshots kept by our hosting provider for 14 days, on storage it encrypts, so deleted data can remain in a backup for up to 14 days. Learning data we derive from a scan (which skills were practiced, whether answers were right, and practice questions modeled on the homework) is kept with the child's progress until you delete the child or the account.

Your Rights

Export

In the parent portal, go to Account, then Download family data (ZIP), to download a copy of your family's information. It leaves out security secrets (such as keys, password and PIN hashes and notification tokens) and Owlbert's internal working data; the file lists exactly what is left out.

Delete

In the parent portal, go to Account, then Delete account. This is permanent. You can also delete a single child from the Children page.

Anything else

To see, correct or remove data, to make a privacy or deletion request, or to ask a question about a child's information (including requests from a parent or guardian), email support@getowlbert.com. We will respond within a reasonable time.

Security

The full picture, including what we cannot protect against, is on our Security page.

Everything is sent over HTTPS.
After reading a scan, we lock it so only your family's devices can open it (rolling out; until your family sets up its key, we can read your scans).
Optional two-step login (2FA) and email confirmation protect your account.
Database backups are encrypted by our hosting provider and kept for 14 days.
Anthropic API keys you add are encrypted at rest and never shown again in full.
Passwords and PINs are stored as hashes, never in plain text.
Each family can only ever see its own data.

No system is perfectly secure, but we take care to protect your family's information.

Children's Privacy

Owlbert is meant to be used by children under a parent's account. We do not knowingly collect information from a child without a parent's consent. If you believe a child's data was added without a parent's consent, contact us and we will remove it.

Changes to This Policy

If we change this policy in a meaningful way, we will update the date above and tell you by email or in the app.

Contact Us

Bare Metal Labs, support@getowlbert.com