Privacy Policy

Balanced Play is operated by Balanced Play LLC, Indian Trail, NC, USA. Contact: info@getbalancedplay.com.

Who this covers

Balanced Play is a tool for parents. Only a parent or guardian creates an account and operates the service. Children do not create accounts, log in, or interact with us directly.

What we collect

• Your identity — when you sign in with Google or Apple, we receive your email address and a stable account identifier from that provider. We do not take your name from it. You can also sign in with an email address and password, or with a one-time code we email you. We never receive or store your password.
• Your name, if you ask for early access — the sign-up form on our website asks for your first and last name and how many children you have, so we can reply to you like a person. That is the only place we collect a name for a grown-up.
• Connected-account access — when you link a platform (Nintendo, Xbox, PlayStation, Steam, Google), we store the revocable access token that lets us read play time and set that platform's own parental-control limit. These tokens are encrypted at rest with AWS KMS.
• Your child's play data — a first name or nickname you enter, and the number of minutes played per day per platform. We do not collect a child's full name, birthdate, contacts, location, photos, or messages.
• Which games were played — so we can show you a play report, we store the title of the game and the minutes spent on it, per day, kept for 90 days and then deleted automatically. This comes from the three sources that can see it: our Windows agent, which already recognises each game as a running program in order to meter and stop it; our Android agent, which sees which app is in the foreground for the same reason; and Steam, which reports the title being played. Consoles report only a daily total, so their time shows in your report as unattributed. We record only the title and the time — never chat, voice, screenshots, screen recordings, keystrokes, or anything that happens inside a game. On Android the agent sees which app is in front and for how long, and nothing else — not messages, contacts, location, or browsing.
• Waitlist email — if you join the waitlist, we keep your email to tell you when we launch.
• Push notifications — if you turn them on, your device gives us a notification token, which we store so we can reach that device. A notification may include your child's first name (for example, “Alex is asking for more time”). Turn them off on your device and we stop.
• Your agreement to these terms — when you create your account we record that you accepted the Terms and this policy, along with the date, the version you accepted, your IP address and your browser's user-agent string. This is the record that shows you agreed, so it survives account deletion (see below).
• If and when you subscribe — payment is handled entirely by Stripe. We never see or store your card number. We keep only your subscription status and Stripe's customer/transaction identifier, so we know whether your account is active.
• Your agreement to be charged — when you subscribe we keep a record of it: the exact price and terms shown to you, the date, and the IP address and browser the agreement came from. Consumer-protection law requires us to be able to show that you agreed before we billed you, so this record is kept for at least three years — including after you delete your account. It is used for nothing else, ever.
• Basic technical logs — standard request logs needed to run and secure the service.

How we use it

Only to run the product: total up play time across the devices you've connected, apply your daily budget and bedtime, and set each platform's native limit accordingly. We use your email to send you account and service messages. That's it.

What we do not do

• We do not sell or rent your data to anyone.
• We do not use your family's data for advertising.
• We do not store your platform passwords — only revocable tokens you can disconnect at any time.

Who we share it with

We share data only with the platform services you connect (to read play time and set limits), and with the infrastructure providers that run Balanced Play on our behalf (Amazon Web Services for hosting and storage; your chosen sign-in provider; Expo, which delivers push notifications to your device and therefore sees the text of a notification, including a child's first name where one appears; Cloudflare, whose privacy-focused analytics count visits to our website and set no advertising cookies; and — if you subscribe — Stripe, which processes the payment and is the only party that handles your card details). We may disclose information if required by law.

Children's privacy (COPPA)

Balanced Play is directed to parents, not children. Any information about a child is provided and controlled by the parent, kept to the minimum needed to enforce a time budget and show that parent their own child's play report (a first name, the minutes played, and the titles played), and never used for any other purpose. A parent can view or delete it at any time by contacting us or deleting the child from their account.

Security & retention

Data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and connected-account tokens are encrypted at rest with AWS KMS. We keep your data only while your account is active. Daily play-time records expire automatically after a few days. Disconnect a platform and its token is deleted; delete your household or account and we remove your data.

The exceptions, stated plainly. Two records survive account deletion, and both exist to show that you agreed to something. The first is your acceptance of the Terms and this policy at signup. The second, if you ever subscribed, is the record of your agreement to be charged. Both are kept for at least three years: we need to be able to prove you consented, and a record we delete on request cannot do that. Everything else — your children, their names and play history, your linked platforms, and the log of your attempts to connect them — is deleted with your account.

Your choices

• Disconnect any platform at any time from your dashboard.
• Request a copy of, or deletion of, your data by emailing info@getbalancedplay.com.
• Unsubscribe from the waitlist or emails at any time.

Changes

If we change this policy we'll update this page and, for material changes, notify you by email.

Contact us

Questions about this policy, or want a copy of your data or it deleted? Reach us any of these ways — a real person answers.