How Roost protects your family
What Roost does with your child's phone, what it never does, and how your family's data is kept safe.
Out in the open, never secret
Roost is for parents looking out for their own children, with their children's knowledge. It is not spyware, and it cannot be hidden:
- Your child's phone always shows a notice that it is monitored, and Android shows a key icon while the internet filter runs.
- Your child can open Roost to see the rules that apply to them and exactly what has been sent to you.
- Your child can ask you to unblock an app or a site, from their own phone.
- Roost is declared to Google Play as a parental-control app, and Google Play Protect tells the phone's user that it is installed.
Messages stay on your child's phone
Roost checks the text of notifications from messaging and social apps on your child's phone. Messages are never uploaded. When something looks worrying - bullying, self-harm, drugs and the like - you get an alert with a short excerpt and its category, not the conversation.
Only what you need
- Websites: the internet filter names only the sites it blocked. Sites your child was allowed to visit are counted, never named or sent.
- Location: off until you turn it on, and your child is told before it starts. History is kept for at most 7 days, only if you choose to keep it.
- Screen time: which apps were used and for how long, never what was on the screen.
- Your child's phone sends no analytics and shows no ads. The optional ads in Roost are only ever in the parent's app, when a parent chooses to watch one.
Who can see it
You, any co-parent you invite (you can remove them at any time), and your child on their own phone. We never sell personal data, and nothing about your child is used for advertising. Our staff look at an account only when strictly necessary to fix a fault or investigate abuse.
How it is kept safe
- Data is stored with Google Firebase in its India (asia-south1) region, encrypted in transit and at rest.
- Database rules let only your family's parents and its linked phones reach your family's data, and a phone can link only with a code you made, which expires after 15 minutes.
- Payments are handled by Google Play and the App Store; Roost never sees your card.
- If a protection on your child's phone is switched off, or Roost is about to be removed, you are told.
Your data is yours
Delete a child's profile, or your whole account and everything stored for your family, at any time: in the app under Settings, or here. Read the full detail in our Privacy Policy, or contact us with any question - we read every message.