Privacy Policy
Outft is a location-sharing app for kids, their Buds and their families. This page says, in plain words, what we keep, what we can't see, and what you can do about it. It covers the Outft apps for iPhone and Android and this website.
We never sell or share your data. Outft's basics are free; families who want more can subscribe. And even we can't see where you are: your location is encrypted on your phone, and our servers only pass along scrambled data they can't open.
What stays on your phone, and what we can't read
These are encrypted on your phone before they leave it, and only the people you've chosen can open them. We store and relay the scrambled version and have no key for it:
- your location, and your location history
- photos, including your profile photo (the location and other hidden details are stripped from a photo on your phone before it is encrypted)
- messages and pokes between people
- your saved places, like home and school
Things like finding where you are going, noticing you have arrived, and working out your Smoke Signal direction happen on your phone, not on our servers.
What we do keep
Only what we need to run Outft:
- Your account: a random account ID, your name and @handle as you chose them, your profile colour, and your age group (under 13, 13–15, 16–17 or adult). We keep an age group, never a birth date. For some people we also keep the month they turn 18 so the app can change the right settings on time, never the full date.
- How you sign in: if you use Apple, Google, a passkey or an email code, we keep a scrambled fingerprint that lets us recognise you, not your email address, and not your Google or Apple details. Your passkey's private key never leaves your phone.
- Who is connected to whom: your family (Head Honcho, Honchos and kids), your Buds, and your Outfts.
- Your devices: a random device ID, the kind of phone (for example "iPhone"), the Outft version, a push-notification token so we can reach your phone, and when it last signed in.
- Consent records: when a parent or legal guardian agreed to a child's account, which policy version, and when. This is a legal record.
- Subscriptions: if a family subscribes, which plan and when it renews. Apple or Google takes the payment; we never see a card number.
- Safety reports: if someone reports a person or a post, we keep the report, and the content the reporter's own phone chose to send for review.
- Counts that aren't about you: totals such as how many people used a feature in a day, with no names or IDs. If you switch on diagnostics or improvement reports, the numbers you send are added to those totals without your name or any ID.
Our logs record things like which page was asked for and whether it worked. They never contain location, photos, messages, phone numbers, emails or names, and they are deleted after 30 days.
What parents and legal guardians can see
A Honcho (a parent or legal guardian) can see what the family settings let them see, such as a kid's location and arrival or leaving alerts. They can't read a kid's chats, and they don't get a kid's photos or a kid's Buds' locations. Every kid can open a screen in the app that shows exactly what each Honcho can see and when they last looked, and Outft tells a kid when their Honchos can see them, even in Ghost mode. Where a switch lets a kid control something, the kid's own setting is shown in the app.
Who can see where you are
Nobody sees your location until you turn sharing on for them. By default they see a neighbourhood-sized area, and an exact spot only if you choose that for a person. A Bud sees at most the last 24 hours. You choose how long your own history is kept: none, 24 hours (the default) or 7 days. It is never kept longer. Nothing about you is public: no profile page, no search for people by name or @handle, and no "people you may know".
Kids and the law about children
An account for a child under 13 is made by their parent or legal guardian, who must agree first. We don't let kids under 13 sign themselves up. Nobody outside the family can add a minor without a Honcho's approval. For children under 13, precise location counts as personal information under the US children's privacy law (COPPA), so we ask the parent or legal guardian for consent before collecting it, and we pass none of it to anyone for their own use. A parent or legal guardian can ask what we hold about their child, and ask us to delete it, using the contact below.
Who helps us run Outft
These companies do part of the work for us. They don't get to use your data for themselves, and none of them can read your encrypted location, photos or messages:
- Apple and Google run sign-in, push notifications and subscriptions on their phones, and Apple hosts the map packs and song search that our apps use. They see what any phone maker or app store sees, such as your IP address when your phone talks to them.
- DigitalOcean and Supabase host our servers and database. Cloudflare delivers our web pages. Like any host, they see an IP address when a device connects; we don't keep it.
- Resend delivers our emails, so it sees an email address when we send to it.
We don't use ad networks, advertising IDs, or analytics tools that collect identifiers. We do pay to advertise Outft to parents; we count which ad led to an install without using advertising IDs and without learning who you are. We may be required by law to answer a valid request from the government; because your location, photos and messages are encrypted, we usually have nothing readable to hand over. We plan to publish how many we receive and answer.
Your choices and your rights
- See it: the app has a page showing what Outft holds about you, and a "Download my data" button. A parent or legal guardian downloads it for a child under 13; a teen's download stays with the teen.
- Control it: choose who sees you and how closely, pause with Ghost mode, freeze your spot, set schedules, and switch off any kind of notification.
- Delete it: "Delete everything" in the app removes your account and your data from our servers within 30 days, including backups. Two records can outlast an account because the law or safety needs them: the consent log (IDs only) and reports kept for safety review.
- Ask us: to know, correct or delete what we hold, email the address below. We'll answer wherever you live. We have no tracking or selling for a Global Privacy Control signal to switch off.
The website
This website sets no cookies of its own and has no ads, trackers or analytics. Our host's network may set one short security cookie that we never see. If you join the early-access list, the email notice says what we keep and for how long.
Where we are and changes
Outft is run from the United States and is for use in the United States for now. If we change this policy in a way that matters, we'll tell you in the app and here, and we'll ask for a parent or legal guardian's agreement again where the law needs it.
Contact
Outft LLC, Colorado, USA. Questions, requests and complaints: hello@jointheoutft.com. To report a security problem, see how to report one.