Privacy Policy

Equal House ("we", "us") builds a family planning app that helps households share responsibilities fairly. We take the privacy of your family — and especially your children — seriously. This policy explains what we collect, why, and the choices you have.

Information we collect

• Account information. When an adult signs in, our authentication provider (Auth0) handles credentials; we store an identifier, name and email to link you to your household.
• Household content. The members, tasks, events, meal plans, routines and notes you create in the app.
• Children's profiles. Children have no email, password or accounts of their own. An adult creates and manages each child's profile, which holds a display name, a date of birth — from which we derive a coarse age band, used to suggest age-appropriate tasks — any school details you add, and the board settings a grown-up chooses for them (how lively it is, and whether it plays sounds). To use Kid Zone, a child signs in to a restricted board with your family's shared code and an optional PIN you set — we do not collect a child's email or contact details.
• Pocket money. For each child we hold a pocket-money balance that is credited when they complete an approved chore, and adjusted when you record a pay-out. This is a simple running total you manage in the app — no bank or payment account is involved.
• Documents (optional). Files you upload are stored securely. Documents marked private remain accessible only to their owner.
• Safe Space notes and voice notes (optional, Equal House Pro). A Safe Space note is something one adult chooses to raise with one other adult in the household. It holds the topic in the author's own words, who it is for, whether they would like a calm talk, and any timer they set. The author can say the topic instead of typing it: the app then records their voice, and the recording (audio only, up to 10 MB) is uploaded to our storage and kept with the note. The words the phone recognised while they spoke become the note's topic. While a note is a draft, only its author can see it or play its recording. Once it is shared, the adult it was shared with can read it and listen to the recording as well. No one else in the household can, and children never can. The author can remove the recording, which deletes it, and deleting a note deletes the note and its recording.
• School information (optional). If you use the school-run planner, you can add a child's school, class, teacher name, term dates and per-day items (uniform, PE, swimming) so the right reminders reach your calendar.
• Party planning (optional). When you plan a birthday party, you may enter whose birthday it is, their interests, an optional age and a gift budget so we can suggest gift ideas. The party need not be a child's, and the person it is for is often not a member of your household.
• Device & usage data. Basic technical data needed to operate the app, such as device type and diagnostics, together with the usage data and crash reports described under "Usage data and crash reports" below — which you can switch off.

How we use information

• To provide the app's features — the Fairness Engine, planners, calendar, Kid Zone, money insights and documents.
• To power the AI features, using Amazon Bedrock (see "Where your data is processed" below). Magic Add reads text or a photo you give it, and a forwarded email is read the same way; a party invitation or a printed shift rota can be read from a photo. What they find is shown to you first — as suggested events and tasks, a party form filled in for you, or shifts — and is saved only once a grown-up confirms it. When you add a note to a meal plan (such as "more Italian"), the note and the recipes the plan can choose from are sent so the plan can follow it, and party gift ideas use the recipient's age, interests and budget; you can edit, regenerate or delete these suggestions at any time. Only what the feature needs is sent, such as the text you paste or the photo you take. From version 1.16.0 of the app, the first time you use one of these features on a phone, the app tells you what is sent and asks your permission, and nothing is sent until you agree; you can withdraw it at any time in Settings → Privacy & legal. Without it, a new party still gets gift ideas from our own list and a Safe Space note our standard talking points, with nothing sent to the AI. Email you choose to forward to Equal House is still read until you stop forwarding it.
• To suggest gentle talking points for a Safe Space note. The note's topic — typed, or the words recognised from a voice note — is sent to Amazon Bedrock to draft them. The voice recording itself is never sent to the AI provider.
• To turn speech into words when you dictate — "Speak it" in Magic Add, a house note, or a Safe Space voice note. The app uses your phone's own speech recogniser: Apple's on an iPhone or iPad, and on Android the recogniser your phone provides, usually Google's. Depending on your phone and its settings, the recogniser may process your speech on the device or on that company's servers, under its own terms. We receive only the words it returns (and, for a Safe Space voice note, the recording described above).
• To improve the pictures on children's boards. Each job on a child's board gets a picture chosen from its words. So that we can add pictures for the jobs families actually give their children, our team can see a list of job and routine-step wordings that at least three different households have used — only the words, never which household, child or date they came from. A wording used by fewer than three households is never shown to us.
• To power Bric, the assistant inside the app, which is part of Equal House Pro. When you ask Bric something, your question, the earlier messages in that chat and the parts of your household's information needed to answer it are sent to Amazon Bedrock to compose a reply. Depending on the question, that can include past and upcoming events and tasks, members' first names and birthdays, who was at work or away, how the load has been shared, your house notes, and the names and expiry dates of the family documents everyone in your household can see — never a private document, and never a document's contents. Bric can propose changes to your household, but a proposal only becomes a change when an adult approves it in the app. The one change Bric makes without that approval is adding items to your household's shopping list when someone asks him to. Chats with Bric are shared with the grown-ups in your household: any of them can read past chats and see who asked. They are kept for 14 days so you can look back at a recent chat, then deleted automatically. If your household keeps facts in What Bric knows, they are sent to Amazon Bedrock (processed in the UK and the EU) with each question, never used to train AI, and any grown-up in your household can change or remove them.
• To apply the monthly allowances on the AI features (see our terms). We count how often your household uses each one, and what those requests cost us. The counts are numbers only — never your questions, text or photos — and are deleted with your household.
• To operate, secure, maintain and improve the service — including the usage data and crash reports described in "Usage data and crash reports" below, which you can switch off.
• To communicate with you about your account, your subscription and important service changes, and to send the reminders and household notifications you have set up. These are part of the service rather than marketing.

Product news and offers. From time to time we may send a grown-up in your household a notification about new features, changes to Equal House or an offer from us. We never send these to children, and we do not use your family's data to profile you for advertising or share it with anyone for marketing. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in telling the people who use Equal House about it. You can object at any time: email us at hello@equal.house and we will stop sending them to your account, or turn off notifications for Equal House in your phone's settings (which also stops the reminders and household notifications you have set up).

Knowing whether our messages are read. When you open a notification that Equal House itself sent you — news, an offer or a message about the service, rather than one from your own family — the app tells our server, so we can see whether those messages are useful. We record that you opened it and when. It is kept with your account, is not shared with anyone, and is deleted with your account. We never record whether you open the notifications your family sends you, such as a task, a thank-you or anything from Safe Space. If you switch off Share usage data (below), this stops too.

Usage data and crash reports

The app can report two kinds of technical information to Google, using Firebase Analytics and Firebase Crashlytics. Both are governed by a single setting — More → Settings → Privacy & legal → Share usage data — which is on when you install the app and which you can switch off at any time. Switching it off stops both, on that device, from that point on.

• Usage data. Which screens are opened, and a small fixed set of actions: for example a household being created, an invite being shared or accepted, a task being completed, something being added, a Pro feature being reached, and a subscription being started or bought (with the plan and its price). Screens are recorded as route patterns rather than the addresses you actually visited, so no task, member or document identifier is included. We also record coarse groupings of your household — free or Pro, whether there is a second adult, and a banded number of children — so that reports describe kinds of household rather than yours.
• Crash reports. When the app fails, the error and its stack trace, together with the device model, operating system version, language, available memory, the app version, the screen you were on, and an identifier that Crashlytics generates for that installation of the app.

We use this only to understand which parts of the app are used and to find and fix faults. It is not used for advertising and we do not sell it. We do not put your household's content into either kind of report — no names, no task, event or document titles, no notes, messages, photos, documents or journal entries — and we send no account, household or member identifier, so the only identifiers involved are the ones Google's own software generates for an installation of the app. A crash report is a technical description of a failure, so in rare cases the error message inside one may quote a value the app was handling when it failed. Google processes this data for us as a service provider, under its own security and data-processing terms.

Kid Zone. When a child signs in to the kid board, usage data and crash reporting are switched off for that session, and they are switched off again as the app starts if a child is still signed in. Your household's own setting is restored when the child signs out.

Which version of the app you use. While Share usage data is on, the app also tells our own servers which version of Equal House it is and which phone operating system it runs on (for example "Android 14") — never the phone's model. We keep this with your membership of the household, so that when a family reports a problem we can tell whether they have the update that fixes it. It is deleted with your account or your household. Switching Share usage data off stops the app sending it; the version already recorded is kept until your account or household is deleted.

When each member last used the app. To run and support the service, our servers note the date and time each member of a household — children included — last used the app. This is part of operating the service rather than usage data, so it is recorded whatever the Share usage data setting. It holds nothing about what was done in the app, and it is deleted with that member or the household.

Connecting an AI assistant (MCP connector)

Equal House offers an optional connector that lets an outside AI assistant — such as Claude (made by Anthropic) — work with your household on your behalf, so you can plan family life by simply asking. Connecting is entirely your choice, is switched off unless you set it up, needs an active Equal House Pro subscription, and can be turned off again at any time.

Once you connect an assistant, it can read and act on your household's planning data:

• Your calendar and events — what's coming up, all-day and timed entries, school days and holidays.
• Tasks and who does them — their titles, their status, and which member each is assigned to.
• Fairness scores — your household's Fairness Score and how the load is split between members.
• Household members, including children — members' first names and ids, and a child's coarse age band where relevant, so the assistant knows who "Alex" is when you mention them.
• Meal plans and linked connections — planned meals, and the free/busy availability of any extended-family or friend households you've linked.

The assistant can also make changes for you — creating events and tasks, marking tasks done, reassigning a task to a different member, and rescheduling an event. These changes act only on your own household, exactly as if you had made them in the app.

Equal House only responds to the specific requests the assistant sends. We do not receive, see or store your conversation with the assistant, and connecting one creates no new store of your data and does not change how long we keep it — the information involved is the same household data described above, kept under the same retention rules. The AI assistant you connect (for example Claude/Anthropic) is a separate company, not part of Equal House: it processes your data under its own privacy policy and terms, which are outside our control, so please review its policies and only connect a provider you trust with your family's information — including your children's names and schedules.

Access is set up by an adult account owner through a secure sign-in (OAuth via Auth0) — you approve the connection yourself, and no password or token is shared with the assistant — and it is scoped to the single household you sign in with. You can revoke access at any time by disconnecting the Equal House connector in your assistant's settings; once disconnected, it can no longer read or change your household data. Questions? Email hello@equal.house.

Using Equal House with Alexa

You will be able to link Equal House to Amazon Alexa once Amazon has certified our skill. Linking it is your choice, and you can unlink it at any time in the Alexa app.

• If you link Equal House to Alexa, Amazon processes your voice under Amazon's own terms and privacy notice. Amazon sends us the words of your request that we need to answer it — for example a task's name — not the recording.
• Equal House answers from your household's data on its own servers in London. These requests are not sent to an AI provider.
• If you ask Alexa to add a task, an event or something to the shopping list, or to tick off a task, Equal House makes that change in your household as if you had done it in the app, once Alexa has read it back to you and you have said yes. Alexa never reads out or changes a child's own jobs.
• Amazon receives the answer we send back, which can include names, events and tasks, so that Alexa can say it aloud.

What we never do

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use your family's data for third-party advertising. Equal House has no ads.

How information is shared within your household

Content you add is visible to members of your household according to the app's rules — for example, household documents are shared with the family, while private documents stay with their owner. Reassigning and sharing respect each member's role. Chats with Bric are shared too: any grown-up in your household can read past chats and see who asked.

Offer codes claimed on our website

If you claim an offer code on our website (equal.house/join), we store the email address you enter, the code, where you came from (for example our switch page) and, if you choose to answer, which app you are moving from. We use them to apply the code when you sign in to the app with that address, to make sure each code is used only once per household, once per person and once per email address, and to count how many families an offer reaches. We don't add you to a mailing list, and we don't send you email. When you sign in, the claim is linked to your household's record of the code. We keep the claim until you delete your Equal House account, which deletes it too, or until you ask us to delete it at hello@equal.house.

So that the same person can't use a code twice, even by deleting their account and starting again, we also keep a one-way, keyed fingerprint of the sign-in and of each email address that used a code. It can't be turned back into your sign-in or your address: it can only tell us that the same sign-in or address has used that code before. It is linked to no account or household, and it is deleted three months after the code closes.

Where your data is processed

Your household's information is stored with Amazon Web Services in London, and Auth0, which runs sign-in, hosts your account in the UK.

Equal House's own AI features — Bric, Magic Add, reading a forwarded email, an invitation or a rota, a meal plan shaped by your note, gift ideas and Safe Space's talking points — run on Amazon Bedrock. Each request is sent from London, and Amazon Bedrock processes it in the UK or the European Union: in London, Ireland, Paris, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Milan or Spain. UK data protection law treats sending personal data to EU countries as approved, so no extra safeguards are needed. Amazon says it does not use these requests to train AI models, and that the company that makes the AI model cannot see them.

This covers Equal House's own features only. Google (Firebase), Stripe, the app stores and some of the services Auth0 itself uses, such as its email and support providers, handle data under their own arrangements, which may be outside the UK and the EU. If you connect an outside AI assistant, or use Equal House through Alexa, that company processes what it handles wherever it operates, under its own terms.

Service providers

We use trusted providers to run the service, including authentication (Auth0, which hosts your account in the UK), cloud hosting and storage (Amazon Web Services, in London), AI processing (Amazon Bedrock, in the UK and the EU), receiving forwarded email (Mailgun, in its EU region), payment processing (Stripe and the app stores), and usage measurement, crash reporting and push notifications (Google, via Firebase Analytics, Firebase Crashlytics and Firebase Cloud Messaging — see "Usage data and crash reports" above). These providers process data only as needed to deliver their service to us. Separately, if you choose to connect an AI assistant (see "Connecting an AI assistant" above), that provider — for example Anthropic (Claude) — processes your household data under its own policies, outside our control; and if you link Alexa, Amazon handles your requests under its own terms (see "Using Equal House with Alexa" above).

Data retention

Conversations with Bric are kept for 14 days and then deleted automatically. If you report one of Bric's answers, our team reads the report (the question, the answer and anything you add); it is kept for 90 days, then deleted, and never used to train AI. Safe Space notes, and their voice recordings, are kept until the author deletes them (or removes the recording), the author deletes their account, or the household is deleted. A note stays with its author if the adult it was shared with deletes their account. Everything else: we keep your data for as long as your household uses Equal House. You can delete content in the app at any time, and you can delete your account and the personal data linked to it from within the app (Settings → Privacy & legal, or More → Your Account) or at https://equal.house/delete-account. When an adult deletes their account, we also delete their private documents, the reach-out messages they sent and their weekly fairness check-ins. Content they added for the whole household, such as tasks, events and shared documents, stays with the household.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export or delete your personal data, and to object to or restrict certain processing. To exercise any of these, contact us at hello@equal.house.

Children's privacy

Equal House is designed for adults to manage on behalf of their family. A child's profile is created and controlled by a parent or guardian; the only information held about a child is what the managing adult provides — a display name, a date of birth, an optional profile photo, an optional sign-in PIN and any school details added — together with the chores, routines and pocket money recorded as the child uses Kid Zone. We do not collect a child's email or contact details. If you believe a child has provided us personal information directly, please contact us so we can remove it.

Security

We use industry-standard measures to protect your data, including encrypted connections, access controls scoped to your household, and signed, time-limited links for document downloads. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, but we work hard to protect your information.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. We'll revise the "last updated" date above and, for material changes, notify you in the app.

Contact us

Questions about your privacy? Email hello@equal.house.