Terms of use
Paired Parent — Messaging Oversight & Monitoring System
Version 2 · 6 September 2026
What this is
Paired Parent is two apps. One runs on a phone you provide to a child, arrives already set up, and is openly announced on that phone's lock screen. The other runs on your phone and is how you see and control what the first one does.
Installing the parent app and pairing it with a child's phone means you accept these terms and the privacy policy.
Who may use it
By using Paired Parent you confirm that:
- You are an adult, and the parent or legal guardian of the child whose phone is supervised.
- You own or otherwise control that phone and are entitled to decide what runs on it.
- You are lawfully entitled to supervise that child's use of it where you live.
This is not a tool for monitoring another adult, an employee, or anyone whose phone is not yours to decide about. Laws on recording and intercepting messages and calls differ from place to place, and some require the knowledge or consent of more people than you might expect. Satisfying yourself on that point is your responsibility, not ours.
The child's phone announces its own supervision permanently on the lock screen, and that notice cannot be removed while the software is running. That is deliberate. If your intention is that someone not know they are being monitored, this is the wrong product.
What it does not promise
This is the most important section on the page, so it is stated bluntly rather than buried. Paired Parent is not a safety service and must not be relied on as one.
- The screening misses things. It is a model that judges text, and it is wrong in both directions: it will flag ordinary conversation, and it will let real harm through. Nothing about a quiet week means nothing happened.
- The web filter can be got around, and it fails open. A network that blocks the filter's port, a router the child controls, or a second unsupervised device all defeat it. When it cannot work, browsing is unfiltered rather than blocked, and you are told — being told is the guarantee, not the blocking.
- A phone that is off, out of signal, or in airplane mode reports nothing. The app shows you that it has lost contact. It cannot tell you why.
- Location is a best effort. Indoors, or with no view of the sky, a position may be coarse or unavailable.
- Alerts may be delayed. Delivery depends on Google's notification service, both phones' networks, and the battery settings on your own phone.
- It is not an emergency service. If a child is in danger, contact the emergency services or a crisis line. Do not wait for an app.
Updates
Both apps update themselves. The child's phone installs an update only after you approve it in your app. Every update is checked on the phone against our signing certificate and a checksum before it is installed, so a compromised server cannot push code to your phones.
If an update changes what is collected or shared, you are asked to make that choice again before anything new is shared. See the privacy policy.
Availability, and the state of this software
This software is early and is being tested with a small number of families. It is provided as it is, without any warranty. Features may change, and a service it depends on — a phone network, Google's notification service, a name server — can fail in ways we do not control.
We will tell you what we know when something breaks. We cannot promise it will not.
What it costs
Nothing today. Paired Parent is free while it is being tested, and there is no billing in it. If a paid plan is ever offered, the price, the billing interval, what renews and how to cancel will be shown before anything is charged, and a charge will need your explicit agreement at that time. Nothing here is an authorisation to bill you.
Ending it
- Remove disconnects a parent phone from a child's phone. The disconnected phone's access stops within a heartbeat.
- Release ends supervision entirely and gives the phone back. It needs both you and the person holding the child's phone to agree, within ten minutes of each other — neither side alone can do it, deliberately, so that neither a lost parent phone nor a guessed PIN can end supervision on its own.
- Either way, the pairing and everything held for it on our server is deleted. A released phone keeps its own message archive for whoever holds it, and stops being filtered.
- To have us delete what we still hold about your family — your consent records and any problem or crash reports naming your pairing — write to privacy@pairedparent.com. The privacy policy says what can and cannot be reached.
Other people's work
Both apps are built on open-source software, and the screening was trained on published research datasets. Several of those licences require that credit travels with the product. It does: the parent app's About screen and the child app's Licences screen show the full credits and licence texts. Maps and map data are © Mapbox and © OpenStreetMap contributors.
If these terms change
A changed version is published here with a new date. Where a change affects what is collected or shared, the app asks you again rather than assuming your previous answer carries over.