Privacy Policy

Version tos-v3 · Last updated July 10, 2026

The short version

• Calls are never recorded. Live audio is processed in the moment to translate it, then discarded. Only transcripts and the moments your family chooses to save are kept — visible only to your family.
• No ads, no analytics or ad SDKs, no selling or sharing data with data brokers — ever.
• Your family's content is never used to train AI models — not by us, and not by our AI providers under our agreements with them.
• You can export everything or permanently delete everything, any time, in Settings.

What we collect

• Account data: names, emails, phone/WhatsApp numbers, languages, and dates of birth you add for family members, plus optional profile photos.
• Content your family creates — with everyone's consent: transcripts, live captions and their translations, moments a family member chooses to save, and voice/text/photo messages, stored in your family's private archive.
• Call and usage metadata: who called whom, when, and for how long; AI cost metering; subscription status. Payment cards are handled entirely by Stripe — we never see or store card numbers.
• Consent records: what notice was shown, in which language, which text version, when, and from which IP — kept as legal evidence of consent.
• Technical data: push-notification subscriptions for devices that opt in, and short-lived server logs for security and debugging.

How translation works (and where your voice goes)

During a call, speech is streamed to Google's Gemini API, which returns the transcription and translation; the optional spoken interpreter voice is generated by Microsoft's speech service. These providers process your family's audio and text solely to provide the translation for your call — under our agreements they do not use it to train their models. Because translation happens on servers, calls are encrypted in transit (not end-to-end encrypted — no live-translation service can be). No one at Grandkins — and no contractor — listens to or reads your family's conversations; the only exceptions are content you share with us yourself when asking for help, or when the law requires it.

What we never do

• No voiceprints or biometric identifiers — the interpreter voice is the same neutral synthetic voice for every family, never a clone of anyone.
• No selling or sharing family data; no advertising use; no analytics or ad SDKs in the apps.
• No AI-model training on your family's content.
• Platform administrators see operational metadata only (counts, plans, spend) — never recordings, transcripts, captions, or messages.

Who we share data with

Only service providers that Grandkins needs to run, processing on our instructions: Amazon Web Services (hosting, USA), Google (translation), Microsoft (interpreter voice), Stripe (payments), Resend (transactional email), and Meta WhatsApp / Twilio (delivering the invite and notification messages you ask us to send). We may also disclose data if the law requires it. There are no other recipients.

Children

Children under 13 are added only by a parent or legal guardian with a fresh password confirmation and explicit consent (COPPA). What we collect from a child is the same as any member: name, language, and the call content described above. Children never have their own credentials, and the parent can review or permanently delete a child's information at any time in Settings.

Retention and deletion

• Your archive is kept until you delete it — that's its purpose.
• Export: Settings → Privacy → "Export my data" downloads everything we hold about your family.
• Delete: Settings → Privacy → typed confirmation deletes the whole family after a 7-day grace period — database rows and files, permanently, including from the archive.
• Expired join links, dead push subscriptions, and server logs are cleaned up automatically.

Your rights

• Access, export, correct, or delete your family's data any time in Settings — no request forms, no waiting.
• California residents: the rights above cover CCPA access/deletion; we do not sell or share personal information as defined by the CCPA.
• India: the join-screen notice grandparents accept is the purpose-limited notice for processing under the DPDP Act.
• Questions or requests we can help with directly: hello@grandkins.com.

Security

TLS everywhere, hashed passwords (scrypt), one-time expiring join links (stored only as hashes), consent-gated archive features enforced server-side, per-family data isolation, and nightly encrypted backups. Data is hosted in the United States.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will update the date above and, for material changes, tell you in the app or by email. We will not reduce your rights under this policy without your explicit consent.

Grandkins · Webiske LLC, Louisville, KY · hello@grandkins.com · Terms of Service