Your family's privacy

Last updated 27 October 2026. Written in plain language. There is also a version for kids.

The short version

We collect as little as we can. A child's profile holds a nickname, birth year and avatar, and that's it.
There are no ads, no advertising trackers and no selling of data. Ever.
Kids never sign up themselves. A parent or guardian creates the family and gives consent.
Everything your kids do stays inside your family. There is no chat, no public profile and no contact with strangers.
Friends is optional and off by default. If you switch it on for a child, friends they've met in person can see a small profile (avatar, pet, room, badges, level and finished books) and send preset reactions. Never messages. See Friends and sharing between families.
Task photos are private to your family and delete themselves automatically (after 30 days by default).
Growth and health records are optional, need your consent first, are encrypted field by field and are only ever seen by the grown-ups you choose. See Growth and health information.
You can download all your family's data, or delete it, at any time from Parent settings.

Who we are

Yippie (“we”, “us”) runs the Yippie website and app. We are based in Australia. If you have a question about privacy, email privacy@yippie.me.

What we collect

From parents and guardians

Your name (or what the kids call you), email address and a securely hashed password.
Your family name, an optional family emoji, time zone and settings such as coin values, your gold-to-money rate and the dates holiday mode was on.
A hashed Parent PIN, if you set one.
If you subscribe to Family+, our payment provider (Stripe) handles your card details. We never see or store your card number.

About how the app is used

The tasks, rewards, goals, books and coins (silver and gold) you and your kids create, so the app can work. This also covers each kid's room layout and the items in it, and any pets (the animal, the name you gave it, its food and how many days it has been looked after). This includes any weekly allowance you set and the cash-out notes you record, like “Paid $5 cash”. Yippie never handles real money.
Basic device details (such as “iPad, Safari”) for each connected device, so you can see and remove devices in Settings.
If you turn on notifications, a push subscription for that device.

We don't collect location, contacts, advertising IDs or anything from other apps.

Children's information

Yippie is designed for children, so we hold ourselves to a higher standard.

Data minimisation: a child profile holds a nickname, birth year (never a full date of birth), avatar settings and their room and pets. No email, phone number, location or real photos of your child. Growth and health records are separate, optional and only added by a parent (see below).
Parental consent: only a parent or guardian can create a family and add children. Kids can't sign up on their own.
No strangers: there is no chat, no public profile and no way to search for or find other families. Siblings only see each other's name and avatar unless you turn on the family leaderboard. If you switch on friends, your child can connect only with kids they swap a code with in person.
No ads or purchases in Kid mode: there is no advertising anywhere in Yippie, and subscriptions can only be managed in Parent mode behind the parent gate.
Stays inside Yippie: Kid mode has no links to other websites. Book covers and details are fetched through our server, so your child's device never talks to third-party services directly.
Kid-written text (goal names, book reviews, task ideas) is visible only to your family, with a basic language filter for younger kids.

Growth and health information

Growth tracking is optional and free. Nothing is recorded unless a parent adds it. Because it can include health details, it counts as sensitive information under the Australian Privacy Act 1988, and we treat all of it that way, including heights and milestones.

What's collected

Measurements a parent enters: height, weight, shoe size and clothing size, each with a date and an optional note.
Milestones and memories: a date, a title, an optional note and a coded sticker. There are no photos.
Health records: vaccinations, allergies (with severity, reaction and an action plan), medicines and doctor, dentist or specialist visits, with an optional reminder date.
Custom trackers you create (for example sleep, mood or brushing teeth) and the entries you log.

Consent

The first time anyone in your family uses growth tracking, a parent reads how this information is handled and agrees before anything can be saved. That consent covers all growth and health information for your family, and we record who gave it and when.

How it's protected

It's kept in its own tables, separate from the rest of your family's data, and never included in the copy of your data the app saves on your device for offline use.
Every value is encrypted on our server before it's stored (field-level encryption with AES-256-GCM), on top of the encryption our hosting provider already applies. In production the key is held separately from the database, so a copy of the database alone can't be read.
Adding or changing these records needs a connection: they're sent straight to our server and never wait in your browser.

Who can see what

Owners and admins (parents) can see and change everything.
Helpers (such as a babysitter or grandparent) can only see current allergies and medicines, so they can keep your child safe. They can't see anything else or make changes.
Your child only sees their own height marks on a playful “growth door”. They never see weight, sizes, health records or trackers, and never any comparison with other children. You can switch the growth door off for each child.
It is never shared with friends or other families, and it is never used for advertising, analytics, profiling or training AI models.

Reminders

If you set a reminder (for example the next vaccination or a dental check-up), owners and admins get a notification that simply says a health reminder is due for your child. Notifications and emails never contain the details of the record.

Export and deletion

Your data export from Parent settings → Data & privacy includes all growth and health information, decrypted, so you can keep it or take it to your doctor.
You can delete any single record at any time. Deleting a child's profile deletes their growth and health information immediately, without the usual grace period.

Friends and sharing between families

Friends lets your child connect with kids they know in real life, like a cousin or a friend from down the street, so they can visit each other's rooms and cheer each other on. It's free, optional and off by default. It is the only part of Yippie that shares anything outside your family, so here is exactly how it works.

Your consent, for each child

A parent or guardian (an owner or admin in your family) switches friends on separately for each child, after reading what is shared and agreeing. We record who agreed and when. Helpers can't switch it on, off or remove friends.
Kids can't switch it on themselves, and nothing is shared with anyone until a parent has agreed.

What friends can see

The display name you chose for your child (we ask you to use a nickname or first name only, never a full name).
Their avatar and pet (its name, the animal, how grown-up it is and its mood).
Their room, to look at only. Friends can't change anything in it.
Their badges and level.
The titles of books they've finished, and the stars they gave them.

What is never shared

Coins (silver or gold), money, allowance and cash outs, tasks and approvals, goals, praise, growth and health information, location, school, book reviews and anything a child writes. Friends also never see your family name, your name or your email.

How friends are added

Only in person. One child shows a 6-character code or QR code from their Friends screen, and the other types or scans it. Each code lasts 10 minutes and works once. Scanning a QR code opens a screen that asks the child to confirm before anything happens.
There is no search, no directory, no suggestions and no friends-of-friends. Nobody can find your child unless your child shows them a code. Wrong codes are limited to 10 an hour, so codes can't be guessed.
Siblings in the same family can't add each other (they already share a family). Each child can have up to 50 friends.

What friends can do

Friends can only send one of 4 preset reactions (high five, wow, love it, cheer) to a part of a profile, up to 10 a day for each friend. There is no messaging, chat or free text of any kind, and no way to send photos, links or files.

You stay in charge

Parents in both families are notified each time their child makes a new friend.
You can see your child's friends, look at each friend's profile and remove any friend at any time, in Parent mode under Kids → your child → Friends. Kids can remove friends too.
Switching friends off hides your child's profile from their friends immediately and cancels any unused code. Their friend list is kept, paused, in case you switch it back on. A friend's profile only shows while both children have friends switched on.
Removing a friend deletes the friendship and the reactions between them. Deleting a child's profile removes all their friendships, codes and reactions straight away.
Your data export includes your children's friends (their display names and when they became friends) and the reactions sent and received.

Compliance

Australian Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles: we only disclose these profile details to another family with your consent, for the purpose you agreed to (letting friends see each other's progress), and we collect nothing new to do it.
COPPA (US): a parent gives verifiable parental consent from Parent mode (behind their password or Parent PIN) before any of a child's information is shared with another family, and can review, remove or switch it off at any time.
UK Age Appropriate Design Code: friends is off by default, shares the minimum, has no public profile, search or geolocation, no nudges to add more friends, and no messaging.

How we use information

To run Yippie: show tasks, award coins, sync between your devices and send the notifications or emails you've asked for.
To keep accounts secure, for example by limiting PIN and password attempts and alerting you to unusual activity.
To answer your support requests.

We do not use children's information for advertising, profiling or training AI models, and we don't sell or rent anyone's data.

We only share what's needed with trusted service providers who process it on our behalf, under contracts that protect it:

Hosting and database providers, which store data encrypted at rest.
An email delivery service, to send sign-in links, invites and reports you've turned on.
Stripe, if you subscribe, to process payments.
Your browser's push notification service (Apple, Google or Mozilla) to deliver notifications. These contain a short message, never photos or health details.

If you switch on friends for a child, their small public profile is shared with the friends they've added in person, and nothing more. We never share anyone's information with other families otherwise.

Growth and health information is never shared with friends, other families or anyone else, apart from the hosting provider that stores it in encrypted form.

Where your information is stored

Some of our service providers are based overseas, so your information may be sent to or handled in these countries:

Australia (Sydney). Our database and the servers that run Yippie. This is where your family's information, including growth and health records, is stored.
Japan (Tokyo). Our email delivery service sends emails from here. An email holds only what it needs, such as a name and a sign-in or invite link, and never growth or health details.
United States. Our hosting and email providers are US companies, and the public pages of the site are copied to their worldwide network so they load quickly wherever you are.

We only use providers that protect information to a standard comparable to the Australian Privacy Principles, and we stay responsible for how they handle it.

We may disclose information if the law requires it, and we will tell you unless we're legally prevented from doing so.

Photos and voice notes

If you use photo proof (for example a photo of a tidy room), the photo is of the task, is only visible to your family and is deleted automatically after 30 days by default. You can shorten this in Settings. Voice praise notes are also private to your family.

Cookies and local storage

We only use strictly necessary cookies: one secure, httpOnly cookie that keeps each device signed in. That's why there's no cookie banner. The app also saves a copy of your family's data in your browser's storage so it keeps working offline. There are no analytics or advertising cookies. If we ever add analytics for parents, they will be cookieless or we will ask first.

Keeping it safe

All connections use HTTPS. Data is encrypted at rest by our hosting platform, and growth and health information is also encrypted field by field with a separately held key.
Passwords and PINs are hashed (scrypt); sign-in links and invite codes are stored only as hashes and expire quickly.
Every action is checked on our server, so a child can't approve their own tasks or change balances, even on a shared device.
You can see every connected device and remove any of them at any time.

How long we keep it

We keep your family's information while your account is active. Task photos are deleted automatically (30 days by default). If you delete your family, everything is permanently removed after a 30-day grace period (so you can change your mind), except records we must keep by law, such as payment invoices.

Your choices and rights

See and download all your family's data as a file from Parent settings → Data & privacy.
Correct any details, including your children's profiles, at any time.
Delete a child's profile, or your whole family, from Settings.
Turn off notifications, emails or individual features whenever you like, including friends for each child.
Ask us about your information or make a complaint by emailing privacy@yippie.me. We'll respond within 30 days.

Laws we follow

We designed Yippie to meet children's privacy laws around the world, including:

the Australian Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles, and we are preparing for the Children's Online Privacy Code;
the EU and UK GDPR, including the extra protections for children (sometimes called GDPR-K);
the UK Age Appropriate Design Code (Children's Code): high-privacy settings by default, no nudges to share more, no profiling;
the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA): verifiable parental consent before any child profile is created, and parental access and deletion at any time.

If you're in Australia and unhappy with our response, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). In the EU or UK, you can contact your local data protection authority.

Changes and contact

If we make a meaningful change to this policy we'll tell parents by email and in the app before it takes effect. Questions? Email privacy@yippie.me.