Privacy · Homestead

Where your information lives

Most family apps keep it in their cloud. Homestead keeps it at home.

Most family apps

Your kids, rules and history

Stored on the company’s servers

Behind an account the company runs

Homestead

Your kids, rules and history

Stored on the Board, in your house

Your grown-up account lives on your Board

What the Board talks to on the internet

The Board talks to the internet for a few practical things. It never sends us your kids’ activity unless you turn on Homestead Care, and then only to deliver it to your phone. With Care off, it contacts:

Our box-name service, to give your Board its secure web address (it sends the Board’s address on your home network). Security certificates for that address come from Let’s Encrypt, and the address appears in public certificate logs.
Our update server, to check for updates (no identifier is sent; we see your home’s internet address), and Debian’s servers for system updates.
Weather: Open-Meteo gets your home’s approximate location every 20 minutes.
Address lookup: OpenStreetMap gets the town or address you type during setup, and the school search uses the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics.
Location lookup services (ipapi.co, ipwho.is), only if you tap “Use where this Board is”.
Cloudflare, for secure name lookups; Google and Apple connection checks; and Google Fonts and jsDelivr for parts of the Board’s screens.
Our email service (through Resend), only when you ask for a password reset: it gets your email address and display name.
Any calendar you choose to connect, and any optional service you turn on yourself (for example Google Calendar or smart lights).

Before Homestead goes on sale we’ll publish a full Privacy Policy with every detail.

Our promises

Private because of how it’s built, not because we say so.

No cloud account for your family

We don’t run an account for your family, so there’s no Homestead login in the cloud to hack. Your grown-up account lives on your Board.

Works when the internet is down

Routines, rules and bedtimes keep going at home. The kids’ devices remember their rules, too.

We never read kids’ messages

Homestead sees which app is open and for how long. It doesn’t read messages, look at photos, record the screen, listen, or track what your kid types.

No ads, no selling

Homestead is not an ad business. We never sell your family’s information, and there are no ads anywhere.

Free backups to a USB stick

Every family gets weekly backups to a USB stick in the Board, locked with your Recovery Kit code.

Cloud backups locked with your code

With Homestead Care, nightly backups are locked with your Recovery Kit code before they leave the house. Unless you turn on the safety net below, nobody else can open them, including us.

What parents can see

Exactly what shows up in the Parent app, and what never does.

Homestead is for parents and guardians guiding their own kids, out in the open. Kids can always tell it’s there.

Parents can see

Which app is in front and for how long (Android, Windows)
On Windows PCs, the title of the window in front (like a browser tab name), and installed and running programs
Daily screen time, most-used apps and a 3-day list of events
A phone’s last-known location and 14-day trail, only if you turn location on for that phone
Which devices are on the Kids Wi‑Fi, including guests’ devices

Parents can’t see

Messages, chats or emails
Web history or web addresses
Photos, the camera, the microphone, screenshots or a live screen
Keystrokes or passwords
Contacts or call logs

If you lose your code

A safety net, only if you want one.

Your Recovery Kit code is the only key to your backups. If you’re worried about losing it, you can ask us to help. We want to be plain about what that means.

Let Homestead help if I lose my code

Off unless you turn it on

LEFT OFF

Only your code can ever open your backups. Nobody else can, including us.

TURNED ON

We keep a sealed copy of your backup key, so support can get you back in after checking it’s you. That means we could open your backups while this is on.

Your family’s information lives in your home.