Privacy Policy
Last updated: 14 August 2026
Hello Animals is used by children aged 1 to 3. It collects no personal information from anyone, and it cannot: there is no account, no text field, and no permission the app is able to ask for.
This policy describes the Hello Animals iPhone app and this website. It is written to be checked, not just believed — every statement below matches how the app is actually built.
Short version
- No accounts, no sign-up, no profiles, no email addresses.
- No name, age, birthday, photo or voice of a child. Nothing to type them into.
- No advertising, no advertising SDKs, no IDFA, no IDFV, no App Tracking Transparency prompt.
- No location, camera, microphone, contacts or photo access. The app requests no system permissions.
- No session replay, no screen recording, no cross-app tracking, no data brokers.
- The app works fully offline. A child can use it forever without a network.
What stays on the device
These never leave the phone:
| What | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|
Favourites — a list of animal identifiers such as cow |
To show the Favourites grid | Until the like is removed or the app is deleted |
| A counter of the first two app launches | To show the “swipe and tap” hint twice, then stop | Until the app is deleted |
| Seven usage counters (how many sessions, how many seconds, with and without a network) | To understand how much the app is used offline | Reset every time the summary is sent |
| Full-access status | To open the paid animals | Not stored at all — asked from the App Store each launch |
The usage counters are seven whole numbers and nothing else — no timestamps, no history of what was opened, no session list. They can show how much the app was used, and they cannot show when or by whom.
What is sent, and to whom
Anonymous product analytics
The app sends anonymous usage events to Aptabase, an analytics service,
processed in the European Union (eu.aptabase.com). They tell
us which animals children listen to, which screens are opened, and whether the app is used
without a network — so we know what to build next.
An event can only contain values from a fixed list defined in the app: an animal or
category identifier from our own catalogue (cow, farm), a word
from a closed vocabulary (swipe, left), a count, a duration in
seconds, the app version, the interface language, the product identifier of the purchase,
or the three-letter country code of the App Store storefront. Free text cannot be sent,
because no event accepts it.
Events are grouped by a random session value that lives in memory for a single run of the app and is never written down, so two sessions of the same phone cannot be connected. There is no user identifier and no device identifier of ours anywhere in the app.
What the analytics service adds by itself
Aptabase attaches technical information to each event that our app does not choose:
device model (for example iPhone14,6), operating system name and version, app
version and build, system language, whether the build is debug or release, its own SDK
version, its own session number, and the time of the event. This is standard technical
information about a device, not about a person; it is listed here because you should know
what a third party receives.
Purchases
The optional purchase is handled entirely by Apple. We never see payment details, card numbers, or your Apple Account. When a purchase or a restore succeeds, the app records the fact in analytics together with the product identifier and the storefront country — never a price, a receipt, or an identity.
The parental gate
Buying, restoring a purchase and opening any external link require a grown-up to solve a small arithmetic problem first. The answer is never stored, never logged and never sent anywhere — the app reports only that an attempt was wrong, with no detail attached. A new problem is generated for every attempt, so “passed once” cannot be remembered or reused.
Children
The app is made for children and takes part in the App Store Kids Category. It collects no personal information from children — or from adults — because it has no way to receive any: no registration, no text input, no permissions, no advertising and no social features. Nothing in the app can identify a child, and nothing sent from it can be traced back to one.
There is therefore no personal data to access, correct or delete. If you would like the anonymous analytics from your device to stop, delete the app; nothing further is sent, and nothing about the device remains identifiable in what was already collected.
Legal bases and retention
The anonymous usage data described above is processed to operate and improve the app (legitimate interest under the GDPR). It is processed inside the European Union. Purchase processing is performed by Apple under Apple’s own terms and privacy policy.
We keep analytics data only as long as it is useful for product decisions, and it is never combined with any other source to identify a person.
Changes
If this policy changes, the date at the top of this page changes with it. Material changes will also be described in the app’s release notes.
Contact
Questions about privacy: [email protected]. We answer within three business days.