Privacy Policy

The short version

ScreenDumb is an app for putting phones down together, and a website at screendumb.org (screendumb.com redirects there). There are no analytics.

Your plan, your budgets and your usage live on your phone and nowhere else.

Two things can leave the phone: the email address you give us so we can send you codes, and — only if you use screendown — timings that let a group see one shared clock.

If you choose to sign in, we also keep an account for you: your email, the screendown spaces and zones you own, and your screendown ledger (which spaces you were in, for how long, on which days). Signing in is optional; nothing in the app needs it.

Who this is for

ScreenDumb is for people 18 and older managing their own screen time. It is not a parental-control product and it is not directed at children.

We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you believe we have, email privacy@screendumb.com and we will delete it.

The ScreenDumb app

• Everything about your plan stays on the device. Your daily budgets, the apps you limit, downtime, sessions, budgeted days, lock-in dates and history exist only on the phone they were created on. An account, if you make one, holds none of this. It holds only your email, the screendown spaces and zones you own, and your screendown ledger.
• One email, one purpose. Changing your plan takes a code sent to your email. The address you give is stored on your phone. When a code needs sending, the address is processed transiently by our infrastructure providers (Cloudflare and Resend) and is not kept in any list or marketing database. You can change it at any time in the app.
• Codes are short-lived and never stored in plain text. Each code expires within minutes, is single-use, and is stored on our side only as a keyed hash until it expires.
• No analytics, no ads, no tracking SDKs. The app contains no advertising or behavioural-tracking code of any kind. It does not phone home. The only network calls it makes are to request and verify codes and, if you use screendown, to keep the group clock.
• Apple's Screen Time. Limits are enforced with Apple's Family Controls and Screen Time frameworks. Their privacy design means ScreenDumb cannot read which specific apps you use or build a browsing history; it can only enforce the budgets you set.
• Deleting the app deletes your plan. Your email, your commit date and your screendown keys live in the device's Keychain, which Apple preserves across app deletion so a reinstall can honour a lock-in you chose and keep your space. They stay on your phone. If you have signed in, your account — and with it your ledger and your zones — is on our side until you delete it, so a new phone can pick them up.

Your account (optional)

You can sign in with your email and a code. When you do, we create an account: a random id, your email address, the date, the list of screendown spaces and zones you have claimed, and your screendown ledger — one line per sitting you settled: the space, whether you hosted or joined, your seconds, the day. That is the whole record. It exists so a new phone can regain your spaces, your zones and your history.

It never contains your plan, your budgets, your sessions, your lock-in, or which apps you use.

Sessions (the sign-in on each phone) are stored as hashes and never expire; you can end this phone's from the app. The sign-in stays in your phone's Keychain, so reinstalling the app keeps you signed in.

You can delete the account at any time in the app (Settings → Account → Delete account) or, without the phone, by asking for a code with your email address. Deletion removes the account, its ledger and its ownership rows immediately, with no backups, and your spaces and zones keep working without an owner. If you never sign in, none of this exists.

You also choose a display name when you sign in. Your display name is visible to other signed-in members of a zone you're in. It never appears on the public page. You can change it in the app at any time (Settings → Account → Name).

Signed in, you can keep a zone you have been in: the zone's record then lists your account and your display name as a member, and the zone appears in the app on every phone you sign in on. Leaving a zone removes that membership; it never touches your ledger. When you delete your account, your membership rows go with it.

Screendown

Screendown is the optional group feature: one person shows a QR code or shares a link, others open a page on screendumb.org, and everyone puts their phones down together against one shared clock.

To keep that clock, a small service on Cloudflare stores the following per space:

• A random space id and, for a hosted space, a hashed host key.
• When a sitting started and ended.
• When each participant joined and tapped out, keyed by a random token the page generates — no name, no email, no device identifier, no account.
• For a zone (a poster in a café, a lecture hall, a park), the venue's name and, if we set it, its location. That is information about a place, not about you.
• Running totals of person-hours.

Participant tokens are deleted within 24 hours of a sitting ending; only the totals remain. If you leave a comment on the results page, it is emailed to us and not stored on the server. We may quote comments on this website without any identifying information.

If you join from the app while signed in, the sitting's record carries your account and display name, and the other signed-in members in that sitting see your name in the app. Joining from the web page is anonymous, as above. The website also shows one global counter — all-time hours screendown and the number of phones put down — computed from settled sittings alone, with nothing about any person in it.

This website

• No accounts, no forms, no analytics. Anything you type into a page on this site stays in your browser unless the page says otherwise.
• Server logs. Like nearly every website, our host keeps standard server logs — IP address, browser type, pages requested — for security and operations. We do not use them to identify or profile visitors.
• Cookies. We set none. There are no tracking or advertising cookies.
• Get the app links go to Apple's TestFlight, which is governed by Apple's privacy policy.

What we will never do

• Sell or share your email address with anyone.
• Send you marketing. The only emails the app sends are the codes you request.
• Collect which apps you use, how long you use them, or anything else Apple's Screen Time knows.
• Link your account to your plan, your budgets or your sessions — those never leave the phone.
• Add analytics or tracking without updating this page first.

Third-party services

We use three infrastructure providers, each processing data on our behalf under its own privacy policy.

Security

• Everything is transmitted over HTTPS.
• Your email and commit date are stored in the device's Keychain.
• Codes are single-use, expire within minutes, and are stored on our side only as keyed hashes.
• Host keys for screendown spaces are stored only as hashes.
• Account sessions are stored on our side only as hashes; the token itself lives in your phone's Keychain.

Your rights

• Change the email the app uses, at any time, in the app.
• Delete everything: delete the app to remove your plan (there is nothing on our side to remove unless you signed in — codes expire on their own and screendown totals were never linked to you), and delete your account in the app, or by asking for a code with your email, to remove it, its ledger and its ownership rows at once.
• Ask us anything about your data, or ask us to remove a screendown space or a quoted comment, at privacy@screendumb.com. We reply within 48 hours and act within 30 days.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a way that matters, the app will tell you the next time it asks for a code, and the date at the top of this page will change. We keep a habit of writing this page before we change what the app does, not after.

Contact

Privacy questions go to privacy@screendumb.com. Anything else goes to hello@screendumb.com.