Privacy Policy

What the app stores on your phone

In the app’s private storage on the device, and nowhere else:

• Your settings: the lock mode (Whole screen, End call only or Some buttons), the unlock method, whether the app offers to lock when a call starts, and your privacy choices.
• The blocked zones you have drawn, saved per call app as rectangles on the screen.
• A cached copy of the app’s remote settings, described below.

Display over other apps

The lock layer is a transparent window the app draws on top of whichever app is in front — your call app, during a call. Android calls this permission “Display over other apps” (SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW). Screen Lock uses it for the lock layer, the floating lock button and the offer to lock when a call starts, and for nothing else. The layer swallows touches; it does not see, record or capture what is on the screen beneath it.

The accessibility service

Android only lets an app notice the volume keys while another app is in front, and hold back the Back and Home gestures, through an accessibility service. Screen Lock’s service is used for exactly three things:

• Noticing the volume keys, so that holding one of them unlocks the phone while the lock is on.
• Holding back the Back, Home and Recents gestures while the lock is on, so a swipe from the edge does not leave the call. Android may still let some system gestures through; see Terms.
• Noticing which app is in front, so the app can offer to lock when a known video-call app comes to the front — only if you have turned that offer on.

What the accessibility service does not do

The service does not read the content of the screen, the text in other apps, what you type, your messages, or who you are calling. It records nothing and sends nothing off the phone. It does nothing at all unless a lock is armed or active — that is, you have tapped the lock, or you have turned on the offer to lock when a call starts. Screen Lock is not an accessibility tool and does not claim to be one; it uses the service because that is the only way Android provides for what the lock needs to do.

Fingerprint

If you choose fingerprint as your unlock method, the app asks Android to check your fingerprint and gets back only a yes or a no. The app never sees, stores or sends your fingerprint; Android keeps that entirely to itself.

Advertising

Screen Lock includes Google AdMob, which is part of Google, but ads are switched off: the app shows no ads, and the AdMob SDK is not started unless the app’s remote settings turn advertising on. Nothing ad-related is sent from your phone while it is off.

If advertising is switched on in future, AdMob would receive, to select and measure an ad, your device’s advertising identifier, your IP address and coarse information about the device and app — for example the model, the operating system version and the app version — along with whether an ad was shown, viewed or tapped. Google acts as an independent controller of that information under its own privacy policy, at policies.google.com/privacy. Your settings, your blocked zones and anything about your calls would never be part of an ad request, and no ad would ever appear over a locked call.

Before any ad is shown, this policy will be revised to describe it, including how you can give or refuse consent where the law requires it. You can reset or delete your advertising identifier, or turn off ad personalisation for every app, in your phone’s settings at any time.

How the app reports on itself

Screen Lock uses three Google Firebase services to keep the app working. None of them ever receives your settings, your blocked zones, which app you were calling with, or anything from the screen.

• Remote Config fetches a small settings file, so things like whether ads are on, or whether the reporting below is enabled, can be changed without publishing an update. Without a connection the app uses its built-in defaults.
• Analytics records Firebase’s automatic events only — for example that the app was opened for the first time and that it was used, and for how long — which is what tells us how many people use Screen Lock. The app logs no events of its own, and Analytics does not collect the advertising identifier.
• Crashlytics sends a report when the app crashes or hits an error: what went wrong, where in the code it happened, and the state of the device at the time.

What those reports contain

A Firebase installation identifier, your IP address, and basic information about the device and the app — the model, the operating system version, the app version, the language and the country worked out from the IP address. The identifier is specific to this installation of Screen Lock; it is not your Google account, and uninstalling the app ends it.

Google processes this on our behalf as a data processor, under its own terms at firebase.google.com/terms/data-processing-terms.

Feedback

Send feedback, in the app, opens this website in your browser. The feedback form here sends what you type — the topic, your message, and your name and email if you give them — to a private Google Sheet that only we can open, so we can read it and reply. The app itself sends us nothing.

What we do not do

• We do not ask you to create an account, and we do not know who you are.
• We do not read, record or capture the screen, what you type, or your calls — not during a lock and not at any other time.
• We do not upload, store or see your settings or your blocked zones.
• We do not use the microphone, the camera, your location, your contacts or your photos. The call app you are using has its own permissions and its own policy.
• We do not run analytics or crash reporting of our own — only Google Firebase, described above, and only about the app itself.
• We do not sell personal information — we hold none.

Children

Screen Lock is used by an adult to lock a phone before a child holds it. It is not directed to children, it has nothing for a child to enter, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, children included.

Your choices

Leave the offer to lock when a call starts off if you do not want the app to notice which app is in front; the accessibility service then does nothing until you tap the lock yourself. Turn the accessibility service off in Android’s settings at any time — the volume-key unlock and the gesture blocking stop with it, and the lock cannot work without it. Clearing the app’s storage or uninstalling Screen Lock removes everything it has stored on your phone.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a way that affects you, the revised version will be published on this page with a new revision date. Continuing to use Screen Lock after that date means the revised policy applies.