Most family-safety apps track location. We don’t.

This is a deliberate choice, and it shapes almost everything else about how I’m Okay works. We get asked about it constantly — by users, by reviewers, by would-be acquirers — so this is the long answer.

The promise

I’m Okay has no sign-up form, password, or personal login email, but that does not mean the service processes no data. The service may process:

An app-generated device identifier and authentication or device-integrity data
Device, operating-system, app-version, locale, language, region, and time-zone details
Your chosen display name, check-in timestamps, reminder settings, overdue window, and alert state
Trusted-contact names, email addresses, relationships, and order
Going Out deadlines, status, and optional notes
Optional Just in Case recipient and message content
Operational, security, delivery, diagnostic, and limited product-interaction analytics

The app does not request precise location or health data, and it does not use GPS-based continuous location tracking. See the Privacy Policy for current providers, purposes, retention, deletion, and security details.

Why this matters

There are three reasons we made the data-minimization choice, in roughly the order they came up during design.

1. Surveillance changes the relationship

A daily check-in app sits in a sensitive emotional space: between an aging parent and an adult child. The whole point of the app is to relieve anxiety on both sides — the parent’s “I want to be independent” anxiety and the child’s “I want to know they’re okay” anxiety.

The moment the app starts collecting more than the minimum, that emotional balance tips. The parent feels watched. The child has more data to obsessively interpret. The app, instead of providing relief, becomes a new source of unease.

A check-in app should make the relationship easier, not more surveilled. That means collecting only purpose-specific service data and avoiding precise-location or health monitoring.

2. Data you don’t have can’t be misused

Every byte of data a company collects is a future liability. Breaches happen. Acquisitions happen. Subpoenas happen. Internal mistakes happen.

A 2022 study by IBM and Ponemon found the average cost of a data breach was $4.35M. That number is going up. And cost to the company isn’t the only metric — for users, the cost of having their movements, health data, and routines exposed in a breach is genuinely bad.

The simplest defense is: don’t collect it in the first place. We can’t lose what we don’t have. We can’t be subpoenaed for what we don’t have. We can’t be tempted to monetize what we don’t have.

3. We don’t want the business model that requires data

Once a company collects user data at scale, the gravitational pull toward monetizing it is enormous. Even companies that started with good intentions tend to drift. Location data, in particular, is hugely valuable to advertisers, retailers, and data brokers.

We don’t want to be in that business. We want to be a small, focused product with a sustainable subscription model: users who want advanced features can subscribe via the App Store at a low monthly rate (current pricing on the App Store), we provide a useful service, we own no surveillance machinery, we owe no advertisers anything.

This is only possible if we avoid building a surveillance-data business model.

What we lose by not tracking location

The trade-off is real. Without location data, I’m Okay can’t:

Tell you whether your parent is home or out
Detect if they’ve left an unusual area
Confirm they made it to the doctor’s appointment
Notify you if they’ve been at a hospital for an hour

If you genuinely need those features, Life360 and similar apps exist and they do them well. We’re not trying to be them.

What I’m Okay does instead is answer the simplest version of “is my parent okay today?” — using one daily tap as a yes/no signal. That’s a much smaller question than “where is my parent right now?”, but it turns out to be the one most families actually want answered.

What about “fall detection” and similar features?

We’ve been asked to add fall detection, sleep tracking, heart rate monitoring, and other sensor-based features. We’ve declined all of them.

Reasoning:

Fall detection requires accelerometer data, which means continuous background processing and potentially false positives that erode trust in the entire system.
Sleep tracking requires the user to wear something to bed, which is a step most independent seniors won’t take consistently.
Heart rate monitoring duplicates what an Apple Watch does for users who want it, and adds zero value on a phone where you can’t actually measure heart rate accurately.

These features sound good in marketing copy and rarely deliver in practice. They also require more data collection, more battery use, more sensors — exactly the things we’re trying to avoid.

If you want fall detection, the Apple Watch is excellent. If you want sleep tracking, dedicated sleep apps exist. I’m Okay stays focused on the one thing it does well: the daily check-in.

What about analytics? Don’t you need to know how people use the app?

The service records limited product and operational events such as onboarding completion, successful or missed check-ins, contact-email workflow events, and Going Out timeouts. Google Analytics is one of the providers used for this limited operational analytics, and the marketing website also uses Google Analytics for traffic measurement.

The service sends an app-generated device identifier with some analytics events, so these events should not be described as anonymous. They are used for App Functionality and Analytics, not cross-app behavioral advertising. See the Privacy Policy for the current disclosure.

Our “Just in Case” feature is the opposite of surveillance

If you’ve used I’m Okay’s Just in Case feature, you might wonder how it squares with our privacy stance.

Just in Case lets you write an optional message for a selected trusted contact. If check-ins remain overdue for the configured period, the service can attempt to send it by email. Delivery is not guaranteed.

This is the opposite of surveillance:

The message is yours and written by you, but it is service content rather than an end-to-end encrypted vault.
It is transmitted over HTTPS and stored with your service settings until changed or deleted.
The trigger condition is set by you.
The service begins an email attempt only after the trigger becomes due.

This kind of feature is only possible when we’re not also doing background surveillance — there’s no tension because we never started.

How we handle the data we do have

Service data is:

Encrypted in transit with HTTPS
Processed by providers including Cloudflare for API hosting and storage, AWS Simple Email Service for contact emails, Google Analytics for limited operational analytics, and Apple for purchases and device-integrity services
Not sold or used for cross-app behavioral advertising
Deletable through Settings → Account → Delete Account, subject to limited retention of operational security, delivery, or diagnostic logs where reasonably necessary

No internet service can promise absolute security. Use the Just in Case field only for content appropriate to this service, not passwords, recovery codes, or information that requires a dedicated encrypted vault.

What we hope this changes

We’re a small product. We don’t expect to single-handedly shift the family-safety category. But we do want to demonstrate something to other builders in this space:

You can build a useful family-safety product without collecting location, health, or behavior data. You can sustain it on a small subscription. You can ship it without a venture-backed surveillance business model.

Whether or not other companies follow, this is the product we want to use ourselves — and what we hope our parents would use too.

Frequently asked questions

Can you prove you’re not collecting location data? Not in the absolute sense — you’d need to audit our codebase and infrastructure. But you can check: I’m Okay doesn’t request the iOS Location permission. iOS itself enforces that an app cannot access location without the permission popup. If we wanted to start tracking location, we’d have to ask for permission in a visible OS-level dialog. So at minimum: until you see that dialog, you can be confident location data is not flowing.

What if someone subpoenas you? We would respond to valid legal requests as required. The service may hold the installation, profile, trusted-contact, check-in, settings, message, log, and analytics data described above. It does not request precise-location or health data.

Will you ever add tracking features? The current app does not request precise location or health data. Any material change would require updated product behavior, permission prompts where applicable, and updated privacy disclosures; users should always review the current App Store and Privacy Policy information.

What if you’re acquired? Any ownership change would still be subject to applicable law and the current privacy disclosures. Users should review notices of material changes and can use the in-app deletion controls if they no longer want to use the service.

Don’t most users want more features? Some do. We’ve made peace with not being for them. There’s a real market for surveillance-heavy family apps and they’re well-funded. We’re targeting the much smaller (but real) audience of users — and families — who want the opposite.

We believe privacy isn’t a feature you bolt on. It’s a starting constraint that shapes everything else. I’m Okay is what a daily check-in app looks like when privacy is the constraint that comes first.

If that resonates, we’d love you to try it — free for 1 contact, no GPS, no monitoring.

Why We Don't Track Location: Our Privacy Promise