Acceptance
The service, meaning the website at guestspy.com, the parent panel, the child app in both of its builds and the guides we publish, is provided by GuestSpy. We are "we" and "us" in what follows; "you" is the person who creates an account or installs the app. By creating an account, installing the app on a phone, or continuing to use either, you agree to these terms and to the acceptable use policy, which forms part of them. If you do not agree, do not create an account and do not install the app. The privacy policy describes how data is handled and is a separate document, though we point to it from here because the two are meant to be read together.
Who may use the service
You must be an adult, meaning 18 or the age of majority where you live, to create a panel account. The service is designed for one of two situations, and you must be in one of them to use it.
The first is that you are the parent or legal guardian of the child whose phone you are monitoring, the child is a minor, and the child knows the app is on the phone. This is the situation the whole product is built around: the app icon is visible, the Transparency screen lists what is shared, and every remote action shows on the phone. We expect you to have told your child what the app does and why, and the setup flow, which takes about fifteen minutes done together, assumes you are sitting beside them.
The second is that you own the device outright and the person using it knows the app is installed, knows what it collects, and has agreed to it. A family tablet that several children share is the usual example. An employer-issued phone is possible only where the employee has been given a written policy and clear notice, and even then the sensitive categories must be accepted on the phone by the employee, not by you.
Nothing else qualifies. Monitoring a partner, a former partner, another adult who has not agreed, or any device you do not own is outside the service and against these terms, and the acceptable-use policy says what we do when we find it.
Your account
You create an account with an email address and a password. You are responsible for keeping those credentials private and for everything that happens under the account, including the actions of a second parent you invite. We provide two-factor authentication and a sessions list so that you can protect the account properly; if you choose not to use them, that is your decision, but the responsibility for the account does not move to us. If you believe someone else has gained access, change the password, sign out all sessions from the Security page and write to [email protected] straight away.
One account can hold two named parents. Each action in the panel is recorded against the parent who took it, and both parents see the record. You may not share an account with anyone who is not a parent or guardian of the children on it, and you may not sell, lend or transfer an account.
The information you give us must be accurate. The child's name and birth year are used only to label the panel and to decide which built-in keyword groups are suggested; giving a false birth year to avoid an age-related restriction is a breach of these terms.
The lawful-use rule
You must use the service only in a way that is lawful where you are and where the monitored phone is. Laws on monitoring, on recording calls, on intercepting messages and on the privacy of children differ from country to country and sometimes between regions of a country. Some places require two-party consent to record a call; some restrict what a parent may read once a child reaches a certain age; some forbid any monitoring of an employee without specific notice. We cannot know every law, and we do not give legal advice. It is your responsibility to find out what applies to you before switching a category on, and to switch it off if the law changes or the child reaches an age where the law gives them a say.
In particular, you agree not to use the service to monitor any person without their knowledge, to record any call where the law requires the other party's consent and it has not been given, to collect data from a phone you do not own and are not the guardian of its user, or to pursue any purpose that is itself unlawful, such as stalking, harassment or coercion. We built the app to make covert use difficult: there is no hidden mode and we will not add one. If you need a product that hides, this is not it, and we would ask you to think about why you need it.
Access days, parent tasks and what we may change
No money changes hands for the service. There is no card on file, no subscription and no paid tier. Instead, every account starts with 10 days of full access, and the core features stay free for as long as the account exists: location and Places, screen-time budgets, routines, app and website blocking, alerts and reports. The advanced tools, which are the consent-based categories available in the direct-download build, are unlocked by access days, and access days are earned by completing small parent tasks from the Account page: answering a feedback survey, sending a bug report with a screenshot, voting on what we should build next, checking a translation, or telling another parent about the app.
Because there is no payment, there is no refund, and there is no contract for a fixed term. In return we make the following commitments about the arrangement:
- We will never set a task that asks you to leave a review on an app store. Reviews must be honest and unprompted or they are worthless.
- Access days already earned will not be taken away because we change the tasks or the number of days a task earns.
- The core features will not be moved behind access days. If we ever intend to change what "core" means, we will give at least 60 days' notice by email and in the panel.
- Running out of access days never deletes data and never unpairs a phone. The advanced categories pause until days are earned again; everything else keeps working.
What we may change, with reasonable notice, is the list of tasks, the days each earns, the length of the starting period for new accounts, and which features count as advanced. We may also decline to credit a task that was not done in good faith, such as a survey filled with random answers or a bug report that describes no bug, and we may remove access days credited in error. If we ever introduce a paid option, these terms will be updated first and nothing you have today will be made worse by it.
The two builds and third-party stores
The child app comes in two builds. The Google Play build is distributed through Google Play and is limited to what Google's policies allow for this category of app. The direct-download build is an APK file that you install by hand and that adds the categories Google Play does not permit: message bodies, call recording, photo and video review, remote camera, ambient audio and email headers. Both builds run on Android 9 or newer. There is no iPhone child app; the parent side runs in a browser and works on any device.
Google Play is operated by Google under its own terms, and installing from it is subject to those terms as well as these. Installing the direct build requires you to allow installs from unknown sources on the child's phone, which is a setting Android warns you about for good reason. Only install the APK from the link on our download page or from the link printed in the panel; a copy of the app obtained anywhere else may have been altered, and we take no responsibility for it. We sign every release and the panel shows the version each paired phone is running so you can check.
Android itself, the phone manufacturer's additions to it, and the messaging and social apps whose notifications the child app reads are all outside our control. A change to any of them can stop a feature working or change what it shows, and we update the app as quickly as we can when that happens, but we do not promise that any given feature will keep working on any given phone.
Acceptable use, in short
The full rules are in the acceptable-use policy, which you have already agreed to. The short version is that you may monitor openly, with the person's knowledge, on your own child's phone or a device you own, and you may not monitor anyone else, anywhere else, or by any means that hides what is happening. You also agree not to attack the service itself: no probing of our systems, no automated scraping of the panel, no attempt to pair a device you do not have physical access to, no reverse-engineering the app to remove the Transparency screen or the on-phone notices, and no use of the service to send unlawful or abusive content.
Our content and the guides
The text, images, screenshots, designs and software that make up the website, the panel and the app belong to us or to those who license them to us. You may read the guides, quote short passages with attribution, and link to any page. You may not copy a guide wholesale, republish our screenshots as your own, or use our name or mark in a way that suggests we endorse something we have not.
The guides we publish for parents are general information written in good faith and checked on real phones. They are not legal advice, medical advice, safeguarding advice or advice about your particular child. A guide about bedtime routines is not a sleep clinic; a guide about grooming language is not a substitute for talking to a professional if you are worried. We say this again in the disclaimer, and we mean it: if you are facing a situation that could affect a child's safety, speak to someone qualified, and if it is urgent, speak to the police.
Availability
We aim to keep the panel and the servers that receive data from the app running all the time, and we plan maintenance for quiet hours and announce it in the panel beforehand. Even so, the service is provided as it is and as it is available. We do not promise that it will be uninterrupted, free of errors or available at any particular moment. Remote actions queue while a phone is offline and run when it reconnects, which means an action you send is not guaranteed to happen at any particular time. Alerts depend on the phone having a connection and on the relevant permission still being granted, both of which can change without warning. You should never rely on the service as the only means of knowing where a child is or that they are safe.
Ending the arrangement
You may stop at any time. Unpairing a device from the Devices page stops collection from that phone immediately; deleting a child removes their devices and data; deleting the account from the Account page removes everything within 30 days, as the privacy policy explains. You do not need to tell us why and you do not need to ask.
We may suspend or close an account if we have reasonable grounds to believe it is being used in breach of these terms or the acceptable-use policy, if a court or regulator requires it, or if the account has been unused for two years. Where the breach is a technical one and no one is at risk, we will warn you first and give you a chance to put it right. Where the breach involves monitoring someone without consent, we may suspend without notice while we look into it, and we may close the account and refuse a new one. On closure the data is deleted on the same schedule as a voluntary deletion unless we are required to preserve it.
Liability, in plain words
Nothing in these terms limits or excludes any liability that cannot be limited or excluded by law, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law of your country says cannot be excluded. Subject to that, the following applies.
We are not liable for a loss that comes from the service not working, not working in time or showing something inaccurate: a missed arrival alert, a location fix that was a few hundred metres out, a call that was not recorded, a keyword flag that did not fire. The app is a tool to help you supervise; it is not a guarantee and cannot be one. We are not liable for anything that follows from your use of the service in breach of these terms, including any claim brought against you by a person you monitored. We are not liable for the actions of Google, of a phone manufacturer, or of any app whose notifications the child app reads. We are not liable for indirect losses, loss of profit or loss of data where you have not kept your own copy, which you can do at any time with the Export button.
Because the service is provided without charge, our total liability to you for anything arising from it, however it arises, is limited to one hundred pounds sterling or the equivalent in your currency. If you consider that too low, the right course is not to use the service.
You agree to compensate us for any loss we suffer because you used the service unlawfully or in breach of these terms, including the reasonable cost of dealing with a complaint or claim brought by the person you monitored.
Governing law
These terms, and any dispute arising from them or from the service, are governed by the law of the country where GuestSpy is established, and are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the country where GuestSpy is established. If you are a consumer living in a country whose law gives you the right to bring a claim in your own courts or to rely on your own country's consumer protections, nothing here takes that right away.
If any part of these terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest remains in force. A failure by us to enforce a term on one occasion is not a waiver of it on another. These terms, the acceptable-use policy and the privacy policy together are the whole agreement between us about the service, and replace anything said or written before.
Changes to these terms
We will update these terms when the service changes in a way that affects them. Minor changes, such as clarifying a sentence or correcting a reference, will simply be made with a new date at the top. Changes that affect your rights, such as the liability section, the access-days commitments or the governing law, will be announced in the panel and by email at least 30 days before they take effect. Continuing to use the service after that date is acceptance of the new terms; if you do not accept them, delete the account before the date and the old terms apply to everything up to the deletion.
Contact
Questions about these terms: [email protected]. Privacy and data questions: [email protected]. Formal notices should be sent to GuestSpy, with a copy by email, and will be treated as received two working days after posting.