Otto's App Blocker collects no personal data. There is no account, no server and no analytics, and the app makes no network requests of any kind. This page explains that in full, including the two places where data does exist: the website you are reading, and an email you choose to send.
The app and this website are operated by Casebuddy Pty Ltd, a company registered in Australia. Casebuddy Pty Ltd is the data controller for the purposes of the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation, and the entity accountable under the Australian Privacy Act 1988 and its Australian Privacy Principles.
Contact for any privacy question, request or complaint: otto@freeappblocker.com, or through the contact page. There is no separate data protection officer; that address reaches the person who wrote the app.
It covers the iPhone app Otto's App Blocker & Focus, the website at freeappblocker.com, and email you send to the address above. It does not cover Apple's App Store, your own email provider, or any other app you use Otto to block. Those are governed by their own policies.
This is not a promise about how we handle data we receive. It is a statement about what the app is built to do, and it is verifiable: the app contains no networking code at all. There is no URLSession, no HTTP client, no third party SDK, no analytics library, no crash reporter, no advertising identifier and no attribution framework. Otto cannot send your information anywhere because it has no means to send anything anywhere.
Its declaration on the App Store is Data Not Collected, and that is accurate.
Everything Otto knows is written to a private container on your iPhone, inside the app's own sandbox and an app group shared only with its own extensions. That is:
None of it is transmitted, and none of it is readable by us. Deleting the app deletes all of it immediately and permanently. We hold no copy, so there is nothing to restore and nothing to request.
Otto blocks using Apple's Screen Time frameworks: FamilyControls, ManagedSettings and DeviceActivity. When you choose apps, Apple's own picker returns opaque tokens. Those tokens are issued by iOS, are meaningless outside your device, and cannot be resolved to an app name even by the app that holds them. Otto never learns which apps you picked, and neither do we. This is enforced by Apple's architecture, not by our restraint.
Otto counts seconds you spend in the apps covered by a rule, on your device, in order to run the budget. That count never leaves the phone. Broader Screen Time statistics are rendered by iOS itself inside a system extension and are not readable by the app.
Budget warnings are local notifications: they are scheduled and delivered by iOS on your phone. There is no push server, no device token, and no remote notification capability in the app. They are off until you turn them on, and iOS asks your permission at that point. You can withdraw it at any time in the iPhone's Settings.
No app is permitted to change Color Filters for you, so greyscale is done by two Shortcuts that you build on your own phone. Otto asks the Shortcuts app to run one by name and is told only whether it succeeded. No data passes in either direction, and nothing leaves the device.
Tips are consumable in-app purchases processed entirely by Apple. The purchase sheet is Apple's, the payment is Apple's, and we never see your card, your Apple Account or your name. Apple later provides us with aggregated sales and financial reports that do not identify individual purchasers. Tips unlock nothing and are not restorable, so no receipt or purchase history is kept by the app. Apple's own privacy policy governs the transaction.
Screen Time access, which is what makes blocking possible and without which the app cannot function; and notifications, only if you turn budget warnings on. Otto asks for nothing else: no location, no contacts, no photos, no microphone, no camera, no health or motion data, no calendar, no tracking permission. It has no Sign in with Apple and no push entitlement.
freeappblocker.com is a set of static pages hosted on Cloudflare Pages. There are no cookies, no local storage, no tracking pixels, no advertising and no third party analytics scripts. Nothing on the site profiles you, and no consent banner is needed because there is nothing to consent to.
Cloudflare, as our hosting provider, necessarily processes the technical details of each request in order to deliver the page and protect the site from attack. That includes your IP address, the page requested, the time, your browser's user agent and your approximate country. We see only aggregate counts derived from this, such as visits per day; we do not have, and do not seek, a log identifying individual visitors. The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in operating a website that works and is not knocked over. Cloudflare's handling is governed by its own privacy policy and its data processing agreement with us.
The form on the contact page does not submit to a server. When you press Send it assembles the message and hands it to your own email app, already addressed and filled in. Nothing is posted anywhere; you send the email yourself, and you can edit or abandon it first.
If you do send it, the email arrives at otto@freeappblocker.com and is forwarded by Cloudflare Email Routing to a mailbox we read. That means the message, your email address, and anything you chose to put in it are processed by Cloudflare and by our mailbox provider. We use it only to answer you. The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in providing support, or the taking of steps at your request. We keep support correspondence for up to two years so that we can follow up on a recurring problem, then delete it. Please do not send passwords, payment details or anything you would not want sitting in an inbox; we never need them.
| Party | What they get | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Apple | Your App Store download and any in-app purchase, under your own Apple Account | Distribution and payment. Apple is an independent controller here. |
| Cloudflare | Website request data, and email sent to our address in transit | Hosting, security, email forwarding. Processor. |
| Our mailbox provider | Email you choose to send us | Receiving and reading support messages. Processor. |
Nobody else. We do not sell personal information, we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, we do not disclose it to data brokers, advertisers or analytics companies, and we run no advertising. We have never done so, and this policy would be updated before that changed.
We would disclose information only if compelled by a valid legal process, and in that case there is almost nothing to give: the app sends us nothing.
We are in Australia. Cloudflare operates a global network, so a request for a page may be served from a data centre near you and the technical data described in section 4 may be processed outside your country, including in the United States. Where personal data of people in the UK or European Economic Area is involved, transfers rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK Addendum, held under our agreements with those providers.
App data lives on your phone until you delete the app or clear it in the app. Cloudflare's request logs are short lived and governed by their retention schedule. Support email is kept up to two years, then deleted. Apple's sales reports are aggregated and hold no personal data.
The strongest protection here is structural: data that is never collected cannot be breached. On your device Otto's data sits inside the iOS sandbox and its app group, protected by the system's own file encryption and your passcode. The website is served only over HTTPS with HSTS, and the account used to publish it is protected by two factor authentication. No system is perfect, and if a breach ever occurred that was likely to result in a risk to your rights we would notify the relevant authority and affected people as the law requires.
Under the UK and EU GDPR, where any processing occurs at all:
No special category data is processed. There is no automated decision-making with legal or similarly significant effects, and no profiling.
Depending on where you live you have rights to access the personal data we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it erased, to restrict or object to processing, to receive it in a portable form, and to withdraw consent at any time without affecting what was lawful before.
In our case the honest answer is usually that we hold nothing: the app sends us nothing, so there is no profile to access, correct, export or delete. Where we do hold something, which in practice means an email you sent us, we will act on your request. Write to otto@freeappblocker.com. We answer within thirty days and do not charge for it.
You may also complain to a supervisory authority. In Australia that is the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au; in the United Kingdom the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk; in the European Economic Area your national data protection authority. We would rather you told us first, but you are not obliged to.
For residents of California: in the past twelve months we have not collected any category of personal information listed in the CCPA as amended by the CPRA through the app. Through the website and email, the only categories are identifiers, in the narrow sense of an IP address seen by our host and an email address you choose to give us. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, so there is no opt-out to offer. We do not use personal information for any purpose incompatible with those described here, and we do not offer financial incentives in exchange for it. You have the right to know, delete, correct and to non-discrimination for exercising those rights; the address above is how to exercise them, and we will verify a request by replying to the address it came from.
There is nothing tracking you here, so a Do Not Track header or a Global Privacy Control signal changes nothing about how the site behaves. We mention it because we are asked to say what we do with those signals, and the answer is that they are already satisfied.
Otto is rated 4+ and collects nothing, from anyone, of any age. It contains no advertising, no social features, no chat, no user generated content and no links to external content other than this website. Because nothing is collected, no verifiable parental consent under COPPA or Article 8 of the GDPR is required. If you believe a child has sent us an email and you want it removed, write to us and we will delete it.
There is no account in Otto today and this policy describes the app exactly as it is. An account is something we may add one day so that rules and history survive a new phone. If that happens it will be optional, the app will keep working without one, and nothing will change quietly: this page and the App Store privacy labels will be updated before any version that collects anything is released, and you will be asked inside the app before an account is created. Even then the apps you block would stay unreadable to us, because Apple's tokens are meaningless off your device.
If this policy changes, the new version replaces this page and the version number and date at the top change with it. A change that materially affects how your information is handled will be announced in the app before it takes effect, and we will not apply it retroactively to information already held.
Casebuddy Pty Ltd, Queensland, Australia.
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