Privacy notice
Version 2026-10-23. In effect from 23 October 2026, replacing version 2026-10-18 of 18 October 2026.
1. Who we are
HomeFón is a family phone service operated by HomeFón Ltd in Ireland. For the data described here, we are the data controller. We decide what is collected and why.
Registered in Ireland, company number 828080.
32 Greenmount Office Park, Dublin 6W, D6W P289.
Contact. Write to us at hello@homefon.ie about anything in this notice, including any request about your data. A real person reads it. We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer, and we are not required to have one at our current size; if that changes, this notice will name them.
What this notice covers. The HomeFón service (the handset your child uses, your parent dashboard, and the servers behind them), this website, HomeFón reservations, and orders from our shop. It does not cover the mobile network that carries your calls and texts, which has its own terms.
2. What we collect
Grouped by who it is about. We do not ask for a child's date of birth and we hold no photograph of a child.
| About | What we hold |
|---|---|
| You, the parent | Your name and email address, and the mobile number you give us as your own, which goes on your child's contact list so they can call and text you and, unless a parent unticks it, gets their quick messages from GoFón trips by text; your password, stored only as a hash we cannot reverse; the record of which version of this notice and of our terms you accepted, and when. When you confirmed your email address. The browsers you are signed in on, and any you ask us to remember, described only in general terms such as "Chrome on Mac". If two parents manage the account, each has their own login, and each can see the other's name and email address, and the other's mobile number while it is on the contact list. A co-parent can choose to keep their number off the contact list instead, as the next row describes. |
| Someone invited as a co-parent | The email address the inviting parent gave us, the name they go by on HomeFón and the name of their household, which we send to you in the invitation, and when the invitation was sent and runs out. The link works for 72 hours. If you never accept, we delete the invitation 30 days after those 72 hours run out, even if it was cancelled sooner. Before you can accept, we email a code to that address, which you enter on the page where you join. It works once, for 10 minutes. We keep it only as a hash, which goes when you join or, if you never do, with the invitation. The invitation also keeps a count of the codes sent and the wrong codes entered, and when the last code was sent. If you accept, the address becomes your account's address. Any mobile number you give us when you accept is held as the row above describes. Once every HomeFón in the family has the update that allows it, you can choose to keep your number off the contact list. Your child then cannot call or text you from the HomeFón, but you still get their quick messages and can ring the phone. Any text you send to the phone is held on the dashboard, where both parents can read it, and your child is not shown it, as section 3 describes for messages from unknown numbers. On the dashboard and in the export, the other parent is shown your name in place of your number. |
| Your child | First name, an avatar colour and initial, and which indicator slot they use. The phone number of the handset. The contacts you approve for them, with names and numbers. A record of each message: who it was with, which direction, when, and whether it carried media. Message content only in the cases in section 3. A record of each call from an unknown number that the phone turned away: the number, or that it was withheld, and the time (section 3). For GoFón trips, a "heading home" check-in that carries a kind and a time and nothing else. |
| The handset | Device name, model, Android version, whether it is online, battery level, which policy version it is running, whether it is on mobile data or WiFi, and which child profile was last active. Its SIM's credit balance, from a check the phone makes with its mobile network, normally once a day, with the text of the network's reply. Any parent PIN and trip lock code you set for it, each stored only as a hash, never as the digits themselves. Both hashes are sent to the phone with its settings, so it can check the codes itself, even with no signal. |
| Your household | Your settings: schedules, quiet time, emergency contacts, message oversight. Until you add each one as an emergency contact or remove it (section 3), the name, number and any note of each support line you have saved. When you add a support line as an emergency contact or remove it, a record of its number, when you did so and which of the two you did, with no name and no note (sections 3 and 8). Your home WiFi network name and password, both encrypted, with the password never returned by any part of the service and never included in an export. Friend links between your household and another HomeFón household. A configuration and security activity log. |
| Our servers, technically | A running log of the requests our servers handle. Each line records the date and time, which page or address was asked for with anything after the question mark removed, whether the request worked, and the internet address of the device that asked. We keep these to run the service and to deal with anyone abusing it. They are built to carry no message content, no phone numbers and no names: anything after the question mark is stripped out before a line is written, and sign-in tokens are blanked. Separately, your device's address is counted against our abuse limits as requests arrive, which happens in memory and is not stored. |
| Visitors to this website | Counts of which pages get visited and which parts of the browser demo get used, through Plausible Analytics. It sets no cookies and stores nothing on your device. The events carry no text you type, and the demo itself keeps everything you enter in your own browser. This runs on this website only: never on your dashboard, and never on the phone. |
| HomeFón reservations | Your email address, and when you confirmed it, which sets your place in the reservation queue. If you signed up to our earlier waitlist, we also keep your county if you gave it, an optional age band for your child, and anything you wrote in the optional note. There is no need to include health details or anything private about your child, and we ask you not to. |
| If you buy from our shop | Your name, email address, phone number, and the delivery address and Eircode you give at checkout, what you paid and when, and the payment reference Stripe gives us. We ask for your phone number so that we can reach you about delivery. Stripe, our payment provider, collects these on its own checkout page and passes them to us once your payment goes through. We never see or hold your card details. |
What we never collect. We do not record the content of a call, and we do not make recordings, screenshots or keystroke logs of any kind. We do not track where your child is, and we do not collect browsing history or app usage details. There is no covert mode: nothing about oversight is hidden from the child using the phone.
Where it comes from. Almost all of it comes from you, through the dashboard, and from the handset reporting its own state. Some of it is about other people: an approved contact's name and number come from you, not from them, and a message from an unknown number arrives from whoever sent it. A co-parent's email address comes from the parent who invited them, and their mobile number from them. If you buy from our shop, your order details reach us from Stripe once your payment goes through.
Two parents, two logins. You can invite your child's other parent to manage the account with you, even if they live in another home. Each of you has your own login and you are equal: each of you sees everything on the account and can change its settings, including your child's contacts, any messages held for review and GoFón trips, and each of you can see the activity log, the other's name and email address, and the other's mobile number while it is on the contact list. Neither of you can remove the other, and either of you can leave at any time. If a court order, a safeguarding concern or another serious reason means a parent should no longer have access, write to us: our support team can remove a parent from an account. We keep a record of that removal with the household, including a note of why, which the family does not see; the activity log shows that a parent was removed by HomeFón support and the reason in a word or two, never the note.
3. Message content, specifically
This is the part families most want to be clear about, so it has its own section.
SMS and MMS text. It stays on the phone unless you turn on message oversight. With oversight on, your child's phone shows the banner from the next time it checks in with us, and you can read what your child sends and receives from then on, never what came before. Turning oversight off deletes the text it saved. With oversight off, we hold counts and timestamps and no message text, apart from the held messages described below. The phone also sends us your mobile network's reply to its credit check, whatever the setting, so that we can show you the balance.
HomeFón to HomeFón. Messages on this lane have to pass through our server to reach the other family, which is unavoidable for internet delivery. They are encrypted at rest. Who can read one is set by each household for its own child's phone. With oversight off in your home, no parent of yours can read it, on the dashboard or in a data export. With oversight on, your child's phone shows the banner from the next time it checks in with us, and you can read what is sent from then on, never what came before. Another family in the conversation can do the same on their child's phone. If they do, their parent can read the conversation from then on, your child's messages included, and your child's phone does not show a banner for their setting. How long a message is kept is set by the thread. If any household in the conversation already had oversight on when it was sent, it is held for 30 days for everyone on it, because our server holds one copy of a message and not one per family. Otherwise it goes as soon as delivery allows.
Texts when there's no internet. If your child's HomeFón has no Wi-Fi or mobile data, a message to a friend on another HomeFón can go as an ordinary text instead. Replies come back as texts too. This only happens between two HomeFóns linked as friends, where each family has saved the other child's HomeFón number as a contact with messaging on. It is on unless you or the friend's family turn it off. Texts are charged at your network's rate. A text like this travels through the mobile networks, not through our server. On each phone it is treated like any other text, so its words reach us only if that family has message oversight on. To match a friend to your contact, our server looks for each linked friend's HomeFón number among your contacts, and for your child's number among theirs. It does this whether or not the setting is on, and neither family is shown the other's contacts. After a text arrives this way, the phone that got it can ask our server whether the other phone is back online. We answer only yes or no. The phone uses the answer only to choose how to send, and no parent ever sees it. You can turn it off for each phone in your dashboard, under Phone settings on the Device page.
Messages from unknown numbers, held group chats, and any picture or video. All three are held for you to look at whichever way oversight is set, and your child is not shown them. A group chat is held when it includes a number you haven't approved, or more people than the group limit. They are encrypted. The picture rule is the broadest of the three and is worth stating on its own: every picture or video that arrives is held for you, whoever sent it, including an approved contact, and turning oversight off does not change that. An unknown message can matter for safeguarding, and so can an image from someone you approved.
Calls from unknown numbers. When your child's HomeFón turns away a call from a number that is not on your contact list, or from a withheld number, it does not ring and your child is not told about it. The phone sends us the caller's number, or that it was withheld, and the time. We hold these for you to look at on your dashboard, whichever way oversight is set. A call from a number on your contact list is never held, even when quiet time stops it ringing, and neither is a call from an emergency number, a saved support line or a parent who keeps their number off the contact list.
Support lines and emergency contacts. We are retiring confidential support lines, and a HomeFón update replaces them with emergency contacts your child can ring in one tap. An emergency contact is an ordinary contact, so it is not kept private: its messages are treated like any other contact's, as this section describes. A HomeFón gets the update only once each support line saved for your family has been added as an emergency contact or removed, unless we agree with you that it should have it sooner. A HomeFón that has it sooner treats each saved line as it would an emergency contact until you add or remove that line: the line can ring your child at any time, and your child can ring it at any time except during a lost-phone lock. Until then the line stays private, as below. A freephone or short number cannot be rung this way. One you add stops being private on each HomeFón from its next check-in. One you remove is then treated like any number that is not on your contact list: a text from it is held for you, and your child is not shown it. Texts your child had with a number while it was a support line stay private. To make sure of that, we keep the line's number and when you added or removed it (section 2). A HomeFón with the update is told both and deletes those texts. If a phone sends us one, we do not store it. While a support line is still saved for your family, contact with it never syncs to us, and you are not shown it or told about it, whatever your settings say.
4. Why we process it, and our legal basis
| Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Running your account, enforcing the contacts you approve and the time rules you set, delivering messages, managing the handset, and supporting GoFón trips and home WiFi | Performance of our contract with you, the account holder (Article 6(1)(b)) |
| Sending an invitation to your child's other parent when you ask us to, and holding their email address until they accept or the invitation lapses | Our legitimate interest, and yours, in letting both of a child's parents manage the phone they share responsibility for (Article 6(1)(f)). Once they accept, performance of our contract with them |
| Removing a parent from an account, and keeping a record of it, where a court order, a safeguarding concern or another serious reason requires it | Our legitimate interest, and the family's, in the safety of a child using the service (Article 6(1)(f)), and where a court order applies, compliance with it (Article 6(1)(c)) |
| Showing you message content when you turn oversight on | Your instruction under the same contract, together with your exercise of parental responsibility for your child. See section 5 |
| Emailing you about your HomeFón: a low-credit email each time a phone's daily credit check finds €2 or less, a notice when the other parent sets or changes a phone's parent PIN, which never includes the PIN, a notice to every other parent when a co-parent joins your account, an email to every parent when a contact is added to your HomeFón or changed so that it can reach the phone, or when HomeFón starts a HomeFón chat with one of your contacts by itself, and, once we switch each of them on, a reminder when something new is held for you and nobody has looked yet, and an email when another HomeFón family makes a group and asks for your child, which never names the group or the family. You can turn off the low-credit email, the reminder and the group email in your dashboard. Each is one setting for the account, so if two parents manage it, turning one off stops it for both | Performance of our contract with you (Article 6(1)(b)) |
| Holding unknown-sender messages and media for an adult to review, and following our safeguarding procedure if a concern reaches us | Our legitimate interest, and yours, in the safety of a child using the service (Article 6(1)(f)). Where there is a risk to someone's life we may also rely on vital interests (Article 6(1)(d)) |
| Keeping the service secure and intact: the activity log, rate limiting, the nightly integrity check, and a limit on how many checkouts one internet address can have open at once, so that nobody can hold all of our stock | Our legitimate interest in a secure service (Article 6(1)(f)) |
| Counting how this website is used | Our legitimate interest in knowing which pages are worth keeping (Article 6(1)(f)). We have asked for professional advice on whether this instead requires your consent under the Irish ePrivacy Regulations, and we will change what we do if the answer is yes |
| Emailing you about your reservation: confirming your address, then inviting you to order, with the price, delivery details and a deadline, when stock arrives | Your consent (Article 6(1)(a)), which you can withdraw at any time |
| Selling you a HomeFón from our shop: taking your payment, delivering it, handling a return or a refund, and keeping a record of the sale | Performance of our contract with you (Article 6(1)(b)), and keeping the accounting records the law requires (Article 6(1)(c)) |
| Keeping records we have to keep, and answering a lawful request from a public authority | Legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c)) |
No automated decisions. Nothing here makes a decision about you or your child by automated means in the sense of Article 22. There is no profiling, no scoring and no inference about anybody.
5. Children's data
HomeFón is bought by a parent and set up by a parent. Our contract is with you, and the service is not offered directly to a child, so the age-of-consent rule for online services in Article 8 of the GDPR is not the mechanism we rely on. We process a child's data to deliver the service you asked for and to enforce the boundaries you set, and we treat you as exercising parental responsibility when you make those choices.
Two things about that position are still open, and both of them concern your child.
- A HomeFón can be set up for two children. Where a second child's parent or guardian is not the account holder, the right basis and the right consent design are still being worked out with professional advice.
- Turning on message oversight means processing a child's message content. That is significant processing and it needs the confirmed basis and consent design that review will settle. It is off by default, it is always visible on the child's phone, and there is no way to turn it on invisibly.
We design against Ireland's Data Protection Commission guidance for children's data (Children Front and Centre: Fundamentals for a Child-Oriented Approach to Data Processing) and the UK ICO's Age Appropriate Design Code: high privacy defaults, the least data we can work with, and transparency to the child as well as to you.
6. Who else handles your data
We do not sell your data and we never share it with advertisers or data brokers. We use a small number of companies to run the service, and each is listed here with what it touches. We use them for that and nothing else. Stripe also decides some things for itself, which is explained below the table. Putting a formal data-processing agreement in place with each one is work we have not finished, and section 7 says where that stands.
| Company | What it does for us | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Fly.io | Runs our servers and the main database, in Paris | Everything in section 2 except the website analytics |
| Tigris Data | Holds the off-site backup copy of that database, in Frankfurt | The same data, as a backup |
| Google (Firebase Hosting) | Serves this website and your dashboard to your browser | The pages themselves. Your household's data comes from our own servers and is not stored with Google. Google's own web logs do record the address your browser connects from and which browser it is, and it holds those for a few months |
| Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) | Sends a HomeFón phone a short wake-up signal, so it checks in with our servers sooner after a change such as a lock or a new message. Only for phones we have switched this on for | A code that identifies the HomeFón app on that phone, and the times we signalled it. The signal says only “check in”. It never carries a name, a number, a setting or any part of a message; the phone fetches those from our own servers. When we switch it off for a phone, or the phone is removed, we delete our copy of the code and the phone asks Google to delete its registration, which Google says it removes within 180 days |
| Resend | Sends our email | Your email address and the content of the message we send you: account recovery codes, friend invitations, co-parent invitations, reminders that something is waiting for you to review and emails that a group is waiting for your approval (once we switch each of them on), low-credit emails, a notice when the other parent sets or changes a phone's parent PIN, a notice to every other parent when a co-parent joins your account, a notice to every parent when a contact is added to your HomeFón, a contact's number changes, a contact is newly allowed to call or text it, a support line is saved or a co-parent's number kept off the contact list is set (naming the contact and the parent who made the change), and when HomeFón starts a HomeFón chat with one of your contacts by itself (naming the contact), reservation confirmations, and account security emails (codes to confirm your email address, including the code that confirms a co-parent's address before they join, a notice when your email address is changed, and a sign-in code when we ask you for one). Held in the United States, and see section 7 |
| Plausible Analytics | Counts visits to this website | Page views and named events, with no cookies and nothing stored on your device. No family data and no child's data |
| Stripe | Takes payment for orders from our shop, on its own secure checkout page | Only if you buy from our shop: your name, email address, phone number, billing and delivery address, your card details and what you paid. We never see your card details. Stripe Payments Europe, Limited is an Irish company; see section 7 |
Stripe also decides some things for itself. For most of what it does with your order, Stripe works for us and on our instructions. For some purposes of its own, such as preventing fraud, meeting its legal duties as a payment company and improving its services, Stripe decides how your data is used and is responsible for that itself, under its own privacy policy at stripe.com/privacy.
Your mobile operator carries your calls and texts and holds its own records of them under its own privacy terms. We may also share information where the law requires it, or where a child may be at risk: our safeguarding procedure sends a serious concern to Tusla, or to the Gardaí where a child may be in immediate danger.
7. Where your data is held
The database that holds your family's data is in Paris, and its backup copy is in Frankfurt. Both are in the European Union.
Five things do leave the European Economic Area, and here they are.
- Our email. Resend stores the email it sends for us in the United States. Choosing a European sending region changes where the message is sent from, not where it is stored. So your email address, and the text of any message we send you, sits in the United States for as long as Resend keeps it.
- This website and your dashboard. Google serves them from wherever is nearest to you, worldwide, and that cannot be limited to Europe. Your household's data is not stored there, though Google's own web logs record the address your browser connects from and which browser it is.
- Our server logs and our hosting company's records. Fly.io keeps our servers and database in Paris. The server logs described in section 2 go to Fly's log stream rather than into our database, and Fly holds its own operational records, such as error reports and performance metrics, with companies in the United States.
- Payments from our shop. Stripe is an Irish company, and it passes payment data to its US company, Stripe, LLC, and to service providers outside Europe, most of them in the United States. This applies only if you buy from our shop.
- Wake-up signals to the HomeFón. Google's messaging service runs worldwide and cannot be limited to Europe. It sees the code for the phone's HomeFón app, when we signalled it and the address the phone connects from, never your family's data, and only for a phone we have switched this on for.
A transfer like that needs a safeguard recognised by Chapter V of the GDPR: the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where a company is certified under it. All four of those companies offer one or both. Stripe's terms with us include the Standard Contractual Clauses, and Stripe, LLC is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. Google's terms with us include the Standard Contractual Clauses, and Google LLC is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. Putting the right one formally in place, company by company, is work we are in the middle of and have not finished. Our website analytics needs none of this: Plausible is an Estonian company and the data it holds for us stays on servers in Germany and Finland.
Four details about location are still unconfirmed, and we are asking each company for them: where our hosting provider stores the daily snapshots of the server's disk, how long it holds the server logs described in section 2, where Google keeps the web logs for this site, and whether the file names on our backup copy stay in Europe. We will update this notice as the answers come in.
8. How long we keep it
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Your account, your settings and your household configuration | While your account is open. If you are the only parent on the account, deleting your account deletes the household and everything in it. If another parent also manages it, deleting your account deletes your login and your personal details only: the household, its phones and its history stay with the other parent, and the activity log keeps a record that a parent left. If our team keeps a customer record for you, because you ordered from us or contacted us, that record is kept |
| Your own mobile number | While your account is open. When you delete your account, or our support team removes you from it, we delete the number, even if another parent stays. The phone then stops texting it, and takes it off your child's contact list if it was on the list, at its next check-in. Any record of messages between it and the phone stays in the household's history, as it does for any contact |
| The name you use on HomeFón and a hash of a number you kept off the contact list, kept once you change that number or leave the account | Kept with the household, and linked to your account only while you are on it. Deleted when the household is deleted, or if you put that number on the contact list as your own. We keep them so that the household's records of messages with that number go on showing your name in place of it. The hash is not the number, but it can be matched to the number, so we treat it as your personal data |
| A browser you ask us to remember | 30 days from when you entered the code we emailed you, then deleted. It stops working sooner if you forget it in your dashboard, sign out everywhere, or change your password or email address |
| The security record of your account, such as sign-ins, codes we email you, and changes to your email address | 180 days. It records what happened and when, and never the code itself |
| SMS and MMS text, oversight off (the default) | Never leaves the phone, apart from held messages and your network's reply to the credit check. Otherwise we hold counts and timestamps only |
| SMS and MMS text, oversight on | 30 days, encrypted, then the text is removed. Turning oversight off removes it at once |
| HomeFón to HomeFón content sent while oversight is off in every household on the thread (the default) | Removed about 24 hours after it reaches everyone it was sent to, and within 7 days at the latest if delivery never completes. Never readable by a parent, even if a household turns oversight on later |
| HomeFón to HomeFón content sent while oversight is on in any household on the thread | 30 days, encrypted, for everyone on the thread. Our server holds one copy of a message, so one household with oversight on sets the window for the whole conversation, including yours. Only a household that had oversight on when it was sent can read it, and that household can read your child's messages in the conversation as well as its own child's |
| Unknown-sender messages, held group chats and media held for review | 30 days, encrypted, whichever way oversight is set |
| Calls from unknown numbers held for you | 30 days from when it reaches us, then deleted, whichever way oversight is set |
| Message records without content (who, when, direction) | With your household, and removed when you delete your account |
| A record that you added a support line as an emergency contact or removed it, with its number and when | Until 14 days have passed since you last did either and every HomeFón in your family has the update that retires support lines. After that, each of those phones must fetch its settings from us again and check in, and then we delete it. If no HomeFón is linked to your family, we keep it. Deleting the household always deletes it |
| Dashboard invitations, and the phone numbers on them | 14 days after the invitation is claimed, revoked or lapses. An invitation nobody claims therefore exists for 28 days in total |
| A co-parent invitation that is never accepted | Deleted 30 days after its 72 hours run out, whether it lapsed or was cancelled sooner |
| A co-parent invitation that is accepted | Kept with the household as the record of who invited whom and when, and deleted when the household is deleted. The address it was sent to is kept with it until that parent leaves the account, when we remove it |
| A record that our support team removed a parent, with the name that parent used on HomeFón and our note of why | Kept with the household, and deleted when the household is deleted |
| A reservation where you never confirm your email | Deleted 30 days after you signed up, or 30 days after we last sent you the confirmation email, whichever is later |
| A confirmed reservation | Until you order, or the deadline in our invitation to order passes. Deleted sooner if you cancel your reservation or ask us to |
| An order from our shop | Kept as our record of the sale. If you ask us to delete your details, we remove your name, contact details and delivery address, and keep the sale itself (the amount, the date and Stripe's payment reference), because we need it for our accounts. Stripe keeps its own record of your payment under its own privacy policy |
| Operational records about the service itself: nightly integrity checks and similar | Up to 400 days. These hold table names, counts, timestamps, and where a check found a problem, the id of the device involved. No message content and no contact details |
| Device diagnostics: heartbeat history, app crash reports, alert records and API error records | 90 days. These describe the handset rather than your child's messages: when it was online, its battery level, which network it was on, and where the software went wrong. Kept for a shorter time than the operational records above, because they are tied to one family's phone |
| Server logs | These go to our hosting company's log stream rather than into our database. How long they are kept for is set by that company, and we are confirming it |
| Backups | Up to 14 further days after something is deleted from the live system. See below |
A nightly job on our servers applies the limits above across every household, including households that have not used the phone for a while. They do not depend on your phone checking in, apart from the record of a retired support line, which waits for your HomeFóns as its row says.
Backups. When you ask us to delete your data, it is removed from the live system immediately. Copies of it can remain in our backups for a short time afterwards. Those backups are never searched, read or edited for individual records, and they are overwritten within 14 days.
What deletion does not reach. Some diagnostic data stays on the handset itself and is never uploaded: undecodable incoming picture messages, kept for at most 7 days. Deleting your account ends the phone's access to the service; it does not reach into the phone's own storage. Resetting or wiping the handset clears it.
9. Your rights
You can exercise any of these by emailing hello@homefon.ie. We will answer within one month. There is no charge. We may ask you to confirm who you are, so that we do not hand your family's data to somebody else.
- Access. A copy of the data we hold about your household. Your dashboard exports it as a file, at any time, without asking us. The export leaves out your password hash, because handing that back protects nobody. If two parents manage the account, either can export it. It names the other parent and leaves out their email address, which is theirs to ask for. Their mobile number is in it while it is on your child's contact list, because the export includes every contact. It is also in the record of any messages between that number and the phone, which keeps it after it comes off the list. A number the other parent keeps off the list is not in it: messages with that number appear under their name, and still do after that parent changes the number or leaves the account. The hash we keep to do that (section 8) is not in the export.
- Rectification. Correct anything that is wrong. Most of it you can edit yourself in the dashboard.
- Erasure. Delete your household and everything associated with it in our database. Your dashboard does this too, and it is immediate on the live system. If another parent also manages the account, deleting your account removes your login and your personal details and leaves the household with them; the household is deleted when its last parent deletes their account. If you kept your number off the contact list, section 8 says what stays with the household after you leave. Two things it does not reach, both described above: the server logs, which sit in our hosting company's log stream rather than in our database, and the diagnostic data that stays on the handset. If you bought from our shop, email us and we will delete your details from the order; the sale itself stays, as section 8 explains.
- Restriction. Ask us to pause our use of your data while a question about it is being resolved. It stays where it is while that happens.
- Portability. Receive the data you gave us in a structured, machine-readable format. The dashboard export is JSON, which is exactly that.
- Objection. Object to anything we do on the basis of legitimate interests, including the website analytics. Tell us and we will stop unless we have compelling grounds that override your objection.
- Withdraw consent. Where we rely on your consent, such as your HomeFón reservation, you can withdraw it at any time. That does not affect anything we did before you withdrew it.
- Complain. If you are unhappy with how we handle your family's data, you can complain to the Data Protection Commission, Ireland's supervisory authority, at dataprotection.ie. You can go to them directly. You do not have to come to us first, though we would like the chance to put it right.
Children have these rights too. They belong to the person the data is about. Where a child is old enough to make the request themselves, we will deal with them directly and take their views seriously, and we will tell you unless doing so would not be in the child's interests.
10. How we protect it
Everything travels over encrypted connections. Message content is encrypted where it is stored, and so are your home WiFi credentials. Your password is stored as a hash we cannot reverse. Access to the production systems is limited to the people who run the service. A nightly check verifies that the database is intact and that nothing has disappeared from it. No system is perfect, and if there is ever a breach affecting your family's data we will tell the Data Protection Commission within 72 hours where we are required to, and we will tell you where it puts you at high risk.
11. Changes to this notice
This notice is version 2026-10-23 and it replaces version 2026-10-18. Sections 2, 4 and 6 now describe three new emails. When someone you invite as a co-parent joins, we first email a code to the address you invited, and they must enter it before their login is made. When a co-parent joins, we email every other parent on the account. And we email every parent when a contact is added to your HomeFón or changed so that it can reach the phone, or when HomeFón starts a HomeFón chat with one of your contacts by itself. When we change it again, we will change the version at the top, and we will tell account holders by email if the change affects them.
A Data Protection Impact Assessment for children's data is written and is going through review before Phase 1 expands. The HomeFón-to-HomeFón lane processes a child's message content in transit, which sharpens that obligation rather than softening it.
Terms of sale
Version 15 October 2026. These terms apply to every HomeFón package we sell on or after that date, whether you buy it at homefon.ie/shop or directly from us.
These terms set out what you are buying, what it costs, how we deliver it, and what you can do if you change your mind or something is wrong. Nothing in them takes away your legal rights as a consumer. Where they seem to, your legal rights win.
1. Who you are buying from
HomeFón is owned and operated by HomeFón Ltd, registered in Ireland, company number 828080. Our registered office is 32 Greenmount Office Park, Dublin 6W, D6W P289.
- Email: hello@homefon.ie
- Phone: +353 (0)1 4002016
2. Who can buy
You can buy a HomeFón if you are 18 or over, you are buying for your own household and not for a business, and your delivery address is in the Republic of Ireland. Each order is for one HomeFón package.
3. What you are buying
The HomeFón package costs €360 and includes:
- a Samsung phone, set up as your HomeFón;
- a stand and case;
- a SIM with an Irish mobile number;
- access to the parent dashboard, with separate profiles for each of your children;
- HomeFón service for 12 months from the day your HomeFón is delivered; and
- An Post registered delivery within Ireland.
You can read how HomeFón works, and what it does and does not do, at homefon.ie/features before you buy.
Your calls and texts. The SIM works on an Irish mobile network, and the network's own terms apply to the calls and texts it carries. You top up the SIM with the network yourself.
After the first year. The service does not renew automatically, and nothing is charged after the first year unless you choose to continue. We have not set the price after the first year yet. We will tell you the price before your first year ends, and you can decide then. The phone is yours to keep either way.
4. Price and payment
The total price is €360, including An Post registered delivery within Ireland and VAT. There are no other charges.
If you buy directly from us and we hand your HomeFón to you in person, we take €10 off for the delivery we do not make, so the total price is €350, including VAT.
If you buy at homefon.ie/shop, you pay when you place your order, on Stripe's secure checkout page, by card (including Apple Pay or Google Pay where your device offers them). Stripe is our payment provider. We never see or store your card details. Stripe emails you a receipt.
If you buy directly from us, we tell you how to pay when you order, and your order confirmation shows what you paid.
5. When the contract is made
If you buy at homefon.ie/shop, your order is accepted, and there is a contract between you and us, when your payment goes through and our website shows "Order received". If your payment is still being processed by your bank, the contract is made when it clears, and we will not post your HomeFón before then.
If you buy directly from us, the contract is made when we confirm that we have your payment, and we will not send or hand over your HomeFón before then.
We confirm the contract in writing, with a copy of these terms and the cancellation form, in the box with your HomeFón.
If, after you pay, we find we cannot supply your HomeFón, we will tell you straight away and refund everything you paid within 14 days.
6. Delivery
We deliver only within the Republic of Ireland, by An Post registered post to the address you give us, or by hand if you buy directly from us. We post your HomeFón within 3 working days of your order, and it will reach you within 30 days at the latest. Someone may need to sign for it.
If we hand your HomeFón to you in person, we agree the day with you, and it will still reach you within 30 days of your order at the latest.
If your HomeFón does not arrive within that time, contact us. You can give us a further reasonable time to deliver, and if it still does not arrive, you can cancel and we will refund everything you paid, including delivery, within 14 days. If you told us before you ordered that delivery by a particular date was essential and we miss it, you can cancel straight away.
The HomeFón is your responsibility once it has been delivered to you or to someone you named.
7. Changing your mind: 14 days
You can cancel this contract within 14 days without giving any reason. The 14 days begin on the day you, or someone you name other than the delivery company, receive the HomeFón.
How to cancel. Tell us before the 14 days are up, by email to hello@homefon.ie or by post to 32 Greenmount Office Park, Dublin 6W, D6W P289. Any clear statement will do. You can use the cancellation form at the end of these terms, but you do not have to. It is enough to send your message before the 14 days end.
Sending it back. Post the HomeFón back with the stand, case and SIM, without undue delay and within 14 days of telling us you are cancelling. Email us and we will send you a free return label, so posting it back costs you nothing.
Your refund. We refund everything you paid, delivery included, within 14 days of the day you tell us you are cancelling. We refund to the card or payment method you used, unless you ask otherwise, and it costs you nothing. We may wait to refund until we have the HomeFón back, or until you send us proof that you have posted it, whichever comes first.
The first year of service. If you cancel, we refund the whole package price, first year of service included, and we close the HomeFón service for that phone. We make no charge for the service you used during the 14 days.
Trying it out. You can unbox your HomeFón, set it up, link it to your dashboard and try calls and texts, as you would in a shop, to see how it works. If the HomeFón comes back damaged, or with parts missing, or with more use than that, we may take the loss in value off your refund.
Your account and your data. Cancelling the purchase does not delete your HomeFón account. You can delete it from your dashboard, and our privacy notice explains what happens to your data. We reset any HomeFón that comes back before it is used again.
8. If something is wrong with your HomeFón
Your HomeFón must be as described, fit for its purpose and of satisfactory quality, and the HomeFón service must work as described for your first year. These are your legal rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2022, and these terms do not reduce them.
If something is wrong:
- Within 30 days of delivery, you can reject the HomeFón and get a full refund.
- After that, we will repair or replace it free of charge, within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience to you.
- If a repair or replacement is not possible, or does not fix the problem, or takes too long, you can have a reduction in the price, or reject it and get a refund.
A fault that shows up within one year of delivery is taken to have been there when we delivered it, unless we can show otherwise. You can bring a claim for up to six years from delivery.
To report a problem, email hello@homefon.ie or ring +353 (0)1 4002016. We will arrange collection or tell you how to send it back, at no cost to you.
9. What HomeFón is, and what it is not
HomeFón is a tool to support your family's own decisions. It does not guarantee any safety outcome, and you are responsible for how you set it up and use it, and for supervising and supporting your child. Emergency calls stay available by design, but no single tool should be relied on in an emergency: contact the emergency services directly. HomeFón is not affiliated with Google, Android or Samsung.
10. Complaints
If you are unhappy with anything about your order, email hello@homefon.ie or ring +353 (0)1 4002016. We will reply within 5 working days and try to put it right.
If we cannot sort it out between us:
- The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission explains your rights at ccpc.ie.
- You can use the Small Claims procedure in the District Court for claims up to €2,000. It costs €25 to apply and you do not need a solicitor (courts.ie).
11. The law that applies
These terms are governed by Irish law, and you can bring proceedings in the Irish courts.
12. Your personal data
Our privacy notice at homefon.ie/legal#privacy explains what we do with the details you give us when you buy, including what Stripe does with them.
13. Changes to these terms
We may update these terms for future orders. The terms that apply to your order are the ones in force on the day you placed it, and we keep each version.
Cancellation form
(Complete and return this form only if you wish to cancel the contract.)
To: HomeFón Ltd, 32 Greenmount Office Park, Dublin 6W, D6W P289, hello@homefon.ie
I/We (*) hereby give notice that I/We (*) cancel my/our (*) contract of sale of the following goods (*)/for the supply of the following service (*):
Ordered on (*)/received on (*):
Name of consumer(s):
Address of consumer(s):
Signature of consumer(s) (only if this form is sent on paper):
Date:
(*) Delete as appropriate.
Terms of service
HomeFón is provided during Phase 1 on an as-is basis. It is a tool to support your family's own decisions and does not guarantee any safety outcome. You are responsible for how you configure and use it, and for supervising and supporting your child. Emergency access is preserved by design, but you should not rely on any single tool in an emergency. Contact the relevant services directly. HomeFón is not affiliated with Google or Android.
Buying a HomeFón is covered by our terms of sale above, and nothing in these terms affects your legal rights as a consumer.
These terms are version 2026-10-23, the same date as the privacy notice above, so that one acceptance covers both documents as published on that date.