AskBobbie · updated 27 September 2026
Privacy notice
What AskBobbie keeps about your family, why, who else touches it, how long it stays, and what you can ask of us. Written to be read, not skimmed past.
Who we are
AskBobbie is run by Locally UK Ltd, the data controller for everything described here. Write to [email protected] for anything to do with your data.
What we collect, and where it comes from
| What | From | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Your name, email address and password (stored hashed) | You, when you register | To run your account |
| Your household: its name, the grown-ups in it and what they are called at home, children's first names, year groups and school | You, during set-up and in Settings | To file letters against the right child and say whose thing is whose. We ask for first names and year groups only; no dates of birth, no photos of children are needed. |
| Emails sent to your household's AskBobbie address, and anything you forward to it | Your school, clubs, school systems such as ParentPay or Arbor, or your own forwarding | To read out the dates, payments and things to bring, which become items for you to confirm |
| Messages, photos, voice notes and documents you send to Bobbie's WhatsApp number, and the phone number they come from | You, once you have linked your phone by sending a code from it | The same reading, and to answer you. Your phone number is how we know it is you. |
| A child's phone number, and what they send from it | A parent links it from Settings by having the child send a code; a parent can unlink it at any time | So a child can send letters and notes in for their grown-ups. Bobbie replies to a child only if a parent switches that on, and then only about the child's own diary, never money, never changing anything. A parent chooses whether Bobbie tells the child about their own things only, or everyone's things too (never money). |
| The email address or mobile number of a grown-up you invite to your household | You, from Settings → Family or at set-up | To send them the invite (by email from us, or a link you share from your own WhatsApp) and to know it reached the right person. Kept for seven days if they do not accept, then deleted from the invite. |
| Photos and files you share to the app from your phone, or attach in the chat | You | The same reading |
| Your Google Calendar events (titles, times, locations, attendees' email addresses) and your Google account email | Google, only if you connect it | To show your calendar alongside school life, and, only if you switch it on, to put AskBobbie's calendar into your Google account |
| What you ask Bobbie and what Bobbie answers, typed or spoken | You | To answer, and to keep the thread of a conversation for the day |
| Your profile photo, colour and emoji; children's emoji, colour and (if you add one) photo | You | To tell people apart on screen |
| Usual technical records: IP address, browser, times of requests, errors | Your device | To keep the service running and secure |
Why we are allowed to
- Running the service you signed up for (performance of a contract): your account, your household, reading what is sent to your address, answering you.
- Your consent for the optional connections: linking a phone, connecting Google Calendar, sending edits back to Google. Each is a switch you can turn off, and turning it off stops the processing.
- Our legitimate interests in keeping the service secure and working: the technical records, the image check described below, rate limits.
Children's details are entered by their parents or carers, who decide what to share. We keep it to what filing a letter needs.
Who else touches it
We do not sell your data and never use it for advertising. These companies process it on our behalf, under contract, only to provide the service:
| Processor | What for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | Reading letters and messages into items; answering your questions; checking uploaded images. Nothing you send is used to train their models. | United States |
| OpenAI | Turning voice notes into text, and Bobbie's spoken replies into audio. Not used to train their models. | United States |
| Google Calendar, only if you connect it | United States and EU | |
| Meta (WhatsApp Business Platform) | Delivering WhatsApp messages to and from Bobbie's number, only if you link a phone | United States and EU |
| Cloudflare | Receiving email sent to your AskBobbie address, and serving the site | EU and United States |
| Resend | Sending the emails we send you (verification, password resets) | United States |
| Our hosting provider | Running the application and its database | EU |
Where data leaves the UK we rely on the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses, or the UK–US Data Bridge where the processor is certified.
Google user data
This section covers everything AskBobbie does with data from your Google account, if you choose to connect Google Calendar. AskBobbie's use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
What we access. With your permission we read the calendars on your Google account: event titles, times, locations, descriptions and attendees' email addresses, and the email address of the Google account itself. If you switch on "show in Google", we also create one AskBobbie calendar in your account and write your confirmed AskBobbie items into it.
How we use it. To show your Google events next to school life on your Today page and calendar; to let Bobbie answer questions such as "what's on Thursday?" with those events included; and, only when you switch it on, to write AskBobbie's items into your Google Calendar. Nothing else. We never use Google user data for advertising, never sell it, never use it to train AI models, and no person at Locally UK Ltd looks at it except to fix a problem you have asked us to fix.
Who we share, transfer or disclose it to.
- The other grown-ups in your household, who see your Google events in the shared calendar, in the same way they see everything else in the household. Children never see it.
- Anthropic, our AI processor, receives the titles, times and locations of events that are relevant to a question you ask Bobbie, so that Bobbie can answer it. Anthropic acts under contract as our processor, does not use it to train models, and does not keep it beyond the request.
- Our hosting provider, which stores it encrypted on our behalf in the EU.
- Google itself, when you switch on writing AskBobbie's calendar into your account.
- Nobody else. We do not transfer or disclose Google user data to any other third party, and we would only disclose it where the law requires us to.
How it is protected and how long it stays. Google access tokens are stored encrypted and used only from our servers. Google Calendar data is removed from AskBobbie when you disconnect Google in Settings, and the tokens are revoked with Google at the same time; it is also deleted when you delete your account. You can also remove AskBobbie's access at any time from your Google account permissions.
How long it stays
- Emails, photos, voice notes and documents sent to Bobbie: the files and the raw email are deleted thirty days after they arrive. The items read from them (a trip, a payment, a thing to bring) stay on your calendar until you delete them or your account.
- Things you bin are deleted thirty days later.
- Bobbie's spoken replies are cached as audio for up to fourteen days.
- Your calendar, lists, household and conversations stay while your account exists.
- Google Calendar data is removed from AskBobbie when you disconnect Google; the tokens are revoked with Google at the same time.
- Your account and everything in it is deleted when you delete it (how). Backups follow within thirty days.
Keeping it safe
Everything travels over HTTPS. Uploaded files sit on private storage and are only ever served to people in your household. Google tokens are stored encrypted. Every image uploaded is checked once, automatically, for content that should not be there; if one is flagged it is kept out of sight, our team is told, and it is deleted with everything else at thirty days. Access to the service's back office is limited to named staff.
Your rights
You can ask us for a copy of your data, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to take it elsewhere. Most of this you can do yourself in Settings; for the rest, email [email protected] and we will answer within a month. You can withdraw consent for any optional connection at any time by switching it off. If you are unhappy with how we have handled something you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, though we would rather you told us first.
Cookies
AskBobbie sets only the cookies it needs to keep you signed in and to protect forms. No advertising or tracking cookies, so there is no banner.
Changes
If we change this notice in a way that matters, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect. The date at the top is when it last changed.