Effective November 12, 2026. Along the Way is made and operated by ETS3D LLC, a Missouri company.
Along the Way is an app for homeschool families. It is used by parents. This policy says what the app keeps, why, who can see it, and how to remove it. If anything here is unclear, write to [email protected].
The short version
- Your children’s records are seen only by your own family.
- We do not sell your information, show ads, or use it to advertise to you.
- Other families see only what you choose to share with them, and never a child’s name or records.
- You can delete your account, and everything with it, from inside the app.
Who the app is for
Accounts are made by parents and guardians, who must be adults. Children do not create accounts. A parent may enter information about their own children, as described below. By doing so the parent gives consent for that information to be kept for the family’s own use.
A child’s own sign-in
A parent can choose to let one of their children use the app on the child’s own tablet or phone. It is off unless the parent switches it on for that child, and the parent can switch it off at any time, which signs the child out everywhere at once. The child signs in with a one-time code the parent gives them. We do not ask the child for an email address, password, birthdate, or any contact information.
A parent can also set up a tablet the children share. The parent does this once, with their own password or a one-time setup code from their own app. The tablet does not keep the parent’s password or the parent’s sign-in. It then shows the first names of that family’s children, and each child taps their own name. A parent may set a short PIN for a child, which we keep in a scrambled form; it is a simple gate between brothers and sisters, not a security lock. A parent can sign every such tablet out from their own app, and taking a tablet out of this mode needs a parent’s password. The same limits below apply on a shared tablet.
A signed-in child can see only their own checklist for the day, their own book log, and the Bible with their own reading progress, highlights, and notes. They can tick off checklist items, add books and book reports, and mark chapters and verses. What they add is kept in the family’s records, where the parent can see, change, and delete it. A child’s sign-in cannot reach other children’s records, the village, other families, photos, location sharing, settings, purchases, or account deletion.
What we keep
About you, the parent
- Your name as you want it shown, your email address, and a protected (hashed) form of your password. If you sign in with Apple or Google, we keep the identifier they give us instead of a password.
- Your family’s name and home state.
About your children, entered by you
- A first name and, if you give one, a grade level. We do not ask for a last name, birthdate, email, or photo of the child for identification.
- School records you choose to keep: time logged by subject, notes and photos of work, plans, attendance, courses and grades if you turn them on, weekly goals, books read and book reports, Bible reading progress, highlights and notes.
- Keepsakes: photos of a child’s artwork and projects.
Things you share with your village
- Photos you choose to share, events you plan (title, day, time, place, details, and a pin on the map), your answers to events (a count of adults and children, never names), and “We’re here” check-ins.
Location
The app does not track your location. Two features use it, and only when you act:
- Share where I am at a meet-up. It is off until you switch it on for one event, on the day of that event. While it is on and the event is open on your screen, your phone’s position is sent so the families invited to that event can find you on its map. It stops when you switch it off or leave the screen. We keep only your latest position, for a few minutes, and no history.
- Finding an address on the map when you plan an event uses your phone’s map service to look the address up. Your own position is not read for this.
Purchases
If you buy a plan, the purchase is handled by Apple (or Google on Android) and by RevenueCat, a service that tells us whether your family’s plan is active. We receive the plan, its dates, and an identifier for your family. We never receive your card number.
Technical information
Our server keeps ordinary logs of requests (time, address, what was requested) to keep the service running and secure. The app has no advertising or analytics trackers.
Photos
When you add a photo, the server removes the location and other hidden details from the file before storing it. Photos shared with your village are deleted after 21 days. Keepsakes and photos attached to logged time stay until you delete them.
Who can see what
- Your family: every parent on your family’s account sees all of the family’s records.
- Families in your village: your family name, the parents’ display names, photos and events you share with them, your headcount for an event, your check-in, and your position if you switch sharing on for that event. They never see a child’s name, grade, records, keepsakes, or book reports.
- Everyone else: nothing. Families cannot be searched for; a connection is made only by giving someone your code.
- Us: the people who run the service can reach the stored information to operate it, fix problems, act on a report, or answer a request from you. We do not read it for any other purpose.
Companies that help us run the service
- Apple and Google: sign-in, if you choose it, and purchases.
- RevenueCat: the status of your family’s plan.
- Resend: sending you emails such as verification and reset codes.
- Cloudflare: carrying traffic to our server, and holding encrypted backups. The backups are encrypted before they leave our server; Cloudflare cannot read them.
We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.
Keeping it safe
Information travels over an encrypted connection. Passwords are stored only in hashed form. Backups are encrypted. No system is perfectly secure; if we learn of a breach that affects you, we will tell you.
Deleting and keeping
- You can delete any entry, photo, keepsake, book, or child’s record in the app. It is removed from our server at once.
- You can delete your account in the app (Settings, Delete account). To protect you from a mistake or someone else using your phone, the account is first held for 30 days, during which you can restore it. After 30 days it is permanently deleted. If you are the only parent on the family’s account, the family and all of its records are deleted with it.
- Backups are kept for up to 90 days and then deleted. A deleted account may remain in an encrypted backup until that backup expires.
- Positions shared at a meet-up are kept for minutes. Check-ins are removed after the day following the event.
Your choices and rights
You can see and change your family’s information in the app. You can ask us for a copy of it, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it by writing to [email protected] from your account’s email address. A parent may at any time review or delete the information kept about their child and refuse any further collection, by deleting the child’s record or the account.
Reports
If a family reports a photo or event, we receive the report with the item and the names of the two families involved so we can look at it and act.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will tell you in the app or by email before the change takes effect.