Baby ClotheslineThe gist
Your town, your baby's birth month and your settings live on your phone and nowhere else. Three things do leave the phone: the rounded coordinates of your town go to the Norwegian weather service to fetch the forecast; the free version asks Google for a banner ad; and if you buy “Remove ads”, Apple or Google handle the payment. We, the makers, receive none of it — there is no server of ours in the app.
Who answers for this
Emir Ilkerli, trading as Adrina Software, Sattelmacherstraße 6, 21682 Stade, Germany · adrinasoftware@gmail.com
As the maker is based in Germany, this notice follows the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It is also written with the UK GDPR and US state privacy laws in mind.
Kept on your phone
The app has no sign-up and no account. It writes a handful of entries into its own private storage on the device (Apple's UserDefaults, Android's SharedPreferences). Here is every one of them, under the name it has in the code:
line.place- The town you picked from the built-in list: its name, country and coordinates rounded to two decimals.
line.born- The month and year your baby was born (for example 2026-03) — never a day, never a name. Used to dress newborns a little warmer and toddlers a little lighter.
line.ride- Whether you last chose pram, carrier or car seat.
line.room- The room temperature you last set on the Bedtime dial.
line.fahrenheit,line.skin- Display choices: °C or °F, and the skin tone of the drawn baby.
line.forecast,line.fetched- The last forecast and when it was fetched, so the app does not ask the weather service again within 30 minutes.
line.adfree- Whether “Remove ads” has been bought.
Changing your town or settings overwrites these entries. Deleting the app deletes all of them. If your phone's own backup (iCloud or Google) is on, the operating system may include them in that backup; Apple or Google hold that backup, not us.
The app does not ask for location permission, contacts, photos, the camera or the microphone.
Leaving the phone, 1 — the forecast
To get the weather, the app sends the latitude and longitude of your chosen town, rounded to two decimals (about a kilometre), to the locationforecast service of MET Norway (Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Henrik Mohns plass 1, 0313 Oslo, Norway). The request also carries the app's name and our contact address, which MET Norway asks every app to send. Like any web request, it reveals your device's IP address to MET Norway. No identifier of you or your device is added. Its rules for this service are in the MET Norway terms of service.
Legal basis: Article 6(1)(b) GDPR — you asked the app for the forecast, and it cannot show one without asking for it.
The town list itself comes from GeoNames and is built into the app; searching it sends nothing anywhere.
Leaving the phone, 2 — the banner ad
The free version shows one banner at the bottom of the main screen (never on Bedtime). It comes from Google AdMob — Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland, in the EEA, UK and Switzerland; Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA, elsewhere.
To deliver and count ads, Google's software in the app sends Google technical details such as your IP address (and a rough location derived from it), the device's advertising ID if your settings allow it, device model, system version, language and the app's name. The app gives Google none of the entries listed above — not your town, not your baby's birth month.
If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland
Before any ad is requested, Google's consent form asks you. Say no, and the app still works fully. You can change your answer any time under Settings → Privacy choices for ads in the app. Legal basis: your consent, Article 6(1)(a) GDPR. Google may transfer data to the US under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.
Everywhere else
Ads are shown on the basis of our legitimate interest in keeping the app free (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR). You can switch off personalised ads in your phone's settings — on iPhone under Privacy & Security → Tracking and Apple Advertising, on Android under Settings → Google → Ads. The app never shows Apple's tracking prompt and does not ask to track you.
Google explains its side in its privacy policy and on how Google uses data from apps that use its services.
Leaving the phone, 3 — “Remove ads”
The one-time purchase is processed by the App Store or Google Play under their own terms and privacy policies (Apple, Google). We get sales totals per country, never names or payment details. After the purchase the app requests no more ads, and from the next start it does not load Google's ad software at all, so the second item above no longer applies.
Children
Clothesline is used by parents and carers. It is not made for children and does not collect anything from them. The baby's birth month stays on the phone and is not personal data that reaches us or Google.
Writing to us
If you email us, we use your address and message only to reply (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR) and delete the thread when the matter is settled. Please leave out health details about your child.
Your rights
You may ask for access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability, or object (Articles 15–21 GDPR), and you may complain to a data protection authority — for us, the Landesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz Niedersachsen. Residents of California and other US states have similar rights. Because we store nothing about you, there is usually nothing for us to hand over or erase; for ad data, Google's tools above are the place. We do not sell personal information.
When this changes
If a new version of the app handles data differently, this page is updated before that version goes out, and the date at the top changes.