Child safety
and privacy
Scavvi is played by children, including the eleven-year-old whose idea it was. Here are the straight answers to what a parent actually wants to know, without the legal fog. The full detail lives in our privacy policy.
Is Scavvi safe for my child to use?
Scavvi is designed to be played with your family, not alone in a chatroom. There is no public feed, no open chat with strangers, and no way for someone outside your hunt to contact your child. A hunt is a private game you or your child creates and invites people into with a five-character code.
Who can my child play with?
Only people who have the hunt code. You share it with the family and friends you want in the game, the same way you would share a party invite. Chat inside a hunt is limited to the players in that hunt and is a Pro feature, so it is off by default.
What happens to the photos my child takes?
A photo is taken to prove a find is genuine. It is checked by an AI that answers one question: does this picture show the thing on the list? The photo is stored against that hunt so your family can look back at the finds afterwards. Photos are never sold, never shared with tourism boards or advertisers, and never used to identify or profile anyone.
Does Scavvi track my child's location?
Scavvi uses location while a hunt is being played, for two things: awarding explorer points for moving between finds, and checking a family is actually at the right landmark on a city trail. It is not used to follow anyone around when they are not playing, and location is never shared with other players outside your hunt.
What data do tourism boards see?
Only aggregated, anonymised totals. A city can see that a number of families visited a stop, roughly when, and how they rated the trail. There is no individual-level or child-level reporting available to anyone, at any price.
Are there ads?
The free version shows occasional ads from Google AdMob, configured for a family audience. Scavvi Pro removes ads entirely. We do not sell personal data to advertisers.
What do I control as a parent?
You control the account name and avatar, whether notifications are on, whether location and camera permissions are granted at all, and whether you subscribe. You can delete your data by contacting us, and cancel a subscription at any time through the App Store or Google Play.
Who built this?
Scavvi is made by The Hopium Lab Ltd, a UK company. It began as an idea from Harper, who was eleven at the time, and is built by her dad. It is a small family project, which is exactly why the privacy answers here are short and blunt rather than buried in legal text.
Still want to ask something?
A real person reads every email. Usually the one who built it.
hello@scavvi.com