FAQ

Can Backstop see my child’s screenshots?

No. Screenshots are captured on the endpoint and sent directly to your BYOK LLM provider under your API key. They are deleted from the endpoint after evaluation. They never touch Backstop servers.

Can Backstop read my alerts?

No. Alert content is encrypted on the endpoint with your family key. The control plane stores the ciphertext and forwards it to your parent web app, where it is decrypted locally. We have never held your family key and cannot decrypt.

See the Security page for the full model.

What can Backstop actually see?

Metadata: your account email, when your endpoints are online, how often they send alerts, the size of each alert, and the delivery channel and destination you configured. Enough to run the service and route notifications, not enough to know what your family’s rules or alerts say.

What if my kid figures out how to uninstall it?

• On macOS, uninstalling a signed LaunchDaemon requires admin credentials. If your child has admin credentials, no monitoring product can help.
• On Windows, the service runs as LocalSystem and requires admin to remove.
• The endpoint reports a heartbeat every minute. If it goes silent, the parent app flags the device as offline within about five minutes.

Does it work if the laptop is offline?

Yes, with degraded features:

• Screenshots are queued locally up to a bound (about 24 hours’ worth).
• The endpoint keeps enforcing the blocklist even without network.
• Alerts are sent when the endpoint next reaches the control plane.

Does Backstop record video or audio?

No. Only still screenshots at a scheduled cadence.

What about SMS, iMessage, Discord DMs?

Backstop reads whatever is on screen at the time of the screenshot. If your child is looking at a conversation, Backstop sees it. If they close it before the screenshot fires, Backstop doesn’t.

Backstop does not integrate with any messaging platform’s API and does not read message history that isn’t currently displayed.

Is Backstop legal to install on my child’s laptop?

Under COPPA (US federal), a parent may install monitoring on a device used by their own minor child. State laws vary; see our Terms of Service. We do not support installation on adult devices or on shared employee devices.

Do I have to tell my kid?

We recommend transparent mode (a menu-bar / tray indicator + weekly summary shared with the kid). Covert mode exists for cases where transparency would defeat the purpose (e.g., an ongoing crisis), but is your responsibility to use appropriately.

How much does the LLM cost?

Depends on your provider and screenshot cadence. At the default 10-minute cadence and gpt-4o-mini today, expect $2-5 per device per month. Cost caps in BYOK setup prevent surprises.

Can two parents share one family?

v1: one parent seat per family. v2: shared families with a second-parent enrollment.

What if I lose my recovery mnemonic?

If you also lose access to any signed-in Backstop parent web app and your encrypted backup file, past alerts and rules become unreadable. We cannot recover them for you. This is by design; it’s the same trade-off Signal and iMessage make. Please save the 12-word phrase somewhere durable.