About Aunty Bea

Aunty Bea is a child online safety app for Australian parents. It runs on your child's devices, checks for signs of harm such as grooming, explicit content and self-harm, and sends you a plain-English note when something is worth a conversation. You never see a feed of your child's messages. You get a summary of what looked risky, why it matters, and a way to open the chat.

Who built it

Ray and Renie Robinson, parents of three on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, through their company Hidden City Tattoo Pty Ltd (ABN 87 654 468 023). Aunty Bea is Australian owned and operated, and is built for Australian families right now. If you live elsewhere, you can join the waitlist on the homepage.

It started with two moments in our own family: an older son being asked by another "child" online to travel interstate to meet up, and a younger son watching a children's video that had been hijacked with disturbing content. We built the thing we wished we had.

What Aunty Bea does

• Notes, not a feed. When everything is fine, that is all you see. When something looks risky, Bea tells you the type of concern, the app or site, and a way to start the conversation.
• Conversation starters written for your child's age, so the hard chat has an opening.
• Aunty Bea Social Lock blocks the platforms that are age-restricted under Australia's under-16 social media ban, including Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat and X. It is free, with no expiry and no card.
• Blocked-attempt logging so you can see patterns, and an alert if Aunty Bea is disabled, removed or tampered with on the child's device.
• One parent dashboard at auntybea.app for every child and every device.
• The Village, a private community of parents who use the app, included with Complete Protection.

Where it works

• iPhone and iPad: the Aunty Bea companion app on the App Store, built on Apple's Family Controls framework, which Apple grants only to approved child-safety apps.
• Android: the companion app on Google Play. Android is the fullest version of Aunty Bea today, because Google lets apps check on-screen content with the parent's explicit permission.
• Chrome and Microsoft Edge: the Aunty Bea Browser Guardian extension, for Windows, Mac and Chromebook. Available from the Chrome Web Store and Microsoft Edge Add-ons.
• Mac: an app that watches over Safari on the family Mac, downloaded directly from auntybea.app.
• Parent dashboard: any browser, on any device.

What it costs

• Aunty Bea Social Lock: free forever. No trial, no expiry, no card.
• Complete Protection: $9.99 AUD per month for the whole family, every child and every device. Starts with a 7-day free trial with no credit card. Cancel anytime. No ads, and no data sold.

What it cannot do

No app can monitor everything, and any product that tells you it can is worth a second look. On iPhone and iPad, Apple's privacy architecture means no app, including ours, can see inside other apps such as Roblox chat, Discord, WhatsApp or iMessage. On iOS, Aunty Bea works at the network layer and inside Safari: it blocks harmful sites, logs blocked attempts, enforces Social Lock and alerts you to tampering. On Android it can also check on-screen content as it appears. We explain the difference in full on the homepage and in our iPhone vs Android parental controls guide, because you deserve a straight answer before you install anything on your child's device.

Privacy, in one paragraph

Checking happens on the child's device. Only the type of concern that was flagged, the app or site, and a page title leave it. The on-screen text does not, and your child's name is never sent with it. The plain-English notes are written by Claude, made by Anthropic, which keeps what it receives for up to 30 days and never uses it to train its models. Account information and pattern-level signals are stored with our infrastructure providers, who process data in the United States. The full detail, including your rights under Australian privacy law, is in our privacy policy.

Fact sheet

• Product: Aunty Bea, child online safety and parental monitoring app
• Company: Hidden City Tattoo Pty Ltd, ABN 87 654 468 023, Queensland, Australia
• Founders: Ray and Renie Robinson
• Available in: Australia
• Child devices: iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac (Safari), Chrome and Edge on Windows, Mac and Chromebook
• Parent dashboard: web, at auntybea.app
• Free tier: Aunty Bea Social Lock, social media blocking for the platforms age-restricted under Australia's under-16 ban
• Paid tier: Complete Protection, $9.99 AUD per month per family, 7-day free trial, no card to start
• What parents receive: plain-English notes and conversation starters, never message content
• AI provider: Claude by Anthropic, 30-day retention, not used for training
• Apple entitlement: Family Controls, approved
• Contact: support@auntybea.app (support), hello@auntybea.app (media)

Compare

We have written honest, sourced comparisons with the products parents most often ask us about: Aunty Bea vs Bark, Aunty Bea vs Qustodio and Aunty Bea vs Google Family Link.