BlockLock Privacy Policy

What BlockLock Does

BlockLock is an app-blocking tool. You choose a mode — block a set of apps, allow only a set of apps, or lock the phone down to phone calls only — and a duration. For that duration, BlockLock keeps you off the apps you told it to keep you off. That is the entire product. It does not need to know who you are in order to do it.

Data We Collect

We collect nothing. BlockLock does not operate any server, and the app contains no analytics, advertising, or tracking software development kit (SDK) of any kind.

Everything the app needs in order to work is written to a private storage area on your own device and is never transmitted anywhere. We never see your name, your contacts, your messages, your browsing activity, your location, or the contents of any app you use. There is nothing for us to see: the app makes no network request at all except the one described in Section 09.

BlockLock also sets allowBackup="false", so its data is excluded from Android's automatic cloud backup. It stays on the device it was created on.

Seeing Which App Is Open

To block an app, BlockLock has to know which app you just opened. It does this with Android's Usage Access permission, which you grant manually in system settings.

BlockLock uses it for one thing only: reading the package name of the app that most recently came to the foreground — the identifier, such as com.example.someapp — so it can check that name against your chosen mode. If the app is not permitted during your session, BlockLock covers it. If it is permitted, nothing happens.

What it does not do: BlockLock never reads the contents of your screen, your keystrokes, or anything inside another app. It does not build a profile of how long you spend in each app, and it does not read your usage history. It asks a single question, once a second while a session is running: which app is in front right now?

BlockLock deliberately does not use an Accessibility Service. Accessibility is the more common way for blocking apps to do this, but it is a far broader permission than the job requires, and Android grants it far more reach than reading a package name.

Display Over Other Apps

When you open an app that your session does not permit, BlockLock covers it with a plain full-screen panel showing how much time is left. That panel is what the Display over other apps permission is for.

The permission lets BlockLock draw its own window on top of other apps. It does not let BlockLock see, read, or interact with whatever is underneath. Nothing is captured and nothing is recorded — the app draws a cover, and that is all.

Device Admin

Total Lockdown works by locking your screen for the length of the session, which requires Android's Device Administrator permission. This permission sounds alarming, and it is worth being exact about its scope.

BlockLock requests exactly one device-admin policy: force-lock. That is the ability to lock the screen, and nothing else. It cannot erase your phone, change or reset your password, disable your camera, restrict your accounts, or monitor your activity. Those are separate policies, and BlockLock does not request any of them. You can verify this in Android's own device admin settings screen, which lists precisely what an app has asked for.

You can revoke device admin at any time in system settings. Doing so does not remove any other function of the app; only Total Lockdown depends on it.

Contacts & Phone Calls

Total Lockdown keeps your phone locked, which would normally also mean you could not make a call. So BlockLock includes its own small dialer and contact list, shown over the lock screen, letting you reach someone without unlocking the device and defeating the session you asked for.

This is optional. Both permissions below are requested only if you turn on “Allow calls during lockdown”. If you leave it off, BlockLock never asks for either, and the dialer is never shown.

READ_CONTACTS

Shows a searchable list of your contacts in BlockLock's own dialer. Your contacts are read from the device each time you open that screen, held in memory only while it is open, and never stored by the app, never written to its files, and never transmitted anywhere. Closing the screen discards them.

CALL_PHONE

Places the call you tap directly, so the phone does not have to be unlocked first. BlockLock does not read your call log, does not know who you have called before, and does not record calls.

Other Permissions

The remaining permissions are routine and involve no personal information at all.

FOREGROUND_SERVICE
FOREGROUND_SERVICE_SPECIAL_USE

Keeps blocking running for the whole session. This is also why you see an ongoing notification while a session is active — Android requires it, and it is your way back into the app.

SCHEDULE_EXACT_ALARM

Ends your session at the exact time it is meant to, and starts scheduled sessions on time. It simply wakes the app at the right moment.

RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED

Lets an active session or a saved schedule resume correctly if your phone restarts, instead of silently losing track of where it was.

REQUEST_IGNORE_
BATTERY_OPTIMIZATIONS

Asks Android not to shut BlockLock down mid-session to save power. Many phones will otherwise stop it and quietly end your session early. This is a request you can decline.

POST_NOTIFICATIONS

Shows the session countdown, and warns you when something has gone wrong — a permission withdrawn mid-session, or a scheduled session that could not start.

INTERNET

Used solely to talk to Google Play's billing system when you make a purchase. BlockLock makes no other network request, ever — see Section 09.

To let you pick which apps to block, BlockLock needs the list of apps you can launch. It requests a narrowly scoped view of that list rather than the broad QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES permission, and the list never leaves your device.

What Is Stored On Your Device

For completeness, this is everything BlockLock writes to its private storage. All of it is local, none of it is transmitted, and all of it is deleted when you uninstall the app:

Your selected mode, and the app lists you chose for Allowlist and Blocklist
Your schedule — days, start time, duration, and mode
The current session's end time, and whether calls are allowed during lockdown
When your free trial started, and whether you have purchased the app
How much of today's free Total Lockdown allowance you have used
A count of how many times you opened a blocked app, by app, so the app can show you your own activity. This is kept for 90 days and then automatically deleted, and it records only that an app was opened and blocked — never what you did in it.

Purchases & Billing

BlockLock offers one optional, one-time purchase that unlocks every mode permanently after the free trial. That purchase is processed entirely by Google Play's billing system.

BlockLock never receives, stores, or has any access to your card details, billing address, or any other payment information. It receives only a confirmation from Google Play that the purchase succeeded, which is what unlocks the app. Google's own privacy policy governs that transaction.

Retention & Deletion

Because everything lives only in private storage on your device, deleting your data is as simple as it should be: uninstalling BlockLock deletes all of it immediately. There is no copy anywhere else for you to ask us to remove, because none was ever made. There is no account to close and no deletion request to file.

Children's Privacy

BlockLock is not directed at children and is not designed to collect information from anyone, of any age — consistent with the rest of this policy, it has no mechanism to collect personal information at all.

Changes to This Policy

If this policy changes, the update will be posted on this same page with a new effective date at the top. Given how little the app does with data, we do not expect that to happen often.

Contact

Questions about this policy or the app can go here:

✉ support.blocklock@gmail.com