• Your age and country or region associated with your Apple Account will be used to confirm whether you are an adult or child.
• When you start or join a family group, your Apple Account and information about your family members may be used to let you and your family members share subscriptions, purchases and locations.
• If you are a parent or guardian, your Apple Account and those of your family members may be used to let you set up parental controls for children in your family group.
• Details about your family group may be used to send you and your family members relevant communications about products, services, offers and other benefits available through Family Sharing.

Protecting the privacy and security of your information is a priority for everyone at Apple. We work hard to collect only the data we need to make your experience better, and when we do collect data, we believe it’s important for you to know what we’re collecting and why we need it, so you can make informed choices. Family Sharing, like every Apple product and service, is designed with these principles in mind.

Setting Up Family Sharing

When a user initiates family setup, Apple uses the age and country or region associated with their Apple Account to confirm they are an adult and therefore eligible to create a family group. The specific age thresholds referenced below may be different for a user depending on which country or region is associated with their Apple Account. For more information on the age thresholds, visit support.apple.com/102617.

Once adult status is confirmed, the initiating user becomes the family organiser and can invite up to five other users with unique Apple Accounts to join the family group using AirDrop, Messages or Mail, or by tapping Invite in Person in family settings. Apple will display the organiser’s name, Apple Account, the subscriptions the invitee will get access to and/or the organiser’s contact information in the invitation, depending on how it was sent. Apple will not display any other information about the organiser or the family group, such as the names of existing family members. When the organiser taps Invite in Person, Apple will use the invitee’s Apple Account and password, which are entered on the organiser’s device, to authenticate the invitee and confirm their acceptance if the invitee is 13 or older. Apple will not store this information on the organiser’s device. If the invitee is under 13, Apple will initiate the child transfer flow described in the Leaving a Family Sharing Group and Child Transfers section below.

To help organisers and invitees manage invitations and send reminders, Apple will display their name, profile photo and invitation status, as available, in device settings. Apple maintains a record of invitations until the invitee responds or the invitation expires after 15 days. If the invitee accepts, Apple associates the invitee’s Apple Account with the family group. Apple does not maintain a record of expired invitations. For invitations sent through Messages that have been declined, Apple keeps a record for 30 days to display the declined status in Messages to the organiser and the invitee.

Joining a Family and Family Roles

When users join a family group, Apple makes available specific features, information and controls, which can be used to manage sharing of subscriptions, purchases, payment information and locations. For example, Apple will display each member’s name, Apple Account and role, and the age of any children in the family to all members of the family group in family settings. For children on an iOS or iPadOS device, Apple will use their age to provide age-appropriate information about their privacy rights and parental controls. Apple will also process details about a family member, such as their role, subscriptions, and use of features and services, in order to provide a customised list of recommendations. For example, a family member’s recommendations may suggest reviewing parental controls, sharing iCloud+ with family members or making another family member one of their Emergency Contacts.

When the organiser adds an adult user to the family group, they can designate them as a parent/guardian. Parents/guardians, as well as the organiser who can also act as a parent/guardian, can create an Apple Account for children under 13 as described below. They can also set up parental controls such as Ask to Buy and Screen Time for children in the family group. In addition to setting up a family group and inviting users to participate, the organiser can remove family members and disband the group as described below. If a user who is part of a family group signs in to an Apple device such as Apple TV, the device may suggest adding other family members by displaying their Apple Account name and profile photo.

Creating an Apple Account for a Child

The organiser and parents/guardians can add a child under 13 to their family group by creating their Apple Account or through the child transfer process described below. To create an Apple Account for a child under 13, the organiser or parent/guardian must provide the child’s name, date of birth, an email address and a phone number, which Apple uses to provide the Apple Account to the child. If the child account is created during device setup, the organiser or parent/guardian must also provide the child’s country or region. Apple verifies the organiser or parent/guardian’s adult status using their payment details, identity card in Wallet, or Apple Account or equivalent before obtaining their consent to process the child’s data. Apple uses the child’s date of birth to determine eligible services and suggest parental controls such as Ask to Buy and Screen Time. For more information on creating child accounts, visit support.apple.com/102617.
 
Purchase Sharing

When an organiser enables purchase sharing, eligible purchases made by family members in the App Store, iTunes Store, Apple Books or Apple TV app will be charged to the organiser’s payment method on file. Family members will be able to see a description of the payment method used, such as Apple Pay, but will not be able to see payment details, such as full payment account number. Family members will automatically get access to the organiser’s purchases and can opt in to share their purchases with other family members. Organisers will be able to see the description, price and date of all family members’ online and in-app App Store transactions, as well as details of refund requests and outcomes, and disputes. If a family member reports a problem with an online or in-app App Store purchase, Apple will use information about the purchasing family member, organiser and purchase to provide an appropriate response.

Family members can hide individual iTunes, Apple Books and App Store purchases, or disable Share My Purchases within their family settings; the Family organiser will continue to receive receipts for purchases made in the App Store, Apple Books and Apple Music, even if family members have hidden their purchases. For more information on purchase sharing, visit support.apple.com/kb/HT201085. For more information on hiding purchases from the App Store, visit support.apple.com/108091.

Subscriptions

If Share with Family is enabled, subscriptions for services such as Apple Music family plan, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade or Apple News+ will be shared with family members. Family members will continue to sign in to each service using their own Apple Accounts. This will keep their individual content and media libraries and recommendations private and separate, while taking advantage of the shared family plan. Similarly, sharing iCloud+ with the family gives each family member access to the storage and features in the shared plan, while keeping individual accounts and files separate. For more information on sharing subscriptions with family members, visit support.apple.com/108107.

Location Sharing

When a user joins a family group, their device names will be visible to other family members in Find My. Their Apple Account will only be visible to other family members in Find My and their location data will only be processed by Find My if they enable Location Sharing, either through family settings or through the Find My app. A family member can also choose to automatically share their own location with all other family members, including any new members added later, in family settings for as long as they remain in the group. The organiser or parent/guardian may choose to automatically share their child’s location with all other family members in certain cases, including when they create an account for a child under 13. Family members can disable the Automatically Share Location feature in Settings > [your name] > Family Sharing > Location Sharing. They can also choose to share their location with individual members of the family via family settings and the Find My app. For more information on sharing location with family members, visit support.apple.com/105107.

Parental Controls

Apple uses family members’ Apple Accounts and roles to let the organiser and parents/guardians set up parental controls for children in their family group. For example, the organiser and parents/guardians can turn on Ask to Buy so that children must receive their approval before making any downloads or purchases from the App Store, iTunes Store or Apple Books, including in-app purchases and free downloads. The organiser and parents/guardians can also set up Screen Time, which allows them to manage settings for features such as Downtime, app and website usage, contacts, and content ratings for their children. Only the organiser and parents/guardians are able to see information about the child’s transactions in the App Store, iTunes Store and Apple Books, see and manage their online activity through Screen Time, and enable parental controls. For more information on Ask to Buy, visit support.apple.com/105055. For more information on using parental controls, visit support.apple.com/105121.

Leaving a Family Sharing Group and Child Transfers

Adult family members may leave a family group or be removed by the organiser at any time. Children who are between 13 and 17 may leave a family group or be removed by the organiser unless they are managed by the organiser or parents or guardians via Screen Time. The family organiser may also disband a family group by turning off Family Sharing. When a family member leaves or is removed, they immediately lose access to shared subscriptions and content purchased by other members, and their content will also no longer be available to other members.

Children under 13 must be part of a family group. To remove a child from a family group, an organiser in a different family group can invite the child to join their family group by selecting Invite in Person in family settings. The transfer invitation must be approved by the child’s current family organiser. Once the transfer is complete, Apple does not maintain a record of the fact that the transferred child was previously part of a different family group. Alternatively, the family organiser can delete the child’s Apple Account. For more information on moving a child to another family group and deleting a child’s account, visit support.apple.com/102634.

Communicating with You

Apple may use details about a user’s family group, including number of family members and whether anyone has a pending invitation to join the group, in order to send the user and their family members relevant communications about products, services, offers and other benefits available through Family Sharing.

Family members may receive these communications by email if they consent to receive email marketing. They can change their email preferences and opt out of receiving these emails by going to account.apple.com, or on iOS or iPadOS devices by going to Settings > [your name] > Personal Information > Communication Preferences. Family members may also receive these communications by push notification from the relevant Apple product or service. To update notification preferences or to opt out of notifications on your iOS or iPadOS device, go to Settings > Notifications.

Apple may also use details about a user and their family group, including their name, age, role, purchases and subscriptions, to send communications by email or push notification about changes in family membership and role, ability to access shared purchases and subscriptions, and parental controls. For example, when a user joins a family group, all existing family members will be notified about their ability to access the new member’s shared purchases and subscriptions. If an organiser designates an adult family member as a parent or guardian, children in the family group will be notified that the adult user can manage their parental controls.

Applicable Legal Basis for Processing Personal Data

We process personal data for Family Sharing as described above generally for performance of family members’ contract(s) with Apple, as necessary for providing the service and to comply with our legal obligations. Where consent is the appropriate legal basis, we seek it in accordance with applicable local law.

Where applicable local law provides, we process the following categories of personal data as necessary for purposes of our legitimate interests or those of a third party, including information about:

• Users’ Apple Account information, including their name and information used to sign in, as well as their contact, payment and security details, such as trusted phone numbers or security questions, that are used across Apple services
• Apple products owned by family members, family members’ subscriptions to Apple services, and their purchases and downloads
• Users’ family group, including the number of members in their family
• Users’ devices, including their device’s name, serial number and other hardware identifiers
• Payment details, including account numbers and expiry dates, billing and shipping addresses, and gift card redemption information

These legitimate interests include:

• Providing family members with better service and support
• Sending relevant communications about Family Sharing and other related Apple products, services and offers that may be of interest
• Preventing fraud and other malicious activity

At all times, information collected by Apple will be treated in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy, which can be found at apple.com/uk/privacy

Published Date: September 20, 2024