Campfire is a small, free family messaging service run by one person — Andrew Nidzieko — as a personal project. It is not operated by a company, and there is no support team, no help desk, and no staff behind it. When these terms say "we" or "us," that means one individual. You can reach that individual at contact@campfirekids.chat.
Campfire is offered to a small number of families who were personally invited. It is not a commercial product and you are not paying for it.
Campfire lets a parent create a family account, add accounts for their children, and decide exactly who each family member is allowed to message. Two families can connect so their members can message each other, with each parent controlling who on their side is involved.
Two optional extras sit on top of that, and they are switched on for a family one at a time rather than available to everyone. Jobs is a chore and reward record with a family-kept tally — section 9 covers it, and it is not real money. The Dashboard shows a calendar, the weather and each child's chores on a tablet in a shared room; section 10 covers that. A family that has neither sees no trace of either.
When you create a child account, you are confirming that you are that child's parent or legal guardian, that you consent to Campfire collecting and storing that child's information as described in these terms, and that you accept these terms on their behalf.
You are responsible for what your children do on Campfire and for deciding who they are allowed to talk to. Campfire gives you the controls — a contact allow-list, a sleep window, and a view of every conversation your children are part of — but it does not supervise anyone for you, does not filter or moderate message content, and does not screen the people you approve.
You are responsible for your password, your children's PINs, and anyone who has access to a device where Campfire is signed in. Children sign in with a four-digit PIN, which is a deliberately low bar chosen so a child can manage it themselves — treat it as convenience, not as strong security, and don't reuse a PIN that protects anything that matters.
Tell us promptly if you think someone has gotten into an account. Campfire will email a parent when a child signs in from a device it hasn't seen before; please don't ignore those.
Don't use Campfire to:
If any of that happens, accounts involved may be shut off without notice, and serious matters may be reported to the police.
Message contents are encrypted where they are stored, which protects them if the database is ever exposed. That encryption is not end-to-end: the keys are held by the service, so message content can technically be accessed on the server side.
That access is used only to diagnose technical problems, to look into a safety concern, and to respond to a valid legal request. It is not used to browse your family's conversations, and nothing you send is used for advertising or to train anything.
Campfire is designed for family messaging with parental oversight rather than for confidential communication. If you need a conversation that nobody but the recipient can access, use a service built for that.
Separately: parents can see the conversations their own children are part of, including messages a child has deleted. That is intentional, and it is one of the main points of the service.
What information Campfire collects, how long it is kept, and what is done with it is described in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms.
Connecting your family to another family is a decision you make. Once connected, the people you choose to share can be messaged by the people that family chooses to share, subject to both parents' allow-lists. We do not vet the other family. Connect with people you actually know, and disconnect if you change your mind.
Campfire holds no money, moves no money, and owes no money. The balances, points, savings and interest in Jobs are a private tally your family keeps for itself, in the same sense as a chart on the fridge. They are not currency, not stored value, not a deposit, not credit, not a gift card, and not redeemable for anything from us.
Jobs lets a parent write down chores, decide what each is worth, approve them when a child says they're done, and offer rewards a child can put those points towards. What a "point" means is entirely up to you: a family can display the tally as points or as an amount in dollars, and that choice changes nothing except how the number is drawn on screen.
There is no bank, no card, and no payment processor anywhere in Campfire. No funds are held on your behalf, none are transferred, and there is nothing to withdraw. Campfire is not a bank, not a money transmitter, not a payment service and not a financial adviser, and nothing in it is a financial product or financial advice.
"Savings" and "interest" are teaching devices. When a child sets money aside, a number grows on a schedule their own parent chose. Nobody pays that interest and nobody owes it; it is arithmetic in your family's own ledger, designed to show a child how saving works. The same is true of the penalty for taking savings out early. None of it is a deposit, an investment, a security or a return, and none of it is protected by any deposit insurance, because there is nothing to insure.
A "cash request" is a child asking a parent for something. It sets aside part of the tally and sends the parent a notification. Whether real pocket money then changes hands is entirely between the parent and the child, happens outside Campfire, and is neither processed nor guaranteed nor verified by us. A parent marking a request as handed over is a note in your family's own record and nothing more.
Parents control the whole ledger, and it can be wrong. A parent can add value, take it away, reverse an entry or change what a chore is worth at any time. Campfire does not arbitrate between a parent and a child about any of it. And like everything else here, the record is provided as-is: if the service loses data, is discontinued, or a balance is simply miscalculated, there is nothing owed to anyone. Don't rely on it as a financial record.
Anything you choose to promise your child on the strength of it is your promise, not ours.
The Dashboard is a screen for a shared room — usually a tablet on a kitchen wall — showing a calendar, the weather, a clock and each child's chores. A parent pairs it once with a code from the app.
A screen on a wall is public to the room it is in. Calendar entry titles and chore names are readable by anyone who walks past, including guests. Don't show a calendar that carries anything you wouldn't put on the fridge. Messages never appear on it, and a child's tally is hidden until that child enters their own PIN — which is a courtesy between siblings, not a lock, since a four-digit PIN typed in a kitchen is a PIN everybody eventually knows.
Connecting a Google account is your decision. By connecting one you confirm it is yours or that you are entitled to use it, and you authorise Campfire to read that account's calendar entries and calendar list. Campfire cannot change or delete anything in your Google account and never writes to it. You can disconnect at any time in the app. Your relationship with Google is between you and Google, and Campfire is not responsible for their service or for anything you have agreed with them.
Don't rely on what the Dashboard shows. It is a convenience, not a source of truth. Entries are copied periodically and can be minutes or hours out of date; a failed refresh leaves the last copy on screen; an entry changed in Google may not have arrived yet; and a tablet that is asleep, offline or unpaired shows nothing at all. Check the actual calendar before it matters. The weather comes from a free public forecast service, is informational only, and is not a weather warning service — never use it to make a decision about anyone's safety.
A paired tablet stays signed in until a parent unpairs it in the app. Treat it as a signed-in device: anybody with their hands on it sees what is on it.
Campfire is provided as-is and as-available, at no charge, with no promise that it will work, stay working, or continue to exist. Features may change or be removed. The service may be slow, may be down, may lose messages, and may be discontinued entirely. If it is going to be shut down, reasonable effort will be made to give families advance notice, but that is a courtesy, not a guarantee.
The two optional extras are part of that. Either may be switched off for a family, or removed from Campfire altogether, without notice. Switching one off hides it rather than erasing anything, but nothing about its continued availability is promised.
Campfire is not an emergency service. Messages may be delayed or never arrive, notifications may not fire, and a child may be locked out by their own sleep-window settings. Do not rely on it to reach anyone urgently. In an emergency, call 911 or your local emergency number.
Nor is it a safety or warning system of any kind. The calendar on the Dashboard is a copy that can be stale, and the weather shown on it is general information, not an alert. Get warnings from your local weather service.
What your family writes belongs to your family. You give us only the permission needed to run the service — to store your messages, deliver them to the people you sent them to, and back them up. Nothing you send is used for advertising, sold, or used to train anything.
The Campfire app carries no ads, no analytics trackers, and no third-party tracking of any kind. The public website at campfirekids.chat counts its visitors, which is described in section 10 of the Privacy Policy; that counting is of page visits by strangers and has no connection to any account.
You can stop using Campfire whenever you like. There is currently no self-service button to delete an account or a family — account and data removal is done by hand. Email contact@campfirekids.chat and it will be handled within a reasonable time. Parents can request that their child's information be reviewed or deleted the same way, and that includes their chore and reward record.
A connected Google account can be disconnected yourself, in the app, at any time, and a paired tablet can be unpaired the same way. Neither needs to go through us.
Access to an account may be suspended or removed at any time, with or without notice, particularly where section 6 has been broken or where an account is putting someone at risk.
Campfire is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, security, or uninterrupted operation. You use it at your own risk.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, the operator of Campfire will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, messages, goodwill, or profits, arising out of or relating to your use of the service — including messages that are delayed, lost, undelivered, seen by someone you did not intend, or deleted; calendar entries shown late, wrongly or not at all; and any figure in the Jobs tally being wrong, lost or reset.
Because Campfire is provided free of charge, total liability for any claim relating to the service is limited to one hundred US dollars ($100).
Some jurisdictions don't allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.
These terms may be updated. When they change materially, the version number and effective date at the top of this page will change and account holders will be notified by email or in the app. Continuing to use Campfire after a change means you accept the updated terms; if you don't, stop using the service and ask for your account to be removed.
These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in San Diego County, California, and both sides consent to those courts hearing it.
Questions about these terms, requests to remove an account, or anything else: contact@campfirekids.chat.