Is this app safe for my kid?

The app store tells you whether there is violence or bad language. Nobody tells you which companies are collecting data on your child while they play.

1. Source 1 · Google Play

   The shop window

   Tells you the app’s name, that it is labelled for ages 0–5, and who made it.

   Never says whose code is packed inside the app.

2. Source 2 · Exodus Privacy

   What’s inside

   Opens the app up and finds ready-made bits of code from other firms riding along inside: Pangle, AppsFlyer, AdMob.

   Knows the code’s brand name, never the company that owns it.

3. Source 3 · News articles

   Who owns whom

   Written down in an article somewhere: “Pangle is ByteDance’s ad business.”

   Only ever in writing. No list anywhere records it.

4. Source 4 · EU regulators

   The fines

   3,102 privacy fines, written against official company names like TikTok Technology Ltd.

   Never names an app, or a piece of code, at all.

The same companies, under four different sets of names. Line them up in an ordinary spreadsheet and you get nothing, or worse: matching on names alone paired the ad firm Inmobi with Spanish estate agents, because inmobiliaria is Spanish for property agency.

Three things to keep in mind. This shows what an app can send, not what it did send. Most fines in the tally were about some other matter entirely, not about children, and not about any app here. And the ownership links were worked out by an AI, each one showing you the sentence it came from. None of this is an accusation.