Who is Mack?

Mack is Orbit's safety guard, living on your child's phone, built by us, from scratch. Not a service. Not something running in the cloud. Not a copy of an AI built by someone else. A small AI we built and trained ourselves, that comes with the Orbit app and runs entirely on your child's phone.

We chose to build Mack ourselves for one reason: the alternatives meant either sending your child's messages to someone else's server to be checked (a hard no for us) or using AI trained for adult content, which simply doesn't pick up the way children actually message. So we wrote Mack from scratch on examples of how children really talk, using phrases we wrote ourselves and ones we collected from public sources, so Mack understands the rephrasing, slang, and in-jokes children move through.

Mack has two jobs, both happening on your child's phone. When your child sends a message, Mack reads it in the brief moment after they tap send and before Orbit locks it for delivery. When your child receives a message, Mack reads it in the moment after your child's phone unlocks it and before the words appear on screen. If Mack spots something concerning, such as bullying, a scam, an adult fishing for personal info, or a child in distress, Mack flags it. What Mack passes back to the app is a quick tag (like "bullying" or "scam"), never a copy of the message. That tag drives what happens next on the phone: maybe nothing, maybe holding the message for your approval, maybe stopping it, maybe showing a crisis card.

Why read incoming messages too? Because the other family's Mack is set up by their parents, not yours. They might have Mack switched off entirely, or have the category you care most about turned off, or be on an older version of the app. If something harmful is sent to your child, you want your settings to catch it on your child's phone. Reading incoming messages is what makes the rules you've chosen for your child actually apply to your child.

That said, Mack stays narrow. Mack only ever runs on the phone of a child whose own parent has set Mack up, never on someone else's behalf, and only on chats between children: conversations with you, grandparents, or any other trusted adult in the circle aren't Mack's business. If you move your child to the Open supervision level, Mack stands down entirely. Mack doesn't read your child's old chats. Mack doesn't talk to the cloud. Mack is, deliberately, very small in scope, and very firmly on the phone.

Where Mack lives

Mack lives on your child's phone, inside the Orbit app. Mack is included with the app and updates when we release a new version.

When your child taps send, Mack reads the message before the app locks it up to send. That moment, when the child's phone is holding the unlocked message before it's sent, happens in every messaging app, by design. We use that moment to give Mack a look. Then the message gets locked for the other person to open and sent on its way. Our servers only ever see the locked version.

When a message arrives for your child, your child's phone unlocks it, the same as in any messaging app, otherwise the message couldn't be read. We give Mack a second look there, on your child's phone, after the unlock and before the message appears on screen. The unlocked words don't go anywhere new; they're already on the phone that's about to display them.

If Mack flags something, in either direction, what reaches our servers is a small note (which categories were flagged, like "bullying", which version of Mack did the flagging, and the time) plus the flagged message sealed on your child's phone so that only your phone can open it. That's how the alert in your app can show you what was said, while we, in the middle, carry a locked box we have no key to. Our servers never see the words.

Why on the phone, not in the cloud?

A server that can read messages "for safety" can read them for anything else, too, and tomorrow's owner of that server might not be as careful as today's. A door that only opens for good guys isn't a door; it's a promise. Keeping Mack on the phone is the only way to give children a real safety net without letting anyone, including us, read their messages.

What Mack catches

Mack is trained on examples of how children actually message, using phrases we wrote ourselves and ones from public sources, so Mack can pick up on rephrasing, slang, and meaning that simple word lists miss. Mack covers these categories:

  • Bullying and harassment: name-calling, threats, ganging up on someone.
  • Hate speech: targeting people for who they are.
  • Sexual content and sexual solicitation: including age-inappropriate requests from peers and grooming patterns from anyone.
  • Scams and tricks: "free Robux" links, fake giveaways, anyone trying to get login details out of your child.
  • Sharing personal information: home addresses, phone numbers, anything that identifies your family.
  • Self-harm: anything about your child or someone they're chatting with hurting themselves.
  • Suicidal thoughts: when suicide comes up, whether directly or hinted at.

The last two, self-harm and suicidal thoughts, are the crisis categories. They behave differently from the others, on purpose. See the crisis safety net in the next chapter.