For therapists & counselors
A tool you can recommend
without a privacy asterisk.
Clients working on pornography, gambling, or compulsive-use boundaries need structure between sessions. Most accountability software buys that structure with surveillance. Screenshots, browsing history, someone reading over your client's shoulder. Sworn takes the other trade. The filter runs system-wide, and a trusted person only ever learns that a boundary was crossed and what kind — never what, exactly, was seen or sought.
The privacy model How to introduce it
This page is written to be printed or forwarded whole. Write to sworn-support@snowleopard.dev for questions, demo access, or printed copies for a waiting room.
The privacy model
What a partner sees — and what they never do.
Your client chooses one or more accountability partners — a spouse, a sponsor, a friend, possibly you. Each partner confirms by email before anything is sent to them. From then on, exactly three kinds of email exist:
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01
Blocked attempts: a count and a category
“3 blocked attempts in the last 24 hours. The sites were in the Pornography category.” Never a domain, never a URL, never a screenshot, never a history. At most about two of these emails per day, no matter the volume behind them — the pattern surfaces without the partner reading anyone's mail.
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02
Loosened boundaries
Partners are told plainly, in one coalesced email, if your client removes a category they'd committed to or turns the filter off from the app. Tightening is silent; it's the direction of self-discipline.
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03
Silence
If filtering stops abruptly against the client's own normal usage pattern, partners get a soft “Sworn may not be active” nudge; after a full quiet day, a firmer note with a seven-day activity chart. A phone that simply sits idle overnight does not trigger this. Activity is compared against the client's own baseline first.
The design principle. Surface the pattern, protect the particulars. The category is what makes the email worth opening; the domain is what stays the client's own. Normal browsing is never recorded at all; blocked attempts are kept 7 days so the client's own in-app view works, and nothing in the product ever shows a partner a domain. When the work calls for specifics, that view is there on the client's phone, to open in session or with a partner if they choose. Disclosure stays a choice, which is what keeps it therapeutic. The full data inventory is in the Privacy Policy, written to be read.
Clinical fit
Why clinicians can recommend it comfortably.
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Dignity
No surveillance to consent to
Screenshot-based accountability asks a client to accept a person reviewing images of everything on their screen. That's a heavy ask. For some clients with trauma histories or shame-prone presentations, it's counter-therapeutic. Sworn's disclosure is narrow enough that clients who would refuse surveillance can still accept accountability.
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Agency
The client stays the author
The client installs it, picks the categories, chooses the partner, and can leave at any time. Leaving is visible rather than prevented. The mechanism is honesty, not restraint. The moment protection goes off, someone they chose is told.
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Coverage
It runs system-wide
Filtering happens at the DNS layer, so it covers every app and every browser on the phone rather than just Safari. One encrypted-DNS setting, no VPN. Banking apps, maps, and a workplace VPN keep working.
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Between visits
Structure where relapse happens
The hard moments are rarely in your office. A filter that quietly holds at 1 a.m., plus a person who hears about the attempt by morning, gives the work you do in session somewhere to live during the other 167 hours.
In practice
Introducing it takes one conversation.
1. Name the tool and the trade. “There's an app that blocks the category on your whole phone and tells someone you trust if you cross the line. But never what you actually looked at. Would that kind of accountability help?” The client who bristles at surveillance often says yes to this.
2. Let them choose the partner. A spouse, a sponsor, a trusted friend. Some clients ask their therapist to be the partner; that's your call to make within your own boundaries and practice policies — the emails are sparse by design, at most a couple a day.
3. Set-up takes about three minutes, in the room or at home. Install from the App Store or Google Play, turn the filter on (iOS walks through selecting the DNS configuration; Android uses the Private DNS setting), pick categories, invite the partner. The partner clicks a confirmation link, and it's running.
Worth saying to every client: Sworn is a filter plus accountability. It isn't treatment or a cure, and it's no substitute for the work itself. It's the fence, not the field.
The honest limits
What it doesn't do.
Sworn runs on iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac and Linux. Like any DNS filter, it can't see a browser running its own encrypted DNS — Brave and Firefox ship with that on by default (our support page shows the two settings to change; Safari and Chrome are covered as-is). And it can be removed — deliberately. No consumer app can truly lock itself onto a phone the user owns; tools claiming otherwise are overclaiming. Sworn's answer to removal is that the partner hears about the silence.
At a glance
| Price | $7/month after a 7-day free trial. Malware and ad/tracker blocking are free forever. One subscription covers up to 7 of the client's devices. |
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| Filter categories | Pornography, gambling, social media, online shopping, gaming, VPNs/proxies. Each is selected individually, and there's a personal block list. Malware and ads/trackers on the free tier. |
| Mechanism | Encrypted DNS (an iOS DNS configuration / Android Private DNS; a small background service on Windows and Linux; a menu-bar app on Mac; the built-in Secure DNS setting on Chromebook). No VPN, no traffic inspection, no screenshots. |
| Partner sees | Blocked-attempt count + category; boundary loosening; unusual silence. Never a domain, URL, image, or history. |
| Data kept | No browsing history. Ordinary lookups aren't recorded; a domain the client puts on their own allow list is, for 7 days. Details at sworn.snowleopard.dev/privacy |
| Company | Snowleopard Labs LLC · sworn-support@snowleopard.dev — support is read personally, no ticket queue. |
Try it yourself first.
The fastest way to evaluate Sworn is the way a client would meet it. Install it, invite yourself as the partner from a second email address, and watch what actually arrives. Three minutes to set up; the trial is free.
On a computer too? Set up the phone first, then add Windows, Mac, Linux or Chromebook to the same account.
Demo accounts, printed one-pagers, or a walkthrough for your practice: sworn-support@snowleopard.dev