HeyPolo has launched globally as a family safety app built by the team behind Surfshark — and it’s designed specifically to replace hope with data when teens start driving. For parents who remember waiting by the phone, wondering whether silence meant safety or something worse, HeyPolo delivers real-time visibility: location updates every five seconds, automatic arrival and departure alerts for school, practice, friends’ houses or home, and instant crash detection that notifies caregivers without requiring the driver to press anything. That last feature alone shifts the dynamic from passive waiting to active awareness, a change 9to5Mac calls ‘peace of mind worth its weight in gold’. The app doesn’t just track where a teen is. It scores how they drive on every trip. Acceleration, braking, speed, smartphone use behind the wheel. All feed into a per-journey Driving Score. That number isn’t abstract. It’s meant to spark conversation, not surveillance: if scores dip, parents can point to concrete behaviour, not hunches. Over time, improvement becomes measurable, not assumed. Unlike Apple’s Find My or generic location-sharing tools, HeyPolo’s driving layer is purpose-built. It runs natively on both iPhone and Android, so mixed-device households face no friction. One subscription covers everyone. No per-person fees, no tiered plans. Privacy is enforced by design: all location and sensor data is deleted after seven days. Users decide exactly who sees what, and for how long. There’s no data brokerage. No third-party sharing. No ad targeting. That infrastructure comes from Surfshark’s existing privacy stack, a detail 9to5Mac highlights as ‘critical’ for a location-based service. The app is available now, with no waitlist or regional rollout delays. Setup takes minutes: download, create a family group, invite members. And for early sign-ups via 9to5Mac’s link, the annual plan drops to $3.99/month. A 67% discount off the standard rate. That deal was listed at that price when 9to5Mac published its report on 5 October 2026. It includes the full 30-day money-back guarantee, no lock-in, and no hidden terms. HeyPolo doesn’t integrate with car systems or require OBD dongles. It works entirely from smartphones, using motion sensors, GPS accuracy, and on-device processing to detect events like sudden stops or impacts. This isn’t telematics for insurers. It’s not fleet management. It’s a single-purpose tool, built for one moment in a family’s life: the transition from supervised learner to independent driver. Now backed by data, not just trust.