Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

KidTales (“KidTales,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) runs the service at kidtales.io (the “Service”). This Privacy Policy explains what we collect when you use the Service, how we use it, who we share it with, and the choices you have.

2. The short version

• KidTales is for parents and guardians. Accounts are created and managed by adults, not children.
• We collect only what's needed to make and deliver personalized stories: the parent's email, each child's first name, age, and a handful of interests and values the parent types in.
• We do not sell your data. We do not use your data, or your child's data, to target ads.
• You can access, export, or delete your data at any time by contacting owaabiz@gmail.com.

3. Children's privacy (COPPA)

KidTales is designed for adults to use on behalf of their children. We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children under 13. Children do not log in, create accounts, interact with the Service in their own name, or see advertisements.

The only information we receive about a child is what the parent or guardian voluntarily enters into a child profile to personalize stories: the child's first name, age, and optional interests (e.g. “dinosaurs, space”) and values (e.g. “kindness”). We do not ask for last names, photos, addresses, school information, contact information, or any other identifying details about a child.

Child profile information is used solely to generate stories requested by the parent. It is never sold, shared with advertisers, or used to build profiles for marketing. Parents can review, edit, or delete their child's profile at any time from the account dashboard, or by emailing owaabiz@gmail.com.

If you believe a child has provided us with personal information without parental consent, please contact us and we will delete it.

4. Information we collect

Information a parent provides

• Account details (email address, display name, optional profile photo) via our authentication provider, Clerk.
• Child profile details (first name, age, interests, values) — entered by the parent.
• Story inputs (character choices, story titles, prompts, themes).
• Custom character images if you choose to upload one (no images of children are requested or stored).
• Billing information handled by our billing provider, Clerk (payment processing is performed by Clerk's payment processor; we do not store card numbers).

Information we receive automatically

We use a product-analytics tool called PostHog to understand how people use KidTales. Through PostHog and related web technologies, we automatically receive:

• Online identifiers— cookies, browser storage, device identifiers, and a PostHog “distinct ID” used to stitch events from the same browser together.
• IP address and approximate geographic location (country / region level) derived from it.
• Interaction history — pages viewed, buttons and links clicked, stories generated, time on page, referrer URL, device type, browser, and operating system.
• Podcast feed access logs (aggregate access to the private RSS feed that delivers your stories).

We do not use this data for advertising and do not share it with advertising networks. See our Cookie Policy for details, and use the “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” link in the site footer, or enable Global Privacy Control (GPC) in your browser, to opt out of product analytics at any time.

5. How we use information

• Generate and narrate personalized stories you request.
• Deliver stories to your private podcast feed and keep the feed working in your podcast app (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Yoto, etc.).
• Manage your account and subscription.
• Moderate content (run stories through safety and profanity filters before audio is generated).
• Fix bugs, prevent abuse, and secure the Service.
• Measure how people use the Service so we can improve it.
• Send you account and service messages (billing receipts, password resets, material changes to these policies).

We do not use your information, or your child's information, to train our own AI models or general-purpose third-party AI models.

6. How we share information

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share it for advertising or for anyone else's marketing. We share limited information with the following service providers, only to the extent needed to run KidTales:

• Clerk— account authentication and subscription billing (email, name, billing status).
• Convex— database and backend infrastructure (stores your account data, child profiles, and generated stories).
• Cloudflare R2— storage for generated audio files and custom character images.
• OpenRouter— LLM provider used to generate the text of your stories. Receives story prompts which include the child's first name, age, interests, and chosen character.
• OpenAI— content moderation on generated story text.
• Google Cloud Text-to-Speech— narrates approved story text into an MP3. Receives the story text only.
• PostHog— product analytics.
• Vercel— web hosting.

Each of these providers is bound by its own terms and privacy practices and is permitted to process data only on our behalf.

We may also disclose information when required by law, to respond to lawful requests from public authorities, to enforce our Terms of Service, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of KidTales, our users, or others. If KidTales is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred, subject to this Privacy Policy.

7. Podcast feeds and audio files

Each family's stories are delivered through a private RSS feed at a unique, hard-to-guess URL. The feed is not indexed or publicly listed, but anyone with the URL can access the episodes listed in it. Please treat the feed URL like a password — only share it with people you want to have access to your family's stories. You can rotate the feed URL at any time by contacting support.

8. Data storage & security

Data is stored on servers operated by our providers (Convex, Clerk, Cloudflare R2) in the United States. We use industry-standard measures to protect your information, including encryption in transit and at rest. No service can guarantee perfect security, but we work to reduce risk and will notify affected users promptly if we become aware of a breach involving their personal information.

9. Data retention

We keep account information, child profiles, and generated stories for as long as your account is active. When you delete your account, we delete or anonymize your personal information and your child's profile information within 30 days, except where we are required to retain limited records for legal, tax, billing, or security purposes (for example, to keep payment records as required by law).

10. Your rights

You can access, correct, export, or delete your personal information at any time. Most things you can do yourself from the account dashboard; for anything else — including deleting a child profile or closing your account — email owaabiz@gmail.com and we'll act on your request within 30 days.

If you live in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or a U.S. state with a comprehensive privacy law (including California), you have additional rights under your local law — including the right to object to certain processing and the right to lodge a complaint with your data protection authority. Contact us at the address above and we will honor these rights.

11. California privacy

If you are a California resident: in the last twelve months we have collected the categories of information described in Section 4 for the purposes described in Section 5. We do not sell personal information and we do not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, as those terms are defined under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA). You may exercise your CCPA rights — including the right to know, delete, correct, and limit — by emailing owaabiz@gmail.com.

12. International users

KidTales is operated from the United States. If you access the Service from outside the U.S., your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States and other countries where our service providers operate, which may have different data protection rules than your own country. By using KidTales, you consent to this transfer.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you by email or through the Service before the changes take effect. The “Last updated” date above always reflects the current version.

14. Contact us

Questions or requests about your privacy? Email owaabiz@gmail.com. For general support, email owaabiz@gmail.com.