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PlayOwl

Privacy

Privacy Policy

How PlayOwl collects, uses and protects information about grown-ups and children, and the choices you have. It includes our Children's Privacy Notice.

Last updated · Effective

The short version

  • For children, we keep it small. A child's profile is a first name or nickname, a grade, an avatar and a reading voice, plus what they do in PlayOwl. We never ask a child for an email address, phone number, photo, birth date, location or voice recording.
  • No ads, ever. We don't show advertising, we don't sell personal information, and we don't share it for targeted advertising.
  • No strangers. There's no chat, no messaging between users and no public profiles.
  • Grown-ups are in charge. A parent or guardian (or, for its students, a school) creates each child's profile and agrees to how we use it. You can see your child's activity, download a copy of your family's data, and delete a child's profile or your account, free on every plan.
  • A few companies help us run PlayOwl. Microsoft Azure hosts it, Stripe handles payments and SendGrid delivers our emails, and Google Analytics shows us overall traffic totals so we can plan server capacity. We give each one only what it needs for its job, and we never use analytics to track what any child or parent does.
  • Read aloud uses your device's voices. Some browsers' online voices send the words being read to Microsoft or Google. We keep a child's name away from them.

1. Who we are

PlayOwl ("PlayOwl", "we" or "us") runs the PlayOwl website, the PlayOwl app for grown-ups on the web, and the PlayOwl apps for Windows, Android, iPhone and iPad. PlayOwl is a learning service for children from Preschool to Grade 12, built for families and schools in the United States.

This policy explains what information we collect, why, who we share it with and the choices you have. Our Children's Privacy Notice explains how we handle information about children under 13, as the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requires. We apply the same care to every child who uses PlayOwl, whatever their age.

PlayOwl Email: info@playowl.com

2. Who this policy covers

  • Grown-ups with an account: parents, guardians and caregivers; teachers and tutors; and school and organization staff. Accounts are for people 18 or older, and we ask you to confirm your age when you sign up.
  • Children who use PlayOwl on a profile a parent or guardian created in a family account, or one a school added for its classes. Children never create their own accounts.
  • Guests and visitors who browse the website, play free levels or print printables without an account.

It applies to the website, the app for grown-ups and the PlayOwl apps. Our Terms of Use explain the rules for using PlayOwl.

3. Information we collect from grown-ups

When you create an account

Your name, your email address and a password. We store the password only as a secure hash, so nobody at PlayOwl can read it. We also keep your time zone and email settings, and when you signed up and last signed in.

When you use PlayOwl

  • Your family: its name, the grown-ups in it and their roles (owner, guardian or caregiver), and the children's profiles you add (see the Children's Privacy Notice).
  • Classes and schools you run: class names, the staff you invite, and invitations you send to families, which hold the family's email address and, if you add it, the child's first name.
  • Devices you set up for your children: a name made from the device or browser type (for example "Chrome on Windows"), when it was set up and by whom, and when it was last used.
  • Your sign-ins: the kind of browser or app (for example "Edge browser"), when each session started and was last used, and whether you use two-step sign-in. We email you when you sign in on a kind of device you haven't used for a while.
  • Your choices: notification and email settings, Olly and PlayTime settings, goals and assignments you set, and records of your privacy requests (data downloads and deletions).

When you buy a plan

Payments are handled by Stripe. You type card details only into Stripe's own payment fields or pages; PlayOwl never sees or stores your card number. Your name, email and billing address for receipts are saved with Stripe. We keep the plan you chose, how many children or students it covers, its status and renewal date, your invoices (amounts, status and links to Stripe's receipts) and Stripe's reference for your account. When you look at your payment method, we show what Stripe tells us (for example "Visa ending 4242").

When you contact us or send feedback

Contact us asks for your name, email, who you are (for example a parent or teacher), a topic and your message. "Report an issue or request a feature" asks what kind of report it is, which part of PlayOwl it's about, the page, your message, what you expected, your name and email, and also sends the time and your browser's description (its "user agent"). We email your message to our team's inbox with your address as the reply-to. It is kept sealed in our system only until that email is sent, and then removed from our database.

When you sign up for a newsletter

Your email address, which newsletter, and when and where you agreed. Newsletters are only sent after you confirm by clicking the link we email you, and every issue has an unsubscribe link. Creating an account never signs you up, we never add anyone from a class roster or a child's profile, and newsletters never include children's names, work or results.

Children's Privacy Notice

4. Children's Privacy Notice (COPPA)

This notice explains how PlayOwl collects, uses and shares information about children under 13, as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act requires. PlayOwl is made for children, so we follow it for every child who uses PlayOwl.

Who collects children's information

PlayOwl operates PlayOwl and is responsible for the children's information collected through it. You can reach us about a child's information at:

PlayOwl Email: info@playowl.com

What we collect about children, and why

  • A profile. A first name or nickname (up to 40 characters), a grade, an avatar picked from PlayOwl's own set, a reading voice preference (a girl's or a boy's voice, a voice choice and not a gender), and look and comfort settings such as reduced motion, quiet mode, larger buttons, high contrast and read-aloud. A parent or guardian enters these, or a school adds the first name, grade, class and the school's own ID for the student when it imports a roster.
  • What they do in PlayOwl. The levels a child plays, their answers and whether they were right, hints used, stars and when they played; their steps, answers and quiz results in Academy courses, including written answers a teacher or parent can review; what they read with Olly, how (listening, reading together or reading alone), the word help they used and their answers; their progress in Adventure Missions, Life Skills Town and Adventure World, with a look for their explorer built from PlayOwl's options (never a photo) and their saves and discoveries; practice checks; goals and favorites; which kind of help Olly gave and when (never a conversation); and "Ask my teacher" requests, which are a fixed request with no typed message.
  • What they make. Drawings, colored pictures, pixel art, comics, storybooks, animations, mini-games and puzzles a child saves, with the titles and captions they give them. Words a child types into their creations or answers are kept with them.
  • How they sign in. Which family device, class badge or Adventure Pass they used and when, and the picture sequence for a device if a grown-up turns that on.
  • Placement checks. A school can send a family a link to a placement check. The parent or guardian enters the child's first name and grade (and, if they like, their own email, used only if the teacher invites the family to the class), agrees, and the child's answers go to that school's teacher.
  • Identifiers on their device. The cookies that keep a child signed in on a device their grown-up set up (see Cookies and device storage), and on the website, Google Analytics' cookie and the device's IP address.

We use this information to run PlayOwl for the child: to offer activities at the right level, save their progress and creations, keep them signed in on their family's devices, apply the PlayTime and game rules their grown-ups set, show progress to their parents and teachers, and keep PlayOwl working and secure. Emails to a child's grown-ups can mention the child by first name or nickname, including our emails about the free part of PlayOwl and Premium. We never use children's information to show advertising, and we never sell it.

We never collect a child's email address, phone number, home address, photo, video, voice recording, exact birth date or precise location. PlayOwl never uses the microphone or camera: our websites tell browsers to block them, and our apps don't ask for them.

Cookies and identifiers on children's devices

PlayOwl uses cookies and device storage on children's devices only to keep them signed in, remember their settings and progress, protect forms from abuse and, on the website, count overall visits with Google Analytics (totals only, never what a child does). These uses support the running of PlayOwl. We don't use them to contact a child or to show advertising, and Google's advertising features are turned off in our Google Analytics.

What children can share

  • There are no public profiles, no chat and no messages between users. Children can't post anything publicly.
  • A child can ask to share a creation with a class they're in. It goes to the class's teacher to approve, and only the class's teachers see it. (A Hide Olly puzzle the teacher approves can also be played by classmates, who see only the puzzle.)
  • A parent or guardian can share a child's creation with the grown-ups in their own family.
  • Our feedback form is for grown-ups. A child signed in on a browser set up for kids is asked to tell a grown-up instead, and nothing is sent; Olly's help in the app's courses asks children to tell a grown-up too.

Who sees or receives children's information

  • The child's grown-ups. The child's parents and guardians see the child's progress, reports and creations. Other grown-ups in the family see what their role allows, such as creations a guardian shares with the family.
  • Teachers and schools. A teacher sees what a child does for the teacher's class (name, avatar, grade, class work and assigned games), never home play or other classes. A school's administrators see the records of the school's own students.
  • Companies that run PlayOwl for us. Microsoft Azure hosts PlayOwl's servers. SendGrid delivers our emails to grown-ups, which can include a child's first name or nickname and a short summary, such as the games they finished the free levels of or their week's highlights, but never scores. Google Analytics receives, from every website page including pages children use, the page's address (without anything after a "?"), the page before it, the browser and device type, the device's IP address and its own cookie identifier. We never send it names, accounts, children's profiles or answers.
  • Read-aloud voices. If your browser reads aloud with an online voice (such as Microsoft Edge's "Online (Natural)" voices or Chrome's "Google" voices), the words being read go to Microsoft or Google. PlayOwl reads anything that contains a child's name with a voice on the device instead, or leaves the name out. Our apps use the device's own voices.
  • When the law requires it. We may disclose information if a law, court order or legal process requires it, or to protect a child's safety.

We don't sell children's information, and we don't share it for advertising.

No more than an activity needs

A child never has to give more information than an activity needs to take part. Every game, course, book and studio works with the profile described above.

A parent or guardian signs in to their own PlayOwl account, which they created with their email address and a password. When they add a child, they confirm that they are the child's parent or legal guardian and agree to the uses shown on that screen and described in this notice. We record who agreed, when, and which version of the notice they agreed to. Only after that does the child's profile exist.

Guests. Without a profile, children can play free levels and use the creative studios as guests. A guest's stars, saves and creations stay in that browser's storage, and we don't store anything about a guest on our servers except anonymous daily counts of how often activities are opened or finished, with no identifier (Google Analytics' visit statistics also run on these pages). A guest's stars or Adventure World save can later be moved into a child's profile when the child or their grown-up signs in and chooses to.

Classes with an independent teacher. Teachers can't create children's profiles. A teacher invites a family by email, and the child joins the class only after a parent or guardian signs in, chooses the child and agrees to share the child's class work with that teacher.

Schools. A school that PlayOwl has verified can import a roster of its students. The school official doing it confirms they're authorized by the school to provide the students' details, and we record that authorization. For these students, the school gives authorization for PlayOwl's use for school purposes in place of each parent. Parents of these students can ask their school to review or delete their child's school records.

Placement checks. Before a placement check a school sent starts, the parent or guardian confirms they're the child's parent or guardian and agrees that the child's first name, grade and answers go to that school.

A parent's rights, and how to use them

  • Review. See your child's progress, reports and creations in the PlayOwl app, and download a copy of everything we keep about your family on Your data (also in our apps under Account & privacy).
  • Correct. Change your child's name, grade, avatar, reading voice and settings in the child's settings.
  • Delete. Delete your child's profile in the child's settings. We immediately remove the child's name, avatar and reading voice, end their sign-ins on every device, and delete their goals, favorites, bookmarks, PlayTime rules and their Town and World explorer, saves and discoveries. Their game, course and reading progress and their saved creations are kept, archived without their name, under a profile renamed "Deleted child" that nobody can sign in to and that no longer appears in your family. If you'd like those archived records erased too, email info@playowl.com. If another grown-up is also linked to the child, or the child is in a class, remove that link or withdraw from the class first; a school's records stay with the school.
  • Refuse further collection. Deleting the child's profile stops all further collection. You can also remove your child from a class at any time, and remove any device you set up for them (one at a time or all at once) on your devices page.
  • Ask us. Email info@playowl.com with any request or question. We may ask you to send it from the email address on your PlayOwl account so we know it's you.

How long we keep children's information

We keep a child's profile and activity while the profile exists, so their progress and creations are there when they come back. When a profile is deleted, it is archived as described above. A creation a child deletes is hidden at once and can be restored for 30 days; like other archived records, it is kept in our database until we erase it, and you can ask us to. See How long we keep information for everything else.

5. Guests and website visitors

You can browse the website, play free levels, use the creative studios and print every printable without an account. Guest progress and creations are kept only in your browser's storage, until you clear it; a guest's stars and Adventure World save can be moved into a child's profile. When an activity is opened or finished, we add one to an anonymous daily count for that activity, with no name or identifier.

Website visit statistics. We use Google Analytics for one purpose only: to see overall traffic patterns, such as how many visits the website gets, at what times of day, and which pages and activities are busiest, so we can add server capacity when it's needed. We don't use it to track what any child or grown-up does. It isn't linked to accounts or children's profiles, and PlayOwl doesn't keep any of this data ourselves: Google Analytics shows us totals.

To count visits, Google Analytics runs on every page of this website, including pages children use. It receives the page's address (without anything after a "?", and with one-time codes removed), the page you came from, your browser and device type, your device's IP address, and an identifier stored in Google's cookie. We never send it names, email addresses, accounts, children's profiles or answers, and Google's advertising features (Google signals and ad personalization) are turned off. The PlayOwl app for grown-ups and our apps for Windows, Android, iPhone and iPad don't use Google Analytics.

Our servers use your IP address to send you pages and to limit repeated attempts, such as too many sign-in tries. We don't save IP addresses in PlayOwl's database.

6. Cookies and storage on your device

PlayOwl uses a few cookies to run. We don't use advertising cookies, and Google Analytics' cookies are the only ones another company sets.

PlayOwl.Adult
Keeps a grown-up signed in. It lasts up to 14 days and renews while you use PlayOwl. The website and the app share it.
PlayOwl.Learner
Keeps a child signed in to the app on a device a grown-up set up, or with a class badge, for up to 12 hours.
PlayOwl.SiteLearner
Keeps a child signed in to the website on a browser a grown-up set up for kids, for up to 30 days.
PlayOwl.Device and PlayOwl.DeviceRenewed
Mark a browser a grown-up set up for their kids, so the "Who's playing?" picker can show. The device cookie holds a random code that we store only as a hash, lasts up to 400 days and is renewed while the browser is used; the second cookie lasts a day and only records that renewal. "Sign out completely" in the picker removes the device from your family and deletes the device cookie.
PlayOwl.Antiforgery
Protects forms against forged requests. It ends when you close the browser.
Short-lived sign-in and message cookies
Hold your place between the password and code steps of two-step sign-in, carry one-time messages between pages (such as "Password changed"), and keep a placement check a school sent you open while you take it.
_ga and _ga_…
Set by Google Analytics on the website to tell visits apart. Google sets them to last up to two years.

Device storage. The website and app also keep some things in your browser's storage on your device: guest stars, progress and creations; saves for 3D games, Life Skills Town and Adventure World; your place in a book; best scores; Olly's comfort settings; game settings such as sound, graphics quality and controls; drawing settings; whether you closed the "Who's playing?" picker in this tab; and, for a signed-in child, results waiting to reach their account when the connection comes back. A guest's stars and Adventure World save leave the device only if they're moved into a child's profile. Our apps keep sign-in tokens in the device's secure storage and keep practice results on the device until they sync.

You can clear cookies and storage in your browser's settings. Clearing them signs you out and removes guest progress that hasn't been saved to an account.

7. How we use information

  • To run PlayOwl: accounts, families, classes, games, courses, reading, studios, reports, assignments, PlayTime and plans.
  • To keep accounts safe: sign-in and two-step codes, security emails (such as a new sign-in or a changed password), limits on repeated attempts, and an audit record of important changes.
  • To send the emails PlayOwl needs to send: account, security and billing emails, invitations, and notices about assignments and your child's week. You choose which of the others you get, and when.
  • To tell families on the free plan about Premium: at most one plan email a week, and a note when a child finishes the free part of a game or course. You can turn these off in your email settings or with the unsubscribe link.
  • To send newsletters, only if you sign up and confirm.
  • To answer your messages and fix what you report.
  • To understand and improve PlayOwl, using anonymous activity counts, website visit statistics and your feedback.
  • To meet legal obligations, and to protect PlayOwl, our users and children.

We don't use personal information for advertising, and we don't sell it.

8. Who we share information with

These companies help us run PlayOwl. Each one receives only what it needs for its job:

Microsoft Azure
Hosts the PlayOwl website, the app for grown-ups and the service behind our apps.
Stripe
Processes payments for paid plans. It receives the billing grown-up's name, email, billing address and payment details, and the plan and number of children or students. Stripe never receives children's information. Information you give Stripe directly is also covered by Stripe's own privacy policy.
SendGrid (Twilio)
Delivers our emails. It receives each recipient's email address and the email itself, which can include a child's first name or nickname. We've turned off SendGrid's open and click tracking.
Google Analytics
Shows us overall traffic totals so we can plan server capacity; never used to track what any child or parent does. See Guests and website visitors.
Our email inbox provider
Holds the emails that Contact us and feedback messages arrive in, and our replies.

We also share information with the people you choose: the grown-ups in your family, and the teachers and schools of the classes your child joins, as described in the Children's Privacy Notice. We may disclose information if a law, court order or legal process requires it, or to protect someone's safety.

We don't sell personal information, and we don't share it for cross-context behavioral (targeted) advertising.

9. Your choices

  • Download your data. On Your data (or Account & privacy in our apps), download one file with your account, sign-ins, family and devices, your children's profiles, consent records, progress and creations, your notifications, newsletter subscriptions and billing records. School records are described in the file; ask the school for a copy.
  • Delete your account. On Your data, ask to delete your account. It's deleted 14 days later, and you can cancel until then. We then remove your email, name and password and lock the account, end every sign-in, remove your family roles and close your newsletter subscriptions. Children with no other grown-up on PlayOwl are archived as described in the Children's Privacy Notice, and devices set up for your family are signed out. Cancel a paid plan first, and if you're a school's only administrator, add another one first.
  • Correct your information. Change your children's details in their settings. To change your own name or email address, email info@playowl.com.
  • Choose your emails. In your notification settings, choose which emails and app notifications you get and set quiet hours. Every optional email has a one-click unsubscribe link. Account, security and billing emails can't be turned off while you have an account.
  • Sign-ins and devices. See and end your sign-ins on Sign-in & devices, turn on two-step sign-in, and remove devices you set up for your children on your devices page.

Every privacy control is free on every plan.

10. How long we keep information

Your account
Until you delete it. Deletion happens 14 days after you ask, as described in Your choices.
Children's profiles, progress and creations
While the profile exists. A profile ends when a parent deletes it, or when its last grown-up deletes their account; it is then archived without the child's name, as described in the Children's Privacy Notice. If another grown-up is still linked to the child, the profile stays with them.
School records
Rosters, class enrollments, class work and checks are controlled by the school. A family can't delete them; if a parent deletes their account, the child's school record stays with the school.
Sign-in sessions
A session ends when it expires or someone signs out, and ended sessions are deleted 90 days later.
Contact us and feedback messages
Kept sealed in our system only until the email reaches our team, then removed; the record that a message was sent is deleted after 30 days. The email stays in our team's inbox so we can follow up.
Notifications in the app
Deleted 365 days after you read them, or after they're cancelled.
Audit records
A record of important changes (who did what and when, without the details), deleted after 730 days.
Billing records
Your plan history and invoices stay after your account is deleted. Stripe keeps its own payment records under its own policy.
Newsletters
Your subscription lasts until you unsubscribe, and we keep a record that you did. Deleting your account closes your subscriptions and removes your address from them.
Data downloads
Made when you ask and never stored; we only record that a download happened.
Website visit statistics
Kept by Google for the period set in our Google Analytics account.

11. How we protect information

  • PlayOwl's pages are served over encrypted HTTPS connections.
  • Passwords are stored only as secure hashes, and so are the codes behind sign-ins, family devices, class badges, Adventure Passes and invitations.
  • Grown-ups can turn on two-step sign-in with an authenticator app, and repeated wrong passwords or codes lock sign-in for a while.
  • Every request for a child's information is checked against the grown-up's relationship to that child, and a child's sign-in only opens that child's own area, never grown-up pages.
  • Messages you send us are sealed until they're delivered, and our logs never include message text, passwords or children's details.

No system is perfectly secure. Please use a strong password that you don't use anywhere else, and keep it to yourself.

12. Privacy rights in US states, including California

Depending on where you live, state laws (for example the California Consumer Privacy Act) may give you the right to know what personal information we have about you and how we use it; to get a copy; to correct it; to have it deleted; to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information or its use for targeted advertising; and not to be treated differently for using these rights.

Use the tools in Your choices, or email info@playowl.com. We may ask you to confirm the request from the email address on your account. Someone you authorize in writing can also ask for you.

The kinds of personal information PlayOwl collects are: identifiers (such as names, email addresses, the IP address our servers receive and cookie identifiers); account sign-in details; billing records (handled with Stripe); information about how you and your children use PlayOwl; children's learning records and creations; and what you write to us. We collect it from you, from your children's use of PlayOwl, from schools that add their students, and from your device. We use and share it only as this policy describes.

Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

We don't sell personal information, we don't share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we don't use it for targeted advertising. There is nothing to opt out of, so signals such as Global Privacy Control don't change how PlayOwl works.

Do Not Track

PlayOwl doesn't track visitors across other companies' websites, so a browser's Do Not Track setting doesn't change how PlayOwl works.

13. Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we update the "Last updated" date at the top. If a change is significant, we'll tell grown-ups who have an account, by email or in PlayOwl, before it takes effect. If we ever want to collect or use children's information in a way this notice doesn't describe, we'll ask parents for their consent first.

14. Contact us

Questions about this policy, your information or your child's information? Write to us, or use our Contact us page.

PlayOwl Email: info@playowl.com