Privacy Policy

HootQuest Academy (“we”) makes reasoning puzzles for kids ages 4 to 12. This policy explains what we collect, why, and the choices you have. It is written to follow the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The short version is on How we protect kids.

Our core promise: we collect no identifying information about children, and we will not share child data with any third parties, ever.

1. Who can have an account

Only adults (18 or older) can create an account. A parent or guardian creates a profile for each child under their own account. Children do not create accounts, do not sign in, and do not give us an email address or any other contact information.

2. What we collect about grown-ups

• Your sign-in details (email address and password or social sign-in), held by our sign-in provider, Clerk. Our own database stores only an account id.
• When you agreed to these terms, and which version.

3. What we collect about children

For each child profile, a parent gives us:

• A nickname. We ask you to use a made-up nickname, not your child's real name, and we block emails, links and long numbers in it.
• An age in whole years (not a birth date), used to choose puzzles for that age.
• An avatar emoji, a color, and play settings.

While a child plays, we record how they play so the puzzles can adapt and so you can see their progress:

• Which puzzle was shown, the answers picked, how sure they said they were, whether they looked at every answer, hints used and time taken.
• Stars, levels and badges.

We do not collect a child's name, birthday, photo, voice, location, school, device identifiers, or any persistent identifier used to track them across sites or over time. Children cannot type free text or talk to anyone in the app. There is no chat, no sharing, and no public profile.

4. How we use it

• To run the puzzles: pick the next puzzle, adjust difficulty, award stars and badges.
• To show you your child's progress and habits.
• To keep the service working and secure.

We never use child data for advertising, profiling for marketing, or training anyone's AI models, and we never sell it.

5. Usage counts

To see how the app is used (for example, how many quests are finished, which screens are slow), our own server records simple events: an event name, which part of the site it came from, the page with any ids removed, and sometimes a number like a load time. These events carry no account id, child profile id, cookie, device id or IP address, so they cannot be tied to a person. Raw events are deleted after 90 days; only daily totals are kept. We use no third-party analytics or advertising services.

6. Who we share with

We do not share child data with third parties. We use two service providers to run the app, under contracts that limit them to doing that:

• Clerk (grown-up sign-in). Clerk receives your sign-in details, never anything about your children.
• Amazon Web Services (hosting and database). Our data is stored on servers we control, hosted by AWS.

We will disclose information only if the law requires it, and we will tell you if we're allowed to.

7. Cookies

We use only the cookies needed to keep a grown-up signed in. There are no advertising or tracking cookies.

8. Your choices and rights

• See and download everything we store about your family from Your family's data.
• Change a child's nickname, age or settings at any time from the grown-ups area.
• Delete a child profile, or your whole account. Deletion is permanent and immediate: the data is removed from our database, not hidden. Backups roll over and are gone within 35 days.
• Stop collection for a child by deleting their profile. Nothing more is collected once it's gone.

9. How long we keep data

We keep your family's data while your account exists, so progress carries over. If you delete it, it's gone right away.

10. Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Only the people who run HootQuest Academy can reach the database, and every query for a child is limited to that child's own parent.

11. Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we'll ask you to review and agree again before you or your kids can keep playing.

12. Contact

Questions, requests, or concerns: privacy@hootquest.academy.