Children's Privacy Notice

Cadentic, Inc. operates Albie: we are the company that collects and keeps children's information through it. You can ask us how we handle children's information, or about your own child's information, here:

Other companies process information for us so that Albie can work. They are listed under Who do we share it with?

In a family account, we collect a child's information only after a parent or guardian has set up the child's profile and given their consent. Consent works like this:

1. You create your account, and we confirm your email address.
2. You add a profile for your child. We show you a short notice of what Albie collects and why, and you tick a box for each child to give your consent.
3. We email you a confirmation, and again a day later. Each repeats the notice and tells you how to withdraw your consent.
4. You start a plan with a payment card. A child cannot have a lesson before this. Using the card is a further check that an adult is giving consent.

If you do not give your consent, we collect nothing from your child.

If a child tries to sign up on their own

A child under 13 cannot create an account by themselves. A student who signs up is first asked for their birth month and year. We do not keep the answer in our records; a cookie on the device remembers it for one day. A child under 13 is then asked for the email address of a parent or guardian. We use that address once, to send the parent or guardian a link. We do not save it in our own records. Our email provider keeps its record of that one email for 30 days.

At a school

A child can also use Albie through their school. We set up each school ourselves, under a written agreement with the school. Under it the school gives consent in place of parents, and Albie may use students' information only for the school's teaching. We give the school this notice first. The school can see its students' information and can ask us to correct or delete it. If your child uses Albie at school, ask the school about their information, or write to us and we will work with the school.

We do not ask a child for more information than a lesson needs.

A child's profile

• A nickname. At a school: their first name and the first letter of their last name.
• Their grade, their language and their time zone.
• A username, if a parent or guardian makes one for them.
• Their email address, if a parent or guardian invites them by email, or if they are a student of 13 or older who signed up themselves.
• A password, if they have a sign-in of their own. It is kept by our sign-in provider, and we can never read it.

What a child does in lessons

• The messages they type or speak. Speech is turned into text by the browser on the child's own device: the audio never leaves the device, and only the text is sent.
• What they write or draw on the shared whiteboard, saved as images and drawing data.
• Photos and videos they upload, for example of their homework.
• Code they write in the built-in code editor.
• Their answers to quizzes and tests.
• Their homework and its status.
• Their progress: skills, misconceptions Albie has noticed, and summaries of lessons.
• Short notes Albie keeps to remember how the child learns. Albie is told to keep only things about learning, and a filter turns away notes that look like an email address, a phone number, a link or a street address. A parent or guardian can see each note and delete it.
• Marks on a lesson. When a message looks like a worry about the child's wellbeing, or looks like it contains personal details, Albie marks the lesson so that the child's parents, guardians or teachers can see it.

The camera

Albie never turns on the camera or watches through it. On a phone or tablet, the buttons for adding a picture can open the device's own camera app, so that a child can take a photo of their work. That photo is an upload like any other. If we ever add a feature that lets Albie use the camera, it will stay off for each child until a parent or guardian turns it on, and we will ask for your consent first.

Uploaded pictures and videos

Uploaded pictures are re-encoded, which removes location data. Uploaded videos are stored as they were uploaded, so a video may still contain metadata, such as the location where it was recorded.

Cookies

Albie uses a sign-in cookie, which keeps a person signed in. It also uses a few small cookies that make the site work. One remembers which family or school was picked, for up to a year. One remembers the answer on the age screen, for one day. Two are set by our hosting provider's load balancer (AWSALB and AWSALBCORS): they keep a browser with the same server so that a lesson is not interrupted, and they last up to 7 days. Cloudflare, which shields the site from attacks, sets no cookie in ordinary use. If it suspects an attack, it may ask a browser to pass a check, and then sets one (cf_clearance) so that it does not ask again for 30 minutes. There are no advertising cookies, and no analytics or tracking scripts.

Server logs and sign-in records

Our servers keep logs with timing information and IP addresses, for about 30 days. Our sign-in provider records the IP address and browser type of each sign-in. Counters that limit repeated sign-in tries hold an IP address for a short time, usually no more than a day. Cloudflare keeps its own technical records of the requests it carries, with IP addresses, under its privacy policy.

What cookies and IP addresses are used for

We use them only to run Albie: to keep a person signed in, to send a browser to the right server, to remember the age-screen answer, to limit abuse, such as password guessing and automated sign-ups, and to find and fix faults. We do not use them to contact anyone, to build a profile of anyone, or for advertising, and we do not give them to advertisers. Only our own company can read our logs.

Usage records

For each session, we record how much AI was used and what it cost.

Albie's voice

Albie's voice is generated on the device. For that, the browser downloads the voice model files from Hugging Face, which sees the device's IP address, as any website does. Nothing a child says or hears is sent to a speech service.

No. Children cannot make their information public, and they cannot contact other users. Albie has no public profiles, no chats between users and no public posts.

We use the information we collect to:

• tutor the child and remember their progress
• show parents and guardians, and at a school the child's teachers, the child's progress, homework, tests and Albie's notes
• send emails about homework, concerns and progress to the parents, guardians or teachers on file
• send account and billing emails
• bill for plans
• keep the service secure and working
• measure usage and cost

What we do not do

• We do not use personal information for advertising, and Albie shows no ads of its own. Some lessons show a YouTube video, and YouTube may put its own ads on it. We use YouTube's privacy-enhanced player, so those ads are not personalized. A parent or guardian can turn videos off.
• We do not build profiles for marketing.
• We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for advertising.
• We do not train AI models. Our agreement with Anthropic, which provides the AI model behind Albie, says that it does not train its models on lesson content.

We do not sell children's information, and we do not share it for advertising. We share it in these ways.

Companies that handle information for us

These companies handle information only to run Albie for us. The table says what each one does and what it receives.

Other services Albie uses

These services get no account information. They receive search words that Albie writes, or the connection data (such as the IP address) of a device that loads something from them. They handle it under their own privacy policies.

A parent or guardian can turn off web search, videos and web pictures for their child, and turn off Albie's emails.

Within a family or a school

The parents and guardians in a family account can see what their children have done with Albie. At a school, a child's teachers and the school's administrator for Albie can see the child's progress, homework, tests and Albie's notes. Albie emails the parents, guardians or teachers on file about homework, concerns and progress.

When the law requires it, or to keep someone safe

We disclose information when the law requires it, or to protect someone's safety.

If the company is sold or merged

If Cadentic, Inc. is sold or merged, the information moves with the service, under the same promises.

A parent or guardian can:

• see what their child has done with Albie, in the family dashboard: progress, homework, tests, and Albie's notes and messages
• turn off web search, videos and web pictures for their child
• turn off Albie's emails
• delete any one of Albie's notes
• delete a child's profile, with the lessons and records saved in it, from the child's page in the dashboard (Delete this profile)
• delete the whole account, from Account settings (Delete this account)
• ask for a copy of their child's information, by writing to privacy@cadentic.ai

Students who signed up by themselves can do the same for themselves.

When you ask for a copy of your child's information, we send it only to the confirmed email address on the family account.

You can withdraw your consent at any time, by deleting your child's profile or by writing to privacy@cadentic.ai.

Deleting the profile deletes the lessons and everything else saved in it, and stops all further collection of your child's information. Your child can then no longer use Albie with that profile. The table below lists the few things that remain for a time, such as backups and the record of your consent.

This table is our data retention policy. It says what we keep, why, and when we delete it. We do not keep a child's information forever.

• Connections to Albie are encrypted.
• Stored data is encrypted by our hosting providers.
• Access to each family's data is checked on every request, so that one family or school cannot see another's.
• Albie's emails to a parent, guardian or teacher carry a private link to that child's page. Anyone who has the email can open it, so please do not forward those emails.
• Access to our production systems is limited to our own company.
• If there is a breach, we will tell the affected families and regulators, as the law requires.

When we change this notice, we post the new version on this page and change the date at the top. We keep a record of the version you agreed to for each child.

If a change means we collect more from your child, use it in a new way, or share it with someone new, we will email you first and ask for your consent again. Until you give it, the old notice applies to your child.

Write to privacy@cadentic.ai about your child's information, or with any question about this notice. Our postal address and phone number are under Who runs Albie?