Privacy Policy
Last updated: October 16, 2026
Little Wordsmiths is a children's learning product. Protecting children's privacy is central to how we build it. This policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, who can see it, and the choices and rights you have.
Contents
- Who we are
- A note for parents and guardians
- Information we collect
- Who can see it
- How we use information
- Joining a class, and schools
- Reminders and notifications
- Our legal bases (GDPR)
- Children's privacy (COPPA, GDPR-K, PIPEDA, RA 10173)
- How we share information
- Your privacy rights
- Data retention and deletion
- Security
- International data transfers
- Changes to this policy
- How to contact us
1. Who we are
Little Wordsmiths (the "Service", "we", "us") is operated by Little Wordsmiths, Inc., located at 7500 Highway 27, Unit 22 Upper, Vaughan, Ontario L4H 0J2, Canada. We are the data controller responsible for your information. This policy covers our website, our mobile apps (iOS and Android), the school and parent portals, and related services.
2. A note for parents and guardians
Little Wordsmiths is designed for children ages 2 to 8 and is intended to be used with the involvement of a parent or guardian. Accounts, settings and class sharing sit behind a grown-ups door that a young child cannot open on their own. We do not show behavioural advertising to children, and we do not sell children's personal information. For a plain-language summary, see our For Parents page.
3. Information we collect
3.1 Information you provide
- Contact information if you email us or request a demo (your name and email address, and anything you choose to include).
- Account information, if a parent or guardian creates an account: the parent's name and email address and a password (stored only in hashed form).
- A profile for each child you add: a first name (required), and, if you choose to give them, a last name and a birth date or birth year. We also keep the picture avatar the child picks, the language they learn in and their learning preferences. We use these to show age-appropriate content and to save the child's progress.
- Your consent choices: a record of what you agreed to, for which purpose, which version of the notice you saw, and when.
- Subscription information, if you buy a subscription: the purchase is processed by Apple or Google under their own terms, and subscription status is managed for us by Adapty. We receive confirmation of your subscription status, not your payment-card details.
3.2 What the app sends while a child is signed in to an account
When a child is signed in under a parent or guardian account, the app sends the learning activity below to our servers so that progress can be saved and shown to the grown-ups. It is stored only against that child's profile, and only while we have a consent on file for that child.
| What | Exactly what is stored | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Learning activity | What the child opened, heard, traced, read, watched or saved, and each answer they gave. For an answer: the kind of item (a word, letter, number, fact, shape, sentence, sum, stop or story), the app's own name for it (for example the letter a, the sum 3+4 or a shape's name), and whether the answer was right or wrong. Also how long it took, the language the app was in, and the device time zone. | To show progress to grown-ups, and to decide what comes back as a check-in. |
| Check-ins and practice | For each "Do you remember?" check-in, practice game or first placement: which kind it was, the step of the check-in ladder in days, the score, and for each word whether it was right or wrong. | A check-in is the evidence that a word stayed learned. |
| Reading attempts | Which reading step, the word, the language, how many words were read out of how many, whether it was finished, whether the child said they read it on their own or with help, whether guided reading was on, and how long it took. | To show reading progress. |
| The day's trail | How many stops were finished out of how many, and the minutes spent in the app that day, with the child's own date and time zone. Finishing a stop counts as a day of learning. | To build the map of the year and the week in plain words. |
| A reminder snapshot | One row per child, replaced each time: the date of today's trail, stops done and total, the last day the child was active, the word that is due back and its date, the number of words learned, and the family's bedtime hour. It is sent only while the "coach" reminder is switched on. | To time at most one reminder a day. It is not shown in any dashboard. |
3.3 Information collected automatically
- Device and app data: device type, operating-system version, app version, build and release channel, language preference, and crash and error diagnostics. For each signed-in account we keep when each app version was first and last seen, and delete those records after 180 days.
- A grown-up's device for reminders: the push address of the grown-up's own device (never a child's), its platform, installation, app and system version, language, time zone, and which reminders are switched on. See section 7.
- QR codes: when someone scans a Little Wordsmiths QR code, for example in a printed book, we log the scan with an approximate country and a hashed form of the IP address, and clear the hash after 90 days.
- Our marketing website sets no advertising cookies and uses no third-party analytics cookies. See our Cookie Policy.
3.4 Guest mode
The core learning content works in guest mode without an account. In guest mode a child's learning activity stays on the device. Two things still reach our servers: anonymous counters that say a screen was opened (they carry no account, child or device identifier), and the ordinary technical information every request to an online service carries, such as an IP address and the app version.
3.5 Children a school adds
A school can add a child to one of its classes itself. A school that does so provides the child's details to us and decides who at the school sees them; see section 6.
4. Who can see it
| Who | What they can see | When |
|---|---|---|
| Parents and guardians | Everything in section 3.2 about their own child, in the app and in the parent portal: an "On the trail" view of days, check-ins, answers by kind, the items most often missed, and recent activity. | For each grown-up linked to the child who is allowed to view progress. |
| A teacher | For each child in their class: stops done out of stops on the trail over the last 7 days, the days with a trail, check-ins right out of asked, and answers right out of answered over the last 30 days. For the whole class: what the class is still practising, meaning the items children missed most in the last 30 days, with how many children missed each. The names of the grown-ups linked to the child. | Only for children whose family has agreed to share with the class, and for children the school enrolled itself. |
| School administrators and school boards | The same views across the classes of their school, or of every school in their board, and the contact email of a child's linked grown-ups. | By their role, under the same conditions as teachers. |
| Little Wordsmiths staff | The learner record, including an "On the trail" section, to give support and keep the Service running. | Staff only, as needed for that work. |
We do not show a child's learning activity to other families, and there is no chat or public profile in the app.
5. How we use information
- To provide and operate the learning content and features, including choosing which words come back as check-ins.
- To show progress to grown-ups and, with agreement, to a class's teacher and school.
- To send the reminders a grown-up has switched on.
- To respond to your messages and support requests.
- To improve Little Wordsmiths, using only research records that cannot identify a child (see section 12).
- To maintain, secure, and improve the Service (for example, diagnosing crashes).
- To comply with legal obligations.
We do not use children's information for behavioural advertising, profiling, or to build marketing profiles.
6. Joining a class, and schools
A family joins with the teacher's code
A grown-up can join their child to a class by entering the 8-character code the teacher shares, in Grown-ups, under School. Joining needs a signed-in account with a confirmed email address, and the grown-up must be allowed to manage that child's settings. Before the child joins, the app shows this agreement, and the grown-up has to tick the box:
"I agree to share my child's learning activity in Little Wordsmiths with this class's teacher and school. I can stop sharing at any time from Grown-ups."
We record that agreement as a consent of its own (purpose: class sharing), with the class, the grown-up who agreed, the version of the notice (class-share-1) and the date. It never expires on a clock. It ends when the family leaves the class from Grown-ups, when a teacher removes the child, when the child is moved to another class, or when the consent is withdrawn in any other way. Ending the enrolment withdraws the agreement, and withdrawing the agreement ends the enrolment, so a teacher cannot go on seeing a child whose family has stopped sharing. A class-sharing agreement is separate from, and can never stand in for, the consent to record a child's learning.
A school adds a child itself
A school or teacher can also enrol a child in one of its classes without the family joining by code. In that case the child's trail is shown to that school's staff as described in section 4, and the school is responsible for having the right to share the child's information with us. If you did not expect your child to appear in a school's class, contact us.
7. Reminders and notifications
Reminders go to a grown-up's own phone, never to a child's. The reminders in the app (the word of the day, finishing a word, new words and the daily "coach" reminder) start switched on, but nothing is sent to a phone until the phone's own system has allowed notifications, and each one can be switched off any time on the Reminders page in Grown-ups. The coach reminder is sent at most once a day and is timed from the reminder snapshot in section 3.2. Reminders reach iPhones and iPads through Apple's push service, and Android phones through Google's.
8. Our legal bases (GDPR)
For users in the UK and the European Economic Area, we process personal data on these bases: consent (including verifiable parental consent for children), contract (to provide a service you requested), legitimate interests (to secure and improve the Service, balanced against your rights), and legal obligation.
9. Children's privacy (COPPA, GDPR-K, PIPEDA, RA 10173)
We are a Canadian company and follow the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). Because Little Wordsmiths is available globally, we also comply with the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the children's provisions of the GDPR, and the UK Age Appropriate Design Code. For children in the Philippines we follow the same consent-first approach under the Data Privacy Act of 2012 (RA 10173): the server stores no learning data for a child unless a consent is on file.
- Data minimisation: we collect the least information necessary. A child profile needs only a first name.
- Verifiable parental consent: where we would collect personal information from a child under 13 (or the applicable age in your country), we first obtain verifiable parental consent through a parental gate (an adults-only step a young child cannot complete on their own) together with verification of the parent's account email.
- No behavioural advertising to children and no sale of children's personal information.
- Parental controls: parents can review, correct, or delete their child's information and withdraw consent at any time, in the app, in the parent portal, or by contacting us at hello@littlewordsmiths.com.
10. How we share information
We do not sell personal information. We share it only with:
- Service providers that operate the Service on our behalf under contract: our hosting and cloud-storage provider (located in Germany), crash and error reporting, email delivery, and Adapty for subscription management.
- Apple and Google for distribution, payments, and delivering reminders, under their own privacy policies.
- A class's teacher and school, only as described in section 6.
- Legal and safety reasons, if required by law or to protect rights and safety.
- A successor entity in the event of a merger or acquisition, subject to this policy.
11. Your privacy rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, port, or restrict processing of your personal information, to object to processing, and to withdraw consent. Canadian residents may, under PIPEDA, access and correct their personal information and complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. California residents (CCPA/CPRA) have the right to know, delete, correct, and to opt out of sale or sharing; we do not sell or share personal information. To exercise any right, contact us at hello@littlewordsmiths.com. You may also lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.
A grown-up can also use the app and the parent portal. In the parent portal (littlewordsmiths.com/parent), under Account and privacy, you can download your data and delete your account. Today that download covers your profile details, consents, day-level progress, devices and the app versions seen. It does not yet include every record listed in section 3. If you want everything we hold about you or your child, email us and we will provide it.
12. Data retention and deletion
We keep personal information only as long as needed for the purposes described here or as required by law, then delete or anonymise it.
- Deleting an account: the account closes as soon as you ask: every device is signed out, the push addresses of your devices are deleted and nobody can use the account. It is deleted for good 14 days later. If you change your mind, sign in during those 14 days (in the app or on the delete your account page) and choose Keep my account, and nothing is lost. After the 14 days the adult's name, email address, phone number, picture, payment reference and how they found us are erased, the password is destroyed, and the app-version records are deleted. For each child for whom that adult was the only guardian, the child's learning activity is copied into research records that cannot identify the child (below), and then the child's profile is erased, with its guardian links, classes, consents, devices and drawings. A child who has another guardian stays with them.
- Deleting one child: that child is kept for a 30 day safety window, so a mistake can be put right, and is then made anonymous in the same way.
- Withdrawing consent so that a child is left with no consent on file: the child's learning activity is copied into the same research records and then erased from the child's profile. The empty profile is kept, so a grown-up can give consent again.
- What the research records keep: only the child's birth year, the app language, the country (worked out from the device's time-zone setting; the time zone itself is not kept) and the grade level, together with the learning activity itself: answers right or wrong, words, trail days and quiz scores. They keep no name, username, date of birth, school or class, device or IP address, and no calendar dates: days are counted from the child's first day, and each record notes only the month it was made. They sit under a random code that nothing links back to the child. If a combination of these facts is shared by fewer than 5 children, it is made coarser automatically (for example the country becomes "other"). We use these records only to improve Little Wordsmiths, and we do not sell or share them.
- Leaving a class stops sharing at once but does not delete the child's learning activity, which stays with the family.
- Guest mode: learning activity stays on the device and is removed when you remove the app. See section 3.4 for what still reaches us.
You can start a deletion yourself on our delete your account page.
13. Security
We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal information, including encryption in transit (HTTPS/TLS), password hashing, access controls, and rate limiting. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, but we work to protect your information and to notify you and regulators of breaches where required.
14. International data transfers
Our servers are located in Germany, within the European Economic Area. Where we transfer personal data out of the UK or EEA, we use appropriate safeguards such as Standard Contractual Clauses.
15. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy. We will post the new version here with a new "Last updated" date and, for material changes affecting children's data, seek renewed parental consent where required. If the wording of the class-sharing agreement changes, its version number changes for the families who join afterwards.
16. How to contact us
Questions or requests about privacy: hello@littlewordsmiths.com. Postal: Little Wordsmiths, Inc., 7500 Highway 27, Unit 22 Upper, Vaughan, Ontario L4H 0J2, Canada.