Privacy Policy

Who this covers

Ako is managed by an adult (a parent, guardian, or teacher). Children don't create their own accounts and don't give us contact details. See our Children's Privacy notice for the specifics that apply to kids.

What we collect

• Account: an anonymous device identifier when you start, and — only if you choose to add it — a parent/guardian email for progress updates and receipts.
• Child profile: a first name and an age (or year level). No surname, birth date, address, phone number, or photo.
• Learning activity: which lessons were played, answers (correct/incorrect), streaks, time spent, and skill progress — used to adapt difficulty and write your progress notes.
• Tutor conversations: Ako is a voice tutor. When a child speaks, the audio is used in real time to understand and respond, and the text of the conversation is stored to personalise learning. We do not keep raw audio recordings.
• Picture books: when a child makes a book, their story idea and first name are used to write it and draw its pictures, and the finished book is stored privately in the family's account until it is deleted.
• Parental consent: Ako's voice and picture books only switch on after a parent or guardian agrees, during setup or the first time they're used. That consent covers our AI partners processing your child's voice, story ideas and first name to run these features. We record when it was given, and you can withdraw it any time under For grown-ups; every lesson still works by tapping.
• Payment: if you subscribe, Stripe processes your card. We never see or store full card numbers.
• Product analytics: anonymised usage events (e.g. “lesson started”) on our website to understand and improve it. Product analytics do not run inside the Ako app from the App Store.
• Marketing site only: our public website uses Vercel Web Analytics and advertising measurement (e.g. a Meta pixel) to see which pages help parents. These do not run inside the children's app.

How we use it

• Run and personalise the lessons and the AI tutor.
• Send progress notes and account emails to the parent (at the cadence you choose — weekly, monthly, or off).
• Process subscriptions and prevent fraud.
• Fix bugs, improve lessons, and build new ones.

Who we share it with

We do not sell personal information, and we don't share it for others' advertising. We use a small set of trusted service providers who process data only to run Ako on our behalf:

• Supabase and Vercel — secure hosting, database, site delivery, and privacy-respecting website analytics.
• AI partners: the large language, speech and image models behind Ako's voice, picture books, tutor and lessons. They process content only to produce a response, and we don't permit them to use your child's information for their own purposes. We turn on zero-data-retention settings wherever our partners support them; some features, such as live voice and illustrations, may involve brief retention by the partner for safety and abuse monitoring.
• Stripe — payments.
• Resend — sending account and progress emails.
• PostHog — privacy-respecting product analytics.
• We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect the safety and rights of children and others.

Your choices and rights

You can review, correct, export, or delete your and your child's data at any time — in-app or through our contact form. Deleting your account removes the profiles and learning history.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights under the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and state laws such as the California CCPA/CPRA, the UK/EU GDPR, and the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020. We honour these regardless of location.

Data retention

We keep learning data while your account is active so progress carries over, and delete it (or fully anonymise it) after account closure, except where we must keep limited records for legal or accounting reasons.

Security & international transfer

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, with access limited to what's needed to operate Ako. Our providers are primarily in the United States, so your information may be processed there under appropriate safeguards.

Changes

If we make a material change, we'll update this page and, where appropriate, notify the account email. Continued use after changes means you accept the updated policy.