Privacy Policy

Last updated 18 October 2026

1. Who we are

Kids News App ("we", "us") is a subscription news app for children aged about 8 to 12. Real stories from established news publishers are rewritten in age-appropriate language. You can reach us at kidsnewsapp@outlook.com.

2. The account belongs to an adult

Accounts are created by a parent, guardian or teacher using Google Sign-In, and paid for by that adult. Children use the app through the adult's account. Children cannot create their own account, enter payment details, or contact us through the app. By creating an account and letting a child use it, the adult agrees to the practices in this policy on the child's behalf.

3. Children's privacy

Because our readers are children, we follow the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and design the app to collect as little as possible.

What we collect while a child uses the app:

• Which stories were opened, and when.
• How many minutes a day the app was in use (counted only while it is on screen and being used), so the parent's daily time limit works and parents can see reading time.
• Stories bookmarked.
• Stories reported as unsuitable, with a reason picked from a fixed list (children cannot type free text).
• The avatar and topic interests chosen during setup.
• Technical information every app needs to work, such as a sign-in cookie and a device/browser identifier used to measure how the app is used (see section 6).

What we do not do:

• We do not ask a child for their name, age, email address, phone number, school, photo, voice or location.
• There is no chat, comments, posting, profile page, friend list, or any way for a child to share personal information with other people. The "Share" button only passes a link to a public news story to the device's own share menu.
• We show no advertising in the app and do not use children's information for advertising, profiling or building ad audiences.
• We do not sell or rent children's information, and we do not disclose it to third parties except the service providers in section 7, who process it only to run the app for us.
• Children's activity is never sent to our AI provider. The AI only ever sees published news stories.

How children's information is used: to show the feed and remember what has been read and saved, to apply the parental controls (including the daily time limit), to give the parent a weekly summary of what their child read and for how long, with some conversation starters, and to keep the app working and safe. We also look at usage totals (days and minutes, never which stories) to understand how the app is used and, for families in our tester program, to follow up for feedback.

Parents' rights. As the account holder you can at any time:

• Review what we hold about your child: the weekly report shows reading activity, and you can email us for a full copy.
• Delete it: delete the account from Settings (see Delete your account) or email us.
• Stop further collection: stop the child using the app and delete the account. You can also email us to have reading history removed while keeping the account.

We will not require a child to share more information than the app needs as a condition of using it. If you believe a child has given us personal information without a parent's involvement, email kidsnewsapp@outlook.com and we will delete it.

4. What we collect from the adult account holder

• Account details: name, email address and profile image supplied by Google at sign-in.
• Parental settings: allowed topics, an optional daily time limit, how links to other websites are handled, and an optional parent PIN.
• Subscription: plan status, trial dates, and identifiers from our payment processor, Stripe. We never receive or store card numbers.
• Email: your address if you join our newsletter, and a record of which service emails we have sent you so we don't repeat them.
• Invitations: if you arrived on a friend's, partner's or tester invitation link, which link it was, so the right person gets credit and you get the right offer. Visits to invitation links are counted without storing who visited.
• Push notifications: if you turn them on, the subscription address your browser issues.
• Advertising attribution: if you arrive from one of our ads, identifiers from that ad platform's cookies, recorded once at sign-up so we can tell which ads work.

5. How we use information

To run your account and subscription; to show an age-appropriate feed and apply your parental controls; to send service emails, the weekly parent report and (if you asked for it) our newsletter; to give referral and tester credits; to keep the service secure and fix problems; and, for adults visiting our marketing pages, to understand which of our ads work. We do not sell personal information.

6. Cookies, analytics and advertising

• Inside the app children use we use a sign-in cookie and Google Analytics to measure how the app is used (for example, which features get used). Google Analytics is configured with Google Signals and ad personalisation turned off, so it is used only to run and improve the app, never for advertising. Advertising pixels and session recording are never loaded in the app.
• On our public marketing pages (the home page and the free /news pages), which are aimed at parents, we use advertising pixels from Meta and Google to measure our ads, and Microsoft Clarity to see where pages confuse people. Clarity stops before the signed-in app is shown.
• In our Android app none of the advertising or recording tools run, even on those pages.
• A first-party cookie remembers an invitation code you arrived with.

Some U.S. state laws treat ad pixels on a website as "sharing" personal information. You can block these cookies in your browser settings, or email us and we will stop using your information for ad measurement.

7. Service providers

These companies process information only to provide their service to us:

• Google: sign-in, and analytics as described above.
• Stripe: payments and subscription billing.
• Resend: sending email.
• Railway: hosting and database (United States).
• Meta and Google Ads: measuring our own ads; limited to the marketing pages and to purchase events our server reports.
• Microsoft Clarity: page heatmaps on the marketing pages only.
• xAI (Grok): an assistant we use to run our tester program. For testers only, it can read the tester's name and email, whether they opened their invitation, when their free access ends, and their family's usage totals (days, minutes, number of stories). Never which stories were read, and nothing about families who are not testers.
• OpenAI: rewriting published news into child-friendly language, "Explain this" help on a story, the daily quiz, and conversation starters in the parent report. Only news content is sent, never anything about you or your child.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect a child's safety, or as part of a sale or merger of the business, in which case this policy continues to apply to it.

8. How long we keep it

• Reading history and daily usage minutes are deleted automatically after 13 months.
• Account, child profile, settings and bookmarks are kept while the account is open and deleted when you delete the account.
• Newsletter addresses are kept until you unsubscribe.
• Payment records are kept by Stripe as accounting and tax law requires.
• Content reports are kept as safety records, with your identity removed when you delete your account.

9. Your choices and rights

• Cancel your subscription at any time in Settings.
• Delete your account and your child's data in Settings, or see Delete your account.
• Unsubscribe from the newsletter with the link in any issue.
• Turn off push notifications in Settings or in your browser.
• Ask for a copy of your data, a correction, or deletion by emailing us. We respond within 30 days.

Depending on where you live you may have further rights under laws such as the CCPA. We honour these requests wherever you live, and will never treat you differently for making one.

10. Security

Data travels over encrypted connections and is stored with established infrastructure providers, and access to it is limited to the people who run the service. The parent PIN is a convenience lock to keep children out of Settings, not a password, so don't reuse one you value.

11. Changes to this policy

We will update the date at the top when this policy changes, and email account holders about significant changes. If a change affects what we collect from children or how we use it, we will tell you before it takes effect, and ask for your agreement where the law requires.

12. Contact

Questions, requests or concerns: kidsnewsapp@outlook.com.

Questions? Email kidsnewsapp@outlook.com. See also our Terms and Privacy Policy.