Privacy

How Boodo is used

A parent downloads Boodo and creates a profile for their child. There is no account and no sign-in. The profile, the reading progress and any profile picture stay on the device.

Two optional features ask our servers to make something for your family — a story, or a character — and those are described below. Everything else about reading happens on the device.

What we never collect

• No recordings of your child. When a child reads aloud, the words are recognised and compared with the story, and the audio is discarded immediately. Boodo never stores or uploads a recording.
• No advertising identifier, and no tracking of anyone across apps or websites.
• No third-party analytics or advertising software of any kind.
• No location, contacts, health or financial information.

Speech recognition

Reading aloud uses the speech recognition built into the device. Where the device has an offline language pack installed, recognition happens entirely on the device. Where it does not — which is common on a new device — the audio is processed by Apple or Google under their own privacy policies, in order to return the text.

We would rather say that a child's voice never leaves the device, and on many devices it does not. But it is not true of every device, so we do not say it. Either way, Boodo receives only text and keeps no audio.

What leaves the device

Stories come down; almost nothing goes up. Boodo downloads stories and illustrations so the app works with no internet at all. Fetching them tells our server nothing about who is reading.

Crash reports. If the app stops working, it sends a technical report to our own servers so we can fix it — no third party is involved. These describe what the software was doing, not what the child was reading, though a report can occasionally include a name that was on screen. They are deleted after 90 days.

Notifications. If notifications are turned on, the device is registered with a random identifier created for that installation. It carries no name, no email and no school.

Making a story

Create a Story is behind a question only a grown-up can answer, and it is the one part of Boodo that sends something a parent typed. What goes to our servers is the subject chosen from the list, the name the story's hero should have, the child's age and reading grade, and the language. We pass that to Google's AI service to write and illustrate the story, under Google's terms for business customers — it is not used to train their models.

The finished story is stored on our servers and belongs to your family's account on that device. It is not added to the public library and no other family can read it.

A hero's name defaults to your child's name because that is usually what a parent wants. You can type any name instead, and the story is written with the one you give.

Making a character

My Character is behind the same grown-up question. Building one from the wardrobe sends only the choices — a hairstyle, a jacket, a colour — and nothing about your child.

Buying credits

Making a story or a character spends a credit, and credits are bought through the app store you installed Boodo from. The payment happens entirely inside that store's system: we never see a card number, a billing address or your name.

What we store is an anonymous identifier for the device's Boodo account and a record of credits bought and spent. There is no name and no email address attached to it.

Who can see a child's reading

Nobody outside the home. The reading history is on the device, and we do not sell data or share it with anyone for advertising.

Deleting data

Deleting a profile or removing the app deletes the child's reading history, because it was only ever on that device. Stories and characters your family made are held against the device's anonymous account; write to us and we will erase them.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or a request about your child's data: privacy@boodo.co