Child Privacy & Policies

1. Our commitment to children

StudentDeck ("StudentDeck", "we", "us" or "our") provides digital tools that help students organise their learning, study materials and schoolwork. Because many of our users are children, we hold ourselves to a higher standard of care than we would for adults. This policy explains how we collect, use, protect and delete children's personal information, and the rules that keep StudentDeck a safe place to learn.

Our guiding principles:

• Data minimisation: we collect only what is needed to deliver the service.
• Purpose limitation: children's data is used only for education and to run the service.
• Parental and school control: the adults responsible for a child can review, correct and delete their data.
• No commercial exploitation: we do not sell children's data or advertise to them.
• Safety by design: privacy-protective defaults and age-appropriate features.

2. Scope and who this applies to

This policy applies to all StudentDeck websites, apps and related services used by or on behalf of children. A child means anyone under 13, or under the age of digital consent in their country where that is higher (for example, 16 in some countries). We also give these protections to all students under 18.

3. Information we collect

We collect only what a student reasonably needs to use StudentDeck.

A child never has to give their full legal name, home address, phone number, government ID, precise location, photos or biometric data to use StudentDeck. If an optional feature ever needs this kind of information, we will explain why and get verifiable consent from a parent or the school first.

We collect information about a child from the child, from a parent or guardian, or from a school acting for the parent. We use cookies and similar technologies only for essential functions, such as keeping a student signed in, and never for behavioural advertising.

4. How we use children's information

We use children's personal information only to:

• Provide, maintain and personalise StudentDeck's educational features.
• Save and sync a student's learning content and progress.
• Share progress reports with parents, guardians and teachers where permitted.
• Keep the service safe, detect abuse and prevent security incidents.
• Provide support and send essential service notices.
• Improve the service using de-identified or aggregated data that cannot reasonably identify a child.
• Meet our legal obligations.

5. What we never do

StudentDeck will never:

• Sell or rent children's personal information.
• Show targeted or behavioural advertising to children.
• Build advertising or marketing profiles of children.
• Use children's content or data to train third-party AI models.
• Make a child's participation depend on sharing more data than necessary.
• Let strangers contact children through StudentDeck, or publicly display a child's personal information.
• Use children's data for a materially different purpose from those described here without new consent.

6. Parental and school consent

Accounts children create directly. Before we collect personal information from a child under 13, we get verifiable parental consent. We email the parent or guardian, explain what we collect and why, and ask them to confirm in a reasonable way, such as a signed consent form, a confirmation link with a second verification step, or another method the law allows. Until consent is given, the account stays inactive and we keep only what we need to ask for consent.

Accounts provided by a school. When a school provides StudentDeck to its students, the school may consent on parents' behalf for educational use only. The school is then responsible for telling parents and for making sure it has the authority to consent. We follow the school's documented instructions and use student data only for the school's educational purposes.

Withdrawing consent. A parent or guardian can withdraw consent at any time by contacting us. This may limit or end the child's use of StudentDeck, and we will delete the child's data as described under Data retention and deletion.

7. Sharing and disclosure

We share children's personal information only in these limited cases.

We may share aggregated or de-identified data that cannot reasonably identify a child, for example for research on learning outcomes. We do not try to re-identify this data, and anyone who receives it must agree not to either.

8. Data retention and deletion

We keep children's personal information only as long as we need it for the purposes in this policy.

When a school ends its agreement with us, we delete or return its student data within 60 days, unless the school tells us otherwise or the law requires us to keep it.

9. Parent and student rights

Parents, guardians and, where applicable, students have the right to:

• Access: see the personal information we hold about the child.
• Correct: ask us to fix information that is wrong.
• Delete: ask us to delete the child's information and account.
• Restrict or object: limit certain uses of the child's data.
• Refuse further collection: stop us collecting or using more.
• Portability: get a copy of the child's content in a common format.
• Complain: contact us or the relevant data protection authority.

To use these rights, contact us (see Contact us below). We may need to confirm your identity and your relationship to the child first. We aim to reply within 30 days. For accounts provided by a school, we may pass your request to the school, which controls the student's records.

10. Data security

We protect children's data with administrative, technical and physical safeguards suited to how sensitive it is:

• Encryption in transit (TLS) and at rest.
• Role-based, least-privilege access for staff.
• Multi-factor authentication for administrative systems.
• Background checks and yearly privacy and security training for anyone with access to student data.
• Regular vulnerability testing, monitoring and security reviews.
• Checks on service providers, with security requirements in their contracts.
• Secure development, with a privacy review before we launch any feature children use.

No system is perfectly secure. We encourage families to use strong, unique passwords and keep login details private.

11. Safe and respectful use

Everyone who uses StudentDeck must follow these rules to keep it safe for learners.

Students are expected to

• Be kind and respectful: no bullying, harassment or hate speech.
• Never share passwords, a home address, a phone number or other private details.
• Only upload content they have the right to use and that is suitable for school.
• Tell a parent, a teacher or StudentDeck about anything that makes them uncomfortable.

Not allowed

• Sexual, violent or otherwise age-inappropriate material.
• Content that promotes self-harm, drugs, weapons or illegal activity.
• Trying to contact, groom or exploit children, or to get their personal information.
• Impersonation, cheating tools that break a school's academic integrity rules, or trying to hack or disrupt the service.

Teachers and school staff

Teachers and school administrators may access student information only for legitimate educational purposes, and must follow their school's policies and the law.

12. Content moderation and reporting

StudentDeck uses automated tools and human review to find content that breaks this policy. Sharing and collaboration features are off by default for children and, when turned on, are limited to approved classmates or teachers in the same school or family group.

Reporting a concern. Anyone can report a safety or privacy concern with the in-app Report button or by emailing teachersdeck@gmail.com. We review reports promptly and deal with urgent safety issues first.

What we do. Depending on how serious it is, we may remove content, warn or suspend accounts, tell parents or the school and, where required or appropriate, report to the police or child protection authorities. Material showing child sexual abuse or exploitation is removed immediately and reported to the authorities as the law requires.

13. Third-party services

StudentDeck may link to or work with other services, such as single sign-on or a school's learning management system. We check the privacy and security of any integration children use, and turn it on only when it is needed for education. Other services have their own privacy practices, which we encourage parents and schools to read. We do not allow third-party advertising trackers, or analytics that profile children, in StudentDeck.

14. Legal compliance

We design our practices to meet the child and student privacy laws that apply to our users, which may include:

Where a local law gives children or parents stronger protection than this policy, we follow the stronger standard.

15. Data breach response

If we find a breach affecting children's personal information, we will contain it promptly, investigate, and take steps to stop it happening again. We will tell affected parents, guardians and schools without undue delay, and regulators where the law requires (for example, within 72 hours under the GDPR), explaining what happened, what information was involved, and what they can do to protect themselves.

16. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy when our practices or the law change, and will post the new version with a new "Last updated" date. For material changes to how we collect, use or share children's information, we will tell parents and schools directly (for example, by email) and, where required, get new consent before the changes apply to existing children's accounts.

17. Contact us

Send questions, requests or concerns about children's privacy to:

Parent or guardian consent form

For accounts children create directly, a parent or guardian can sign the consent form at the end of the PDF version.