KinderMate Privacy Policy
Last Updated: December 27, 2023
Welcome to KinderMate! If you are a child (under the age of 18) please review this Privacy Policy with a parent. If you are a parent, please supervise your children’s use of KinderMate and discuss this Privacy Policy with them.
KinderMate Inc. and its affiliates (collectively, “KinderMate,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) developed this Privacy Policy to explain how we collect, use, share, and protect Personal Information (defined below), and your choices about the collection and use of your or your children’s Personal Information.
This Privacy Policy applies to Personal Information collected or processed through our websites (collectively, the “Site”) and applications (collectively, the “App”) that link to this Privacy Policy (the Site together with the App, collectively, the “Service”).
1. What is Personal Information?
“Personal Information” is information that, either alone or in combination with other information, identifies you. When we combine other information (i.e., information that does not, on its own, identify you) with your Personal Information, we treat the combined information as Personal Information.
2. How We Collect and Use Personal Information
A. Information Provided by Parents
We encourage parents to take an active role in supervising their children’s use of the Internet. For this reason, we require a parent or guardian to create an account that can be used to supervise and restrict a child’s use of the Service.
We process Personal Information that parents provide through the creation and management of their accounts, such as a name, email address, and log-in credentials. We process this Personal Information only as necessary to provide the Service under the terms of our Terms of Use or for our legitimate interests in providing a Service that meets your needs and expectations. For example, we use this information to send verification codes and account-related notices to the parent or guardian account holders; respond to inquiries regarding the Service; enable secure log-in; facilitate password recovery services; and for other purposes related to the reasons for which the parent provides Personal Information.
We use a parent’s email address to contact you from time to time in furtherance of our legitimate interests in providing you with information regarding the Service and marketing information relating to KinderMate or other products and services offered by KinderMate or its affiliates that may be of interest to you. We do not knowingly advertise to children. Section 7 describes how you may opt out of receiving such communications.
B. Information Provided by Children
With parental supervision, we enable children to safely explore content on the Internet by entering search queries into the App. Parents may request that we close their account at any time by contacting us at support@kindermate.com. Parents can also use the App’s Parental Controls to disable access to the App.
We use search queries entered into the App to find and provide content through the Service, including content provided by third-party providers, such as YouTube, Wikipedia, and Bing. These search queries may also be used to analyze usage and trends, to personalize the App by suggesting content that may be of interest to your child based on the child’s search terms, and to improve the Service, technologies, artificial intelligence algorithms, and users' experiences.
Although children may directly type text into the App, we also provide features that allow a child to use his or her voice to search content available through the App. The voice command audio recordings collected through the Service are used only for the limited purpose of transcribing speech from the audio files into text. We do not store audio recordings. The audio recordings are streamed to a third-party provider (Google LLC) which converts the audio to text and sends the text translation to us. We use the text created from audio recordings in the same way that we use search queries typed into the App. Under the terms of our agreement with Google, Google does not store the audio recordings beyond the time period needed to transcribe the audio into text. See the Google Privacy Policy for more information: https://www.google.com/policies/privacy
As a child browses content through the App, we keep a history of his or her browsing history to further our legitimate interest in enabling parents to supervise their children’s use of the App. We do not make any information regarding search queries or browsing history publicly available.
C. Information We Receive Automatically
We collect the following types of information automatically through your or your children’s use of the Service:
· Cookies, Device Identifiers, and Similar technologies
When you use or access the Service, we may use cookies, device identifiers, and similar technologies such as pixels, web beacons, and local storage to collect information about how you use KinderMate. We process the information, including Personal Information, collected through such technologies to further our legitimate interests in operating the Service, enhancing your experience through personalization, and helping us better understand the features of the Service that you and other users are most interested in.
Although the App does not integrate any social media services, we offer social media features, such as a Facebook “Like” button on the Site. Social media services may use cookies or other methods to gather information regarding your use of our Site. Such services may use these cookies or other tracking methods for their own purposes by relating information about your use of our Site with any of your Personal Information that they may have. The use of such information by social media services depends on their privacy policies. If you would like more information, please see Section 11 for our contact information.
Most browsers provide you with the ability to block, delete, or disable cookies, and your mobile device may allow you to disable transmission of device identifiers. If you choose to reject cookies or block device identifiers, some features of the Service may not be available or some functionality may be limited or unavailable. Please review your help pages of your browser or mobile device for assistance with changing your settings.
Without an industry or legal standard of interpreting Do Not Track Signals (“DNT”) sent to us by your browser, we do not respond to DNT signals at this time. To learn more about how DNT works, please visit http://allaboutdnt.com/.
· Log File Information:
When you use our Service, our servers automatically record information, including your Internet Protocol address (“IP Address”), browser type, referring URLs (e.g., the site you visited before coming to our Site), number of clicks, and how you interact with links on the Service, domain names associated with your internet service provider, pages viewed, and other such information (collectively, “Log File Information”). We may also collect similar information from emails sent to you which then help us track which emails are opened and which links are clicked by recipients. We use Log File Information collected from our implementation of the Service to further our legitimate interests in securing the Service by identifying potential threats and vulnerabilities, and in analyzing the effectiveness of our Service to improve the Service’s function and content.
3. SHARING OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
We will not disclose Personal Information except as set forth in this Privacy Policy or with consent. For example, we generally do not sell, lease, or exchange your Personal Information, but if we ever do, we will first obtain your consent.
This section describes to whom we disclose Personal Information, and for what purposes:
· Our Service Providers. We employ service providers to perform tasks on our behalf and to assist us in providing the Service. For example, Google LLC provides speech-to-text services that enable us to provide voice search features in the App. We take appropriate measures to help ensure that our service providers provide the same level of protection for your Personal Information as we do. Additionally, in order to run our KinderMate AI services, the data will be passed through the OpenAI APIs. OpenAI’s privacy policy can be found at: https://openai.com/enterprise-privacy
· Google Analytics. We use Google Analytics, an analytics service to help us analyze the traffic on the Service. For more information on Google Analytics’ processing of Personal Information, please visit http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/.
· Companies Involved in Mergers and Acquisition Transactions. If we sell or otherwise transfer part or the whole of KinderMate or our assets to another organization (e.g., in the course of a transaction like a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, or liquidation), any information collected through the Service, including Personal Information, may be among the items sold or transferred.
· Law Enforcement, Government Agencies, and Courts: We may disclose Personal Information at the request of law enforcement or government agencies or in response to subpoenas, court orders, or other legal process to establish, protect, or exercise our rights or to defend against a legal claim or as otherwise required or allowed by law, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of any person.
4. PERSONAL INFORMATION TRANSFERRED FROM OUTSIDE THE U.S.
If you are using the Service from outside the United States, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States. The data protection laws of the United States might not be as comprehensive as those in your country. By using the Service, you consent to your information being transferred to the United States for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy.
5. HOW WE PROTECT THE CONFIDENTIALITY OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
We use commercially reasonable safeguards to help keep the information collected through the Service secure and take reasonable steps (such as requesting a unique password) to verify your identity before granting you access to your account.
Despite these efforts to store Personal Information in a secure operating environment that is not available to the public, we cannot guarantee the security of Personal Information during its transmission or its storage on our systems. Further, while we attempt to ensure the integrity and security of Personal Information, we cannot guarantee that our security measures will prevent third parties such as so-called hackers from illegally obtaining access to Personal Information. We do not represent or warrant that Personal Information about you will be protected against, loss, misuse, or alteration by third parties.
6. YOUR CONTROL OVER PERSONAL INFORMATION
In addition to the control we provide over your and your children’s Personal Information in the Parental Controls section of the App, if you would like to access, amend, erase, export (i.e., data portability), or object to or restrict the processing of, your or your children’s Personal Information, you may submit a request to support@kindermate.com. We will promptly review all such requests in accordance with applicable laws.
Depending on where you live, you may have a right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority or other regulatory agency if you believe that we have violated any of the rights concerning your or your children’s Personal Information. We encourage you to first reach out to us at support@kindermate.com, so we have an opportunity to address your concerns directly before you do so.
7. OPTING OUT
We may send notifications, newsletters, promotions, or other information via email (“Communications”). To opt out, you may follow the unsubscribe instructions in any email you receive. Please note that certain Service-related Communications are necessary for the proper functioning and use of the Service and you may not have the ability to opt out of those Communications.
8. Retention of Personal Information
We will retain Personal Information for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes for which your Personal Information has been collected as outlined in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required by law. If you close your account, we will promptly delete all Personal Information associated with your account.
9. OTHER WEBSITES AND SERVICES
We are not responsible for the practices employed by any websites or services linked to or from our Service, including the information or content contained within them. We encourage you to investigate and ask questions before disclosing your Personal Information to third parties.
10. CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY
KinderMate may modify or update this Privacy Policy from time to time, so please review it periodically. We may provide you with notice of material changes to the Privacy Policy as appropriate under the circumstances. If any changes made to the Privacy Policy would affect information collected from or about children in a way that would require parental consent we will obtain such consent from a parent or legal guardian. UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED, ANY CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY WILL APPLY IMMEDIATELY UPON POSTING TO THE SERVICE.
11. HOW TO CONTACT US
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or about your or your children’s privacy, please email us at support@kindermate.com or contact us at:
KinderMate Inc.
999 3rd Ave, Suite 700, Seattle, WA 98104, USA
Telephone +1 206 368 3178