Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy explains what information TernQuest ("we", "us") collects, how we use and protect it, and the rights parents, guardians, and schools have. It applies to our website and app (the "Service").
1. Who our accounts belong to
- Grown-up accounts (a parent or a teacher) are created and controlled by an adult.
- Child profiles ("learners") are created by that adult. A child never creates their own account and we never ask a child for an email address or password. A child signs in with a class code or a short optional PIN.
2. Information we collect
- From the grown-up: name, email address, and account role (parent or teacher). Payment for a subscription is handled entirely by Stripe; we never see or store full card numbers.
- About a child — kept to a minimum: a display name or nickname chosen by the grown-up, an avatar, a grade level, and (optionally) a birth year for grade placement. We do not collect a child's full date of birth, email address, home address, phone number, or photo. A child's sign-in PIN is stored only as a one-way hash.
- Learning & play data: which skills and games a child practices, answers and scores, time spent, streaks, coins, and progress. This powers the child's map, rewards, and the reports a grown-up sees.
- Technical data: basic log information such as IP address and browser/device type, used for security, abuse-prevention, and to keep the Service running.
- Product analytics — grown-ups and visitors only: on public pages and in the grown-up area we measure page views and coarse product events (for example "signed up", "opened reports") to understand what works, and we record masked session replays of grown-up pages. In a replay every name (children's and grown-ups'), every email address and everything typed into a form field is hidden; the rest of the page text is visible so we can see where someone got stuck. We do not record our internal operator console. None of this runs while a child is signed in, or while a lesson is on screen for a signed-out visitor (the free lessons on our home page can be played without an account, and the person playing may be a child — so events and replay pause for as long as the lesson lasts). Analytics is switched off entirely for a child's session, and if a child signs in on a device a grown-up was already using, any recording in progress stops immediately. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking.
3. Children's privacy & parental consent (COPPA)
- Before a child plays, the responsible adult provides verifiable consent (for example, through the grown-up account and payment setup, a signed form, or an email-plus confirmation). We record the type and time of consent.
- We collect a child's personal information only to provide the educational Service — never to build advertising profiles.
- A parent or guardian can review their child's information, request deletion of a child profile and its data, and withdraw consent at any time by contacting us or deleting the profile in the app. Withdrawing consent stops further collection.
- For students added by a teacher/school, we act as a service provider to the school and rely on the school's authority to consent on parents' behalf, consistent with COPPA's school-consent provisions.
4. Our AI tutor ("Pip")
Some help is generated by an AI tutor. To protect children: we scrub personal details from what is sent to the AI, the tutor is guard-railed to give hints (never to chat freely), and if voice input is used the child's audio is transcribed and immediately discarded — never stored. A grown-up can turn the AI coach off for any child. Prompts are processed by our AI provider under contract and are not used to serve ads. Each message a child sends the tutor is also read by an automated safety check (by the same AI provider) whose only job is to spot a child in distress or an unsafe request so Pip can point them to a trusted grown-up.
5. How we use information
- Provide, personalize, and improve the learning experience (e.g., choosing the right next question).
- Show grown-ups real progress reports.
- Operate subscriptions and keep the Service secure.
- Send grown-ups account and (optional, opt-out) product emails. We do not send marketing to children.
6. How we share information
We do not sell personal information and we do not show third-party ads. We share data only with:
- Service providers that run the Service under contract — payments (Stripe), hosting/database, email delivery, error monitoring, product analytics (grown-up and visitor sessions only), and our AI provider — limited to what each needs to do its job.
- Schools — a teacher can see the progress of students in their own class.
- Legal — if required by law or to protect the safety of a child or the Service.
7. Data security & retention
We use reasonable safeguards (encrypted connections, hashed secrets, access controls). No system is perfectly secure. We keep a child's data only while the account is active or as needed to provide the Service; when a profile or account is deleted, we delete or de-identify its personal data within a reasonable period, except where retention is legally required.
8. Your choices & rights
You may access, correct, export, or delete account and child-profile data, and opt out of product emails. To make a request or ask a question, contact support@ternquest.com. We respond to verified parent/guardian and school requests.
9. Cookies
We use cookies to keep you signed in and remember preferences. For grown-ups and visitors only — never while a child is signed in or a lesson is on screen — our product-analytics tool (PostHog) also sets a first-party cookie and browser storage to count visits and power the masked replays described in section 2; it honours your browser's "Do Not Track" setting. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.
10. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy. We will post the new version here and, for material changes affecting children's data, notify account holders. Continued use after an update means you accept the revised policy.
11. Contact us
Email: support@ternquest.com
By using TernQuest, you agree to this Privacy Policy.