COPPA Compliance Notice

What is COPPA?

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) is a U.S. federal law that protects the privacy of children under 13. It requires operators of websites and apps directed to children to obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information from children.

PocketPals is an app designed for children ages 3–8. We take COPPA seriously — not as a compliance checkbox, but as a core design principle. Children's privacy is baked into every feature we build.

How PocketPals Complies with COPPA

• The parent (not the child) creates the account and provides consent
• Children cannot create accounts independently
• No personal information is collected from children without parental consent
• Parents have full visibility into all conversations and activity via the dashboard
• Parental consent can be withdrawn at any time, triggering data deletion
• All child data is accessible for review, correction, and deletion upon request

What We Do NOT Collect from Children

We collect only: first name, age range (3–4, 5–6, or 7–8), conversation transcripts (text only), and learning progress. Voice audio is processed in real time and never stored.

Bedtime Voice (optional, premium, parent-only): Parents may opt to record voice samples to create a custom Buddy voice via ElevenLabs. This is classified as biometric data (voiceprint) under COPPA 2025 amendments. Separate, explicit biometric consent is obtained before any recording begins. Only the parent's voice is recorded — no child voice data is collected for this feature. Voice clones can be deleted at any time from Parent Settings.

Subprocessors — Who We Share Data With

PocketPals is built by NuStack Digital Ventures LLC (Wyoming). To operate the service, your child's data passes through the following subprocessors. Each has a signed Data Processing Agreement (DPA) with us requiring COPPA-compliant handling:

Subprocessor	Purpose	Child Data
Anthropic, PBC	Buddy LLM responses (Claude)	Yes — conversation text. Does not train on PocketPals data.
OpenAI, LLC	Speech-to-text (Whisper STT)	Yes — voice audio chunks, immediately discarded post-transcription
ElevenLabs, Inc.	Buddy voice synthesis (TTS)	Indirect — Buddy reply text only, no child voice input
Supabase, Inc.	Database + storage (us-east-1)	Yes — profiles, transcripts, memory facts
Vercel, Inc.	Application hosting, edge compute	In transit only
Stripe, Inc.	Web pathway parent payment + COPPA verification	No child data — parent billing only
RevenueCat, Inc.	Native pathway subscription management	No child data — parent subscription only
Apple Inc.	iOS in-app billing	No child data — parent App Store account only
Google LLC	Android in-app billing	No child data — parent Play Store account only
Resend	Transactional email (parents)	Indirect — parent email + child first name in digest only
Sentry, Inc.	Error monitoring	Indirect — scrubbed payloads only, no child PII
Twilio, Inc.	SMS safety alerts to parents	No child data — parent phone number only
Inngest, Inc.	Background job processing	Yes — UUIDs and operation types only
Doppler, Inc.	Secrets management	No user data
Cloudflare, Inc.	DNS, edge security	In transit only

AI Safeguards (Anthropic)

PocketPals uses Anthropic's Claude model to power Buddy's responses. The following safeguards are in place per our agreement with Anthropic:

• Age verification — the system prompt is calibrated to the child's declared age band (3–4, 5–6, or 7–8)
• Content filtering — Buddy's responses are constrained to age-appropriate language and topics; sensitive topics trigger safety deflection
• Monitoring systems — all conversations are available for parental review via the dashboard; flagged content triggers parent notification
• AI disclosure — children are informed they are speaking with an AI character, not a human

Data Retention

Conversation transcripts and child memories are retained per parent-configurable settings (minimum 90 days, default 365 days). Safety events are retained for 365 days (required for incident investigation). Session logs are retained for 395 days (safety review evidence window). Parental consent records are retained for 7 years. Upon account deletion, all child data is deleted within 14 days and you will receive a confirmation email with a deletion certificate ID.

Your Rights as a Parent

• Review all personal information collected about your child
• Correct inaccurate information about your child
• Request complete deletion of your child's data
• Withdraw consent at any time without penalty
• Refuse further collection while retaining access to the service (free tier)

How to Exercise Your Rights

You can exercise any of the rights above by:

• Using Parent Settings in the PocketPals app (PIN-protected)
• Emailing coppa@pocketpals.app — we respond within 30 days

We will confirm the action by email and complete it within 30 days of receiving your request.

Data Deletion Requests

To request deletion of all data associated with your child's account:

Request Data Deletion →

Include your account email in the message. We complete deletion within 14 days and send a confirmation email with a deletion certificate ID. What is preserved: parental consent records (7-year legal hold) and anonymized aggregate statistics (no child PII). What is deleted: all transcripts, summaries, memory facts, child profile, and usage data.

COPPA Compliance Notice v4 — 2026-07-21 · NuStack Digital Ventures LLC · Wyoming