Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 30, 2026

SpellABC.com is a spelling practice app for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. It is operated by an individual, not a company. You can reach the operator at [email protected].

This app is built for children, so the guiding rule is to collect as little about them as possible and to never send anything that could identify a child to an outside service. The sections below describe exactly what that means in practice.

Who has an account

Only adults create accounts. Parents and teachers sign in with Google. Children never sign in with an email address and never create their own account — a parent creates a profile for the child, and the child reaches it through a link and a PIN that the parent controls.

What is collected

From parents and teachers

• Email address, name, and profile picture, as supplied by Google when you sign in, plus the Google account identifier
• When your account was created and when you last signed in
• For teachers only: school name, display name, the grades you teach, and an optional short bio you write yourself

From children

• A display name chosen by the parent. This can be a first name or a nickname — a full legal name is never required
• Grade level, practice language, and session length
• Practice activity: which words were shown, whether each answer was right or wrong, how long each answer took, when typing started, and whether hints or other assistance were used
• A detailed record of typing during an exercise, used to tell a confident speller apart from a child who is guessing or struggling
• Points earned, avatar and accessory choices, and badges unlocked

Never collected from children

• Email address, phone number, or any other contact information
• Date of birth, exact age, or home address
• Photographs, camera access, or microphone recordings
• Location data

What is never sent to the AI

The app uses Google's Gemini models for two things: building the word library (words, meanings, example sentences, and spoken audio) and writing progress summaries for parents.

When a progress summary is generated, the model receives only the practice level, aggregate accuracy and timing figures, which words were difficult, and how often assistance was used. It never receives a child's name, a parent's email, any internal identifier, an age, or the typing record.

This is enforced in code rather than by policy alone. A single module is the only place allowed to build data bound for the AI, and an automatic check runs immediately before every call and fails the request if anything identifying appears. The same check runs in the test suite.

Word audio

Spoken words and sentences are synthetic speech generated ahead of time and stored as audio files on the server. No child is ever recorded, and the app does not request microphone access.

Tracking and advertising

There are no advertisements, no advertising networks, and no third-party analytics or tracking scripts of any kind. Nothing about your family is sold, rented, or shared for marketing. Cookies are used only to keep you signed in and to keep a child's practice device signed in.

Who else receives data

• Google (sign-in)— verifies a parent's or teacher's identity when they sign in. Governed by Google's own privacy policy
• Google (Gemini AI) — receives word content and the de-identified practice statistics described above
• Hosting — the server that runs the app and stores its database

Data is not shared with anyone else, except where the law requires it.

Children's privacy

The app is designed to be consistent with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). A child's profile can only be created by a signed-in parent, which is where consent is given. Children cannot enter contact information, cannot message anyone, cannot upload anything, and cannot reach any part of the app outside their own practice sessions.

As the parent, you can at any time:

• See every word your child practiced and every answer they gave
• Clear a child's practice history and statistics
• Archive a child's profile so it is no longer in use
• Revoke a signed-in device immediately, which ends that device's access right away
• Permanently delete a child's profile and all of their history, from that child's page in your parent dashboard
• Permanently delete your whole account, including every child profile under it, from your parent dashboard

Archiving and deleting are different on purpose. Archiving retires a profile but keeps the history so you can still look back at it. Deleting erases the child's record and every session, score, badge and device that belongs to it, immediately and permanently. Neither action requires emailing anyone, and deletion cannot be undone.

Teachers and schools

A teacher joins with an invite code and can see progress for students connected to them and assign word lists. A teacher never sees a parent's contact details, and access to a child's data always depends on the parent's ownership of that profile rather than on the teacher's role.

How long data is kept

• A child's practice device stays signed in for a period the parent sets, 30 days by default, after which it must be re-linked
• Account and practice data are kept while the account is active
• When you delete a child profile or your account, the data is erased immediately, not queued for later removal

Security

The site is served over encrypted connections. The PIN a child uses and the tokens that keep a device signed in are stored only as irreversible hashes, never as readable text. Parent and teacher accounts rely on Google sign-in, so the app never sees or stores your Google password.

Your rights

Deleting your account or a child's profile is self-service from your parent dashboard and takes effect immediately. For a copy of your data, a correction, or any other request, write to [email protected] and you will get an answer within 30 days.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that materially affects how family data is handled, the date at the top will be updated and signed-in parents will be notified.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or a request about your family's data: [email protected].