Privacy Policy

Professor Paws is operated by Professor Paws LLC, a Florida limited liability company ("we," "us"). This policy explains what we collect, why, and what control you have. It is written for parents, in plain language.

1. Who we are and where your data lives

Professor Paws LLC operates the Professor Paws application and the website at playprofessorpaws.com. We are based in the United States, and all data is stored on servers in the United States (Oregon).

Contact:

2. Our approach: collect as little as possible

We designed Professor Paws to collect the minimum information needed to teach your child. Notably:

• We do not ask for your child's real name. You create a nickname. We recommend you do not use your child's real name — a nickname or made-up name works perfectly.
• We ask for your child's age once, when you set up their profile, to confirm the app is age-appropriate (Professor Paws is built for ages 8–13). We do not ask for a birthdate, and your child's age does not decide what they are taught — the app adapts to what your child can actually do.
• We do not collect your child's photograph or location.
• Reading Coach can use optional on-device speech recognition after you press Start and allow microphone and speech recognition access. The Reading out loud setting does not start the microphone by itself. Recognition must be available on the device; otherwise reading continues without listening. Leaving the app stops listening, and returning requires Start. Professor Paws does not send your child's raw reading audio or full speech transcript to its servers or store them.
• We show no advertising. We do not sell, rent, or share personal information.

3. Information we collect from parents

• Account information: your email address and password (passwords are stored hashed; we never see them).
• Consent records: the fact that you gave consent, what you were shown when you gave it, the date and time, and how it was verified.
• Subscription information: if you subscribe, Apple processes the payment. We never receive your payment card details. We use RevenueCat to confirm whether your subscription is active (see Section 9).
• Support correspondence: anything you email us, and problem reports you send from the parent area of the app: the reason you choose, any note you add, and the activity step the report is about, including the question and your child's answer.

4. Information we collect about your child

• A nickname you choose (not required to be a real name).
• Your child's age — a number from 8 to 13, collected once at setup to confirm the app is age-appropriate. We do not collect a birthdate.
• Learning activity: the words, problems, and tasks your child works on; what they answered; what support they used; and what they can do over time.
• Your answers to the setup questions about how your child learns (for example how reading and maths usually go, focus, and things they love). Used to fit each lesson to your child.
• Reading progress (if your child uses reading practice). A record of how each practice word went — read on their own, after a retry, with help, or supplied by Max — with the word shown on screen, the reading pattern it practises and the day, plus a summary of which reading patterns your child is learning and when each is due for review. If you use the Read-Aloud Check, the result you mark. We count a pattern as learned only after your child demonstrates it independently, including through an optional parent Read-Aloud Check when listening is turned off. Professor Paws does not store your child's raw reading audio or full speech transcript. The reading-progress record stores the word shown on screen and the resulting learning evidence, such as independent, retry, helped, told or not confirmed — not a recording of what your child said. It is used only to teach and review reading patterns and to show you progress; it is never a diagnosis, grade or score, never used for advertising, and never used to train AI. Only the reading patterns needed to create a lesson, and your child's age range (8–10 or 11–13), may be sent to our AI provider (Anthropic) with that lesson request, never your child's detailed reading record.
• Practice details. For reading, only while you have Listening turned on for your child: how long each word took, how many times your child corrected themselves, and the kind of any mistake (a guess from the first letter, a vowel mistake, a dropped ending, a skipped word, or a different word with the same meaning). The kind of mistake is worked out on the device; we keep only the kind, never what your child said. For maths: which help was on screen for each answer (blocks, pictures or numbers) and the kind of mistake the answer showed. For spelling: the kind of spelling mistake, never how your child spelled the word. We name a likely reason for a mistake only when your child's practice record supports it. These details are never a diagnosis, label, grade or score, and are not sent to our AI provider. We start keeping them for a child only after you confirm our updated parent notice.
• Schoolwork content you or your child enter: spelling words, homework tasks, reading assignments, and any notes you add.
• Homework photographs, if you choose to use that feature: you may photograph homework so the app can read the task. These images are sent to our AI provider (Anthropic) to read the task and are not stored in your child's profile.
• Usage and error records: which activities are started and finished in the app, and errors the app runs into (for example a lesson that could not be created), so we can keep the service working.
• Puppy and in-app choices: the puppy's name, items earned, worlds opened, and progress.

We do not build advertising profiles, we do not track your child across other apps or websites, and we do not assign IQ-style scores or diagnostic labels.

5. How we use it

Only to run the service: to generate and adapt your child's learning activities, to show you their progress, to maintain their account and rewards, to reply to your support requests, and to keep the service secure and working.

6. Artificial intelligence

Professor Paws uses AI (Anthropic's Claude) to generate teaching activities. When your child works on a task, the relevant task information is sent to Anthropic to produce the activity.

Your child's information is not used to train AI models. Anthropic processes this data as our service provider under a written agreement and does not train its models on it. Our AI provider, Anthropic, may retain API inputs and outputs for up to 30 days under its standard API retention terms, subject to its applicable contractual, safety and legal exceptions. We send only what is needed to produce the activity: the task, and the setup answers that lesson uses (for example to shorten steps or use calmer wording). Only the reading patterns needed to create a lesson, and your child's age range (8–10 or 11–13), may be sent to our AI provider (Anthropic) with that lesson request, never your child's detailed reading record.

Max's voice. Reading narration uses your device's speech voice. Depending on settings and availability, some short coaching messages use prerecorded Max clips. Microsoft Azure was used to make those fixed recordings; your child's reading audio, typed answers, supplied book text and homework photographs are not sent to Azure to make those fixed clips.

7. Parental consent (COPPA)

Professor Paws is intended for children under 13 and is designed to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Before your child uses the app, we:

• Show you our terms and this policy;
• Show you specifically what information we collect about your child and why;
• Ask for your affirmative consent;
• Verify your consent by sending a confirmation to your email address, which you must confirm before your child's account becomes active. If you subscribe, the payment transaction provides additional verification.

You confirm at that time that you are the child's parent or legal guardian.

You may review your child's information, ask us to delete it, or refuse to permit its further collection at any time — see Sections 11 and 12.

8. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, or port your information, to object to processing, and to complain to a supervisory authority. Parents everywhere have these rights with us regardless of where you live — we do not make you prove jurisdiction to exercise control over your child's data. Contact hello@playprofessorpaws.com.

For users in the UK/EEA, our lawful basis is your consent (which you may withdraw at any time) and, for account and security operations, our legitimate interests in running the service.

9. Who we share with

We share only with service providers who process data on our behalf under written data processing agreements, and only to run the service:

• Supabase — database and authentication (United States).
• Anthropic — AI processing for teaching activities.
• Microsoft Azure (our US East service) — creates fixed Max voice recordings. It is not used to recognise your child's reading.
• Resend — sending consent and account emails.
• RevenueCat — subscription management. If you subscribe, RevenueCat receives your parent account's identifier and the purchase records Apple provides (the product, dates and status of the subscription), along with the technical information that accompanies any online request, such as device type and IP address. It receives no information about your child.
• Apple — subscription processing (Apple handles payment; we receive no card data).
• Formspree — receives the access-request form from this website (see "Our website" below).
• GitHub Pages — hosts this website (see "Our website" below).

These providers may not use your data for their own purposes, may not sell or share it, and may not combine it with other data. For transfers from the UK/EEA, our agreements include Standard Contractual Clauses.

We do not sell personal information. We do not share personal information for advertising. We may disclose information if legally required, or to protect someone's safety.

10. How long we keep it

We keep your child's learning information while the account is active, because it is what lets the app pick up where your child left off — except where the table below gives a shorter period. When you delete it, it is removed from the active service. The table below is the summary:

When you delete data, it is removed from the active service. Copies may remain in encrypted backups until those backups expire, for up to 35 days.

11. Reviewing and deleting your child's information

• In the app: in the parent area, open your child's profile (Edit) and choose Withdraw consent & delete data. To delete your whole account, open the Parent portal and choose Delete my data.
• By email: write to hello@playprofessorpaws.com from your account's email address to review, correct, or delete your child's information, or to close your account entirely. We will confirm when it's done.

When you delete data, it is removed from the active service. Copies may remain in encrypted backups until those backups expire, for up to 35 days.

Deleting your child's information means the app no longer knows what they've learned, so a fresh start begins from zero. Rewards and worlds are part of that record.

12. Refusing further collection

You can stop further collection at any time by deleting your child's profile or closing your account. You do not need to give a reason.

13. Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Access controls restrict child data to the parent account that owns it. No system is perfectly secure, but we treat children's data as the most sensitive category we hold, because it is.

14. Children's use

Children do not have their own logins. Accounts are created and controlled by parents. Real-money subscriptions are controlled by the parent. Children can use legitimately earned Bone Bucks for virtual Paw Mart items. There is no chat, no multiplayer, no social features, and no way for your child to communicate with anyone through the app.

15. Our website (playprofessorpaws.com)

This website sets no cookies, runs no third-party analytics or advertising trackers, and loads its fonts and images from its own domain. It is hosted on GitHub Pages, whose servers keep standard access logs (IP address, browser type, pages requested) that we do not receive as personal data and do not use to identify visitors.

Access-request form. If you ask us about getting Professor Paws, the form sends your email address, your country, and — only if you choose to give them — your child's age range and a short note about homework to Formspree, which delivers it to us. Please do not include your child's name or any diagnosis in the note; a sentence about the homework itself is enough. We keep these requests only to contact you about Professor Paws and delete them from Formspree once they are copied to our own list; email hello@playprofessorpaws.com at any time to have your request deleted.

Aggregate counts. To see whether the site is working, we count page views and clicks on the main buttons in aggregate — a number per day, per page, per button — together with the visitor's coarse screen class (phone, tablet, desktop) and the referring website's domain. We do not record IP addresses, cookies, device identifiers, or anything typed into a form, and we honour Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track signals by not counting at all.

Consent and password pages. The consent-confirmation and password-reset pages on this domain contact only our own service (Supabase) when you press their button, set no cookies, and are not indexed by search engines.

16. Changes

If we make a material change to how we handle your child's information, we will notify you and, where COPPA requires it, obtain your consent again before the change applies to your child's data.

17. Contact

If you have a concern we haven't resolved, UK/EEA residents may complain to their local supervisory authority.