Privacy notice

Updated 19 October 2026. Also: Sparks’s terms.

Sparks is made for children, so it is built to know as little about them as it can. There are no adverts and no tracking. This notice says what stays on the device, what our server keeps and why, who else handles it, and how to delete it.

What stays on this device

These are saved on the phone or tablet and are never sent to us:

• your child’s age and gender, if they chose to give them at set-up
• their favourite stories, how far they are through each one and their best quiz scores
• stories downloaded to read offline
• the stories the Curiotron has written for them, unless they send one to Sparks (see below)
• the days they read, for “days in a row”
• the grown-ups’ PIN, and whether Professor S and the Curiotron are switched on. Once you’ve signed in, the PIN is also kept with the family account, scrambled so that nobody can read it, so it’s the same on all your devices and in every Sparks app.

What our server keeps

For coins and ratings, our server keeps, for each device:

• a random code the app makes when it is set up, so the server knows whose coins are whose. It isn’t taken from the device and can’t be used to find it.
• the username and Woo (a character) your child chose. We ask for a made-up name, never a real one, and turn away names that aren’t suitable.
• what earned them coins: which stories they read and when, their quiz scores and the stars they gave stories
• if a grown-up has signed in: their email address, and whether they want the weekly summary

It doesn’t keep your child’s real name, age, gender or location, or anything about the device.

What other children can see

Nothing about your child is shown to other children: there’s no scoreboard. Star ratings are only ever shown as an average, never with who gave them, and “Everyone’s reading” only counts how many children have read a story.

Children can’t message each other. Apart from a story chosen for the library (see below), nothing else a child does is shown to anyone.

Professor S and the Curiotron

Both are written by an AI model, so what your child asks has to leave the device:

• asking Professor S: the question, the story being read, and the last few questions and answers, so that “tell me more” works
• asking the Curiotron for a new story: the question

No name, username or device code goes with them. Our server passes them to Anthropic, whose Claude models write the answer, and doesn’t keep them once the answer has been sent back. Stories the Curiotron writes are kept on the device.

A grown-up can switch both off in the grown-ups’ settings.

Stories sent to Sparks

When your child sends one of their Curiotron stories to Sparks, our server keeps it, with their question and username, and emails it to our team to read. The best are added to the Sparks library, with pictures and the username on them, for everyone to read.

Signing in: the Sparks family account

Signing in is optional. A grown-up signs in with their email and a code we send to it. That makes a Sparks family account: one sign-in for all the Sparks apps, so the same email works in each of them.

For Sparks, the account keeps your email and, for each child on it, their device code, username and Woo. That’s what lets you bring a child back on a new phone or tablet: sign in with the same email, pick the child, and their coins and ratings come back. Favourites, downloads and Curiotron stories are only kept on the device they were made on.

The account also keeps each child’s coins, in one purse shared with Noted by Sparks: what earned them (for example “Read Why are bees so important?”) and what they were spent on. If your child uses Noted too, you can join them up, so the coins they earn here can be spent there. Coins are only for spending in the Sparks apps.

It also notes which Sparks apps each child uses (only which, not when or how much), so the grown-ups’ settings in each app can show your family at a glance.

If you use other Sparks apps with the same email, their privacy notices say what each of them keeps in the account.

The weekly summary

If you sign in with your email, we send you a code to sign in with, and then a short email each Sunday about the week: which stories your child read, how many quizzes they did, the questions behind any stories they sent to Sparks, and the points they earned.

Your email is only used to sign you in and to send the summary. You can stop the summary, or sign out, in the grown-ups’ settings at any time.

The usage log

To stop the service being overused, our server writes a line for each question to Professor S, each story from the Curiotron and each story sent to Sparks: the time, which kind it was, which story it was about (for Professor S), whether it worked, how long it took and a scrambled form of the device code. It never holds what was asked. Lines are deleted after 90 days.

Who handles it for us

Anthropic writes Professor S’s answers and the Curiotron’s stories. Its terms for this service say it doesn’t use what is sent to train its models. It keeps requests for a limited time, for safety and to prevent misuse, and then deletes them.

Supabase stores what our server keeps, sign-ins included. Expo runs our server. Resend sends the emails. Cloudflare stores the stories’ pictures, videos and recordings. Like any website, each of them sees the internet address a request comes from while they handle it.

Some of these companies are based in the United States, so information may be handled there.

Deleting it all

In the grown-ups’ settings, “Delete account and erase everything” deletes what our server keeps for this device (the username, Woo, coins, ratings, stories sent to Sparks and usage log lines) and then erases everything on the device. It needs an internet connection.

If you’re signed in, it deletes the whole Sparks family account instead: every child on it, their coins, everything each Sparks app keeps in it, and the sign-in itself. A story already added to the library stays there; write to us if you’d like the username taken off it.

Deleting the app erases what is on the device, but not what our server keeps. Use the grown-ups’ settings first, or write to us.

What we don’t do

• no adverts
• no analytics or tracking tools
• no selling or sharing of information
• no chat between children
• no camera, microphone or location

Children

Sparks is designed for children of about 6 to 12, and a parent or carer sets it up and chooses a PIN for the grown-ups’ settings. Help your child choose a made-up username, and remind them not to type personal details, such as their full name, school or address, into a question.

Your rights and how to reach us

You can ask what we hold about you or your child, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it, and we will answer. If you aren’t happy with our answer, you can complain to the data protection authority where you live (in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office).

Sparks is run by Studio Darling. Write to privacy@sparksforkids.app.

Changes

If the app starts handling information differently, this notice will change before it does, and the date below will show it.