Privacy Policy
Last updated 23 August 2026 · FablePond is operated by ACCTAN.
The short version
- About you (the adult) we hold: your email, optionally your name, and billing records held by Stripe. We never see your card number.
- About a child we hold three things only: a first name or nickname, an age band, and a few interests.
- We never collect a child’s birthdate, last name, photo, voice, location, school, gender, or contact details. The forms do not accept them.
- Children have no accounts and no way to type anything into FablePond. Everything is entered by the adult account holder.
- Child first names go to our AI providers only to write that one story, and are not used to train models.
- We never sell personal information. Not to anyone, not ever.
- Download everything we hold, or delete your account entirely, from Settings — no support ticket needed.
This box is a summary for convenience. The full text below is what applies.
1. Who controls your data
The data controller for FablePond is ACCTAN. For anything in this policy, or to exercise any right described in it, contact contact@acctan.com. For matters relating specifically to children's data, contact childcontact@acctan.com.
[COUNSEL: insert registered address, company number, and EU/UK representative under GDPR Art. 27 if required.]
2. What we collect from adults
| What | Why | Kept for |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | To create your account, sign you in, and send service emails | Until you delete your account |
| Name (optional) | To address you properly in the app and in emails | Until you delete your account |
| Account role (parent or teacher) | To tune suggestions and copy | Until you delete your account |
| Sign-in identifiers from Google or Apple, if you use them | To authenticate you without a password | Until you delete your account |
| Billing records (customer id, plan, invoice history) | To run your subscription | As required by tax and accounting law, typically 7 years |
| Email preferences and reminder time | To send only what you asked for | Until you change or delete them |
| Product analytics, if you consent | To understand which features help and which do not | Up to 12 months |
| Server and error logs | Security, debugging, abuse prevention | Up to 30 days |
We never see or store your card number. Payments run through Stripe, which is PCI-DSS compliant and holds those details directly.
3. What we store about children — and what we never do
This is the part of the policy that matters most, so we will be exact. When you set up a reader profile, we store exactly three things:
- A first name or nickname — whatever you want the story to call them. It may be a nickname; it does not have to be their real name.
- An age band — 3–4, 5–6, or 7–9. Not a birthdate. Not an age in years.
- A short list of interests — chosen from a fixed list, such as dinosaurs, space, or the sea.
Alongside those we store a chosen animal icon (from twelve built-in illustrations) and the pronouns the story should use.
What we never collect about a child
We do not collect, and the interface does not accept:
- Birthdates or exact ages
- Last names or family names
- Photographs, video, or any image of a child
- Voice recordings
- Location data of any kind
- School, class, or teacher details
- Gender (we ask only which pronouns the story should use, which is a writing setting)
- A child's email address, phone number, or any contact detail
- Health, medical, biometric or any special-category data
- Persistent identifiers tied to a child, or any advertising identifier
The reader-name field is capped at 24 characters and the interface asks explicitly for a first name or nickname. This is a policy enforced in the product, not only a promise in a document.
4. Our COPPA position
FablePond is a service for adults, used on behalf of children. It is not directed to children as a commercial audience, and it is not a general-audience service with a child-facing surface.
- We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. There is no child account, no child login, and no field a child can type into. There is no chat, no comments, no upload, no profile, and no way for a child to communicate with anyone.
- All information about a child is provided by the adult account holder, under that adult's own account, and is limited to the three items listed above.
- Adults must attest they are 18 or older at signup.
- If we learn that a child under 13 has created an account or supplied information directly, we will delete it promptly. Contact childcontact@acctan.com and we will act immediately.
- We never use any information relating to a child for advertising, profiling, or behavioural targeting. There is no advertising on FablePond at all.
[COUNSEL: confirm whether the reader-profile design constitutes “collection from a child” under the amended COPPA Rule, and whether verifiable parental consent mechanics are required for the EU/UK equivalent.]
5. GDPR and UK GDPR
Lawful bases
| Processing | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Running your account and generating the stories you ask for | Performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Taking payment and keeping billing records | Contract, and legal obligation for tax records (Art. 6(1)(b), (c)) |
| Safety review of generated content | Legitimate interests — protecting children from harmful content (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Security, abuse prevention, and error logging | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Product analytics | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) — off unless you accept |
| Marketing emails and weekly digests | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) — opt-in, one-click unsubscribe |
Your rights
You may, at any time:
- Access everything we hold — one click in Settings produces a complete JSON export.
- Rectify anything inaccurate — edit your details and any reader profile directly in the app.
- Erase your data — delete a reader profile, or delete your whole account, from Settings.
- Port your data — the JSON export is machine-readable and yours to take anywhere.
- Object to processing based on legitimate interests, and withdraw consent for analytics or marketing at any time without affecting past lawful processing.
- Restrict processing while a dispute about accuracy or legitimacy is resolved.
- Complain to your supervisory authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk); in the EU it is your national data protection authority.
We aim to answer any rights request within 30 days, and usually much faster. Most of these rights are exercisable instantly in Settings without contacting us at all — that is deliberate.
Children's data under GDPR
The limited information you provide about a child is processed on the basis of the contract with you, the adult account holder. Because there is no child-facing service, Article 8 (information society services offered directly to a child) does not apply to the reader profiles you create. We apply data minimisation rigorously: we ask for the least that lets us write a good story, and nothing more.
6. California residents (CCPA / CPRA)
We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. Not for money, not for value of any kind. There is no advertising on FablePond and no advertising or tracking pixels on any page where a story is displayed.
You have the right to know what we collect, to delete it, to correct it, and to not be discriminated against for exercising those rights. Exercise all of them from Settings, or email contact@acctan.com.
Categories collected in the last 12 months: identifiers (email, name), commercial information (subscription and purchase history), internet activity (usage analytics, with consent), and user-generated content (stories you create and the reader-profile details you enter). We do not collect sensitive personal information as defined by the CPRA.
7. Who else touches your data
We keep this list short on purpose, and we keep it current. Each of these providers is bound by a data processing agreement and may use the data only to provide their service to us.
| Provider | What they do | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| Railway | Hosting, database, object storage, job queue | All service data, encrypted in transit and at rest |
| Anthropic | Story writing and the safety review pass | The story prompt: a child's first name, age band, interests, theme |
| Replicate | Illustration generation | Scene descriptions and a visual description of the protagonist. No names. |
| ElevenLabs or OpenAI | Narration audio, when you request it | The story text, which includes the child's first name |
| Stripe | Payments and subscription management | Your email, name and payment details. Never any child data. |
| Resend | Transactional and opted-in emails | Your email address and message content |
| PostHog | Product analytics, only with your consent | Anonymised usage events. Never child names or story text. |
AI providers and model training
Child first names sent to our AI providers are used solely to generate that one story, and are not used to train their models. Our accounts with these providers are configured accordingly: Anthropic does not use API inputs or outputs to train its models by default, and we maintain equivalent settings with our image and speech providers. We do not send children's names to our analytics provider at all.
8. How long we keep things
- Account and reader-profile data: until you delete it.
- Stories and their illustrations: until you delete the story or the account. Your bookshelf stays readable even if you cancel your subscription.
- Account deletion: deleting your account starts a 7-day grace period during which you can undo it. After that, we hard-delete within 30 days — database rows and the stored illustration, audio and PDF files in object storage.
- Billing records: retained as long as tax and accounting law requires, typically 7 years, even after account deletion. These contain no child data.
- Server logs: up to 30 days.
- Anonymised telemetry: retained indefinitely, because it identifies no one.
9. How we protect it
- Encryption in transit (TLS) everywhere, and encryption at rest for the database and object storage.
- Every database query is scoped to the authenticated account. There is no code path by which one account can read another's stories or reader profiles.
- Illustration, audio and PDF files are served through short-lived signed URLs, never public buckets.
- Passwordless sign-in — there is no password for us to leak or for you to reuse.
- Least-privilege access to production systems, with credentials held in a secrets manager rather than in code.
- Rate limiting and abuse monitoring on generation endpoints.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your data and poses a risk to you, we will notify you and the relevant supervisory authority without undue delay and within 72 hours of becoming aware, as GDPR requires.
10. International transfers
Our providers may process data outside your country, including in the United States. Where data leaves the UK or EEA we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK International Data Transfer Addendum), together with the providers' own certifications where applicable, and we carry out transfer risk assessments. [COUNSEL: confirm transfer mechanism per provider and record the TRAs.]
11. Cookies
We use one essential cookie to keep you signed in. Analytics cookies are set only if you accept them, and you can change your mind at any time in Settings. There are no advertising cookies and no third-party trackers on any page where a story is displayed. See the Cookie Policy.
12. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy materially — particularly anything about children's data — we will email you and show a notice in the app at least 30 days before it takes effect. The date at the top always reflects the current version.
Contact
ACCTAN, operator of FablePond.
contact@acctan.com
One inbox covers general support, privacy and data-rights requests, children's privacy, refunds, accessibility and content-safety reports. Please say which it concerns in the subject line so we can route it quickly.
Postal address and registered company details to be inserted before public launch.