Privacy Policy.
We built StorytimeByMe so children can hear classic stories read by the people they love. Protecting your family — and especially your children — is the whole point. This policy explains, in plain language, what we collect, why, and the control you keep. We designed it to be conscious of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and similar rules.
The short version
- Parents are in charge. Only a parent or guardian creates the account, sets up child profiles, and approves every narration before a child can hear it.
- Children don't get accounts. No email, password, or real name is required for a child — just a parent-chosen display name inside your family space. Grown-up profiles are the ones kept behind a PIN.
- No trackers around children. We block third-party analytics when a child is using the app, and we never sell or share family data.
- Delete means delete. You can permanently remove your whole family's data at any time.
1.Who we are
StorytimeByMe ("we," "us," "our") provides a family storytime app where parents, grandparents, and invited relatives record their own narrations of classic children's books. This policy covers our website (storytimebyme.com) and the StorytimeByMe app during its private beta. The parent or guardian who creates the account is the account holder and controls the family's data within the app.
2.Information we collect
From parents / guardians (account holders)
- Email address and a password, to create and secure your account.
- A record of each attempt to create an account — the email address you entered, when, and whether it worked. We keep this so that when a signup fails, or a verification email does not reach you, we can contact you and fix it rather than never knowing it happened. We never store the password you typed. See §7 for how long we keep it.
- Basic account and device information (e.g., IP address) used for sign-in, security, and to keep a record of parental consent.
- Anything you choose to send us, such as beta feedback or support messages.
- Your answers to any survey we send you in the app. Surveys go to grown-ups only — never to children or Kid Mode — and answering is optional. Unless a survey says it is anonymous, your answers are stored with your name and family so we can follow up; no one else in your family can see them. An anonymous survey stores your answers without your name or family.
From invited family members (narrators)
- If a relative records through a one-tap invite link, we process the audio (and, where used, video) of the narration so it can be reviewed by the parent and played for the child. Narrators using the link aren't required to create an account.
- If a family member chooses to make their own profile, we collect an email and password as above.
- Story gifts from grandparents. A grandparent (or another relative) can sign up before the parents do and record stories as a gift. To say who the gift is for, we ask only for the grandchild’s first name — nothing else about the child, and no child profile is created. The grandparent sends a private gift link to the parents; anyone holding that link can listen to those recordings until a parent adds them to their family or the link expires (30 days after it was last sent). When a parent adds the gift, the recordings and the grandparent move into that parent’s family, and the parent can remove either at any time.
- Story emails. If you read stories for a family but aren’t a parent in it (for example, a grandparent), we email you at the address on your account when a child listens to one of your stories or sends you a ❤️, and when a child or parent asks you for a story. The email gives the child’s first name, the story’s title and, for a request, the first name of the parent who asked. We send at most one email a day about listening. Every email has a link to stop them, and you can also switch them off in the app under You → Notifications. Parents don’t get these emails.
About child profiles (managed by the parent)
- A display name chosen by the parent (no real name required).
- Narration recordings approved for that child, and a simple reading history / wishlist so the child can find and request stories.
- An avatar the parent selects or generates. Any photo used to create an avatar is temporary and auto-expires from storage.
We do not request or store separate emails, passwords, real names, precise location, or contact lists for children.
3.Parental consent (children's privacy / COPPA)
A parent or guardian must set up the account and provide verifiable consent before any child profile is created or any child can use the app. Children interact with the app only inside a parent-controlled "kid mode," which holds nothing but the books and narrations you have approved; the parent and family-member profiles that can change those settings sit behind a PIN. Every narration is reviewed and approved by the parent before a child can hear it. If you believe a child has provided us information without your consent, contact us at privacy@storytimebyme.com and we will delete it.
4.How we use information
We use the information above only to:
- Provide the service — storing books, recording and playing narrations, tracking reading progress and wishlists.
- Let parents review and approve content, and let invited family members record.
- Generate avatars you choose to create.
- Keep accounts secure and maintain records of parental consent.
- During the beta only: understand whether features work and respond to the feedback you send us.
We do not use children's information for advertising or profiling, and we do not show ads in the app.
5.No third-party tracking around children
Our app blocks third-party analytics and advertising scripts (for example, general-purpose analytics or ad SDKs) when a child profile is in use. We do not load such tools around children without a privacy review.
On this marketing website only — the pages at storytimebyme.com, which no child uses — we count visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics. It sets no cookies, does not fingerprint you, does not follow you across other websites, and gives us aggregate counts only: how many people visited a page, roughly where in the world they were, and which site sent them. We use it for one purpose: to know whether the people who read this page go on to request an invite. It is never loaded inside the app.
6.Who can see your family's data
Data within a family is visible only to the parent/guardian who created the account and to family members they invite (for example, a grandparent recording a story). We never sell or rent your data, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.
We use a small number of trusted service providers to run the app — for example, cloud hosting and storage to keep your account and recordings available, and Resend, an email service in the United States that delivers story emails (§2) on our behalf. These providers process data only on our instructions and only to deliver the service. We aim to share the minimum necessary.
7.Retention & deletion
You stay in control of your family's data. From your settings you can permanently delete your whole family account. When you do, access is removed immediately and the underlying data is scheduled for permanent deletion shortly afterward (within about 7 days). Photos used for avatars auto-expire from storage. You can also email privacy@storytimebyme.com to request manual deletion.
Records of attempts to create an account (§2) are deleted automatically 90 days after the first attempt, whether or not an account was created. If you would like yours removed sooner, email privacy@storytimebyme.com and we will delete it.
Survey answers (§2) are kept until your family's account is deleted, and are deleted with it. Anonymous answers are not linked to you or your family, so they cannot be found or removed individually.
Story emails waiting to be sent (§2) are deleted once they are sent, or after three days if they cannot be, straight away if you switch story emails off, and always when the family is deleted. Resend keeps a log of the emails it has delivered for 30 days.
8.Security
We protect data with industry-standard measures, including encryption in transit and access controls that limit who can reach your information. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to keep your family's data safe and to limit what we collect in the first place.
9.Your choices and rights
As the account holder you can review, update, or delete your family's information at any time from within the app, or by contacting us. Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights (such as to access or port your data); email us and we'll help. Because children don't hold their own accounts, requests about a child's data are made by the parent or guardian.
10.Children under 13 and international families
StorytimeByMe is intended to be set up and controlled by adults. Children use it only through a parent-managed profile. We handle children's data consistent with COPPA. If you use StorytimeByMe from outside the country where our service operates, your information may be processed in that country under this policy.
11.Changes to this policy
Because we're in active beta, this policy may change as the product evolves. If we make a material change, we'll update the "Last updated" date above and notify beta families. Continuing to use StorytimeByMe after an update means you accept the revised policy.
12.Contact us
Questions, requests, or want your data deleted? Email privacy@storytimebyme.com and a real person will respond. For general questions you can also reach us at hello@storytimebyme.com.