🌱 Sprout Pals
Privacy Policy
Last updated: November 14, 2026
Open beta. Sprout Pals is in open beta for families in the United States and Canada (except Quebec). A parent joins by leaving their email on our homepage and is admitted automatically, and it's free while we test. This policy describes how the beta works.
Sprout Pals is a learning app for children aged 7 to 17, with friendly cartoon buddies, lessons and games. This policy explains what information we collect, why, and the choices parents have. Sprout Pals is published by Charles Chang, operating as Bao Bao Gaming Studios, 6-2160 Highway 7, Suite 818, Vaughan, Ontario L4K 1W6, Canada; telephone (647) 366-8241; email support@baobaogaming.com ("we", "us"). Using the app is also covered by our terms of service. Parents: our children's privacy notice sums up what we collect about your child and how you consent, in one page.
The short version
- Only parents have accounts. Children never sign in, never type an email and never create a password. A child is a profile in their parent's family: a nickname, an age and a buddy.
- Before cloud sync is turned on, your child's profile and learning progress aren't uploaded to Sprout Pals. That's how the free plan and the trial work. On Family, you can turn on cloud sync on a separate screen; it starts after your first payment by card on our website, which is how we check a parent agreed.
- No ads, no ad tracking, no selling data. Sprout Pals has no advertising and no third-party analytics.
- Your child's voice stays on the device. When your child talks to the app, the speech is turned into text on the device itself and the recording is thrown away; it is never sent to us or anyone else. Children can also type or tap.
- There's no chat. The buddy only says lines written in advance (some with the help of AI, using no child's information), and children answer by tapping or typing set answers. Nothing a child writes is sent to an AI or kept as a conversation.
- Parents can see their child's progress, change settings, and delete a child or the whole family at any time.
What we collect
| Information | Why |
|---|---|
| Parent account: an account ID and email address from Google, Apple, or a sign-in link sent to your email | To manage your plan; with cloud sync on, to keep your family's profiles and progress safe and available on your devices; and to confirm it's you when you reset your parent PIN. This is your Bao Bao Gaming Studios account (see below). |
| Tester sign-up email: an email address a parent leaves on our front page, and the name of the ad or link they came from, if any (such as "applovin") | Only to let you sign in as a tester, send your sign-in link and send messages about testing Sprout Pals. We don't share it or send newsletters; email us to have it removed. |
| Child profiles: a nickname (it doesn't have to be a real name), age, and chosen buddy | To pick lessons and buddy lines suited to the child's age. We don't ask for full names, birthdays, photos, schools or locations. |
| Learning progress: the grade each subject is taught at (from the warm-up, everyday practice, or your choice), the school grade you entered (optional), answers right and wrong, questions already seen, seeds, garden items, streaks, daily minutes, lesson videos watched and reward goals you set | To teach at the right level, avoid repeats, and show you a progress dashboard. The grade is a starting point for practice, not a test result; it's never shown to your child or shared, and it's deleted with your child's profile. |
| Usage counts: how much of the family's monthly natural-voice allowance has been used | To apply the limits of your plan. |
| Your parent PIN, stored only as a one-way scrambled form (a hash) | To keep the parent area closed to children on every device. We can't read your PIN. |
| Technical data: IP address, device and app version in server logs | Security, preventing abuse and fixing problems. Logs are kept for a short time. |
We do not collect precise location, contacts, photos or advertising IDs.
Voice
When your child holds the talk button, the app records only while it is held (or until they stop talking) and turns the speech into text with a speech model that runs on the device. The recording stays in the device's memory just long enough to do that and is then thrown away: it is never uploaded, saved or shared. The first time, the device downloads the speech model (tens of MB) once from a public model library; no audio or personal information is sent with that download. The text is then used exactly as if your child had typed it (it is checked against the lesson's answer). We don't use the browser's built-in speech recognition, because that sends audio to the browser's maker, for example Google or Apple. Children can always type or tap instead. The buddy's spoken lines are created from the buddy's own words, either on your device or by Inworld (see below).
Information stored on the device
The app keeps a copy of your family's profiles, progress and settings on the device so it works offline. If you don't sign in, everything stays on that device only. Uninstalling the app or clearing the browser's data removes it.
Parental consent (COPPA)
Before a child starts, a parent or guardian sets up the family and agrees to this policy. Sprout Pals collects only the information in the table above, and children can't chat or send free-form messages. Child profiles and progress are uploaded only with cloud sync, which a parent turns on separately after reading what's saved, why, where and how to stop, and which starts only after the family's first payment for Family by card on our website (the payment service notifies the account holder of each charge). The free trial ($0) doesn't count, and for now App Store and Google Play purchases don't start cloud sync. We keep a record of the agreement (time, notice version, the children covered by internal id, the payment confirmation) for 3 years. A parent can turn cloud sync off at any time, which deletes the account copy, or delete a child or the family (see below); we then stop collecting that child's information.
Who we share it with
We use a small number of service providers who process data on our behalf, only to run Sprout Pals, under contracts that limit how they use it:
- Inworld: turns the buddy's lines into a natural voice for teens (13-17) on the Family plan with cloud sync on; younger children's devices make the voice themselves. It receives the buddy's words only (which may include your child's nickname).
- Resend: sends parents' emails, such as the reminder before a free trial ends, and a note to us when someone joins the tester waitlist. It receives the parent's email address.
- Supabase: our database and sign-in (accounts, profiles, progress), and the storage our short lesson videos play from. Videos play in the app's own player, never through YouTube or another video service.
- Vercel: hosts the app and its server.
- Google, Apple: sign-in (if you choose them), and the app stores' payments.
- RevenueCat and Stripe: process subscription purchases. We never receive card numbers.
We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect a child's safety. We do not sell or rent personal information, and we never use children's information for advertising.
One account across our games
Your parent sign-in is a Bao Bao Gaming Studios account, and the same login works in our other apps and games. Sprout Pals keeps your family's data separately from them, and none of our other apps can read it. Deleting the whole account (not just Sprout Pals data) removes your data in every one of our apps.
Deleting your data
In the app: open Parents (behind your PIN). You can delete a child's profile, or tap Delete Sprout Pals data from my account under Family account (or Delete all our data under Privacy, which also clears the device) to remove all of your family's Sprout Pals data from our servers at once. This happens immediately. Deleting your data doesn't cancel a subscription: cancel it under Plan or in your app store.
A copy of your data: in Parents → Privacy, tap Download a copy of our data to save everything we hold about your family as a file.
By email: you can ask us to review, delete, or stop collecting your child's information, or to delete your whole Bao Bao Gaming Studios account. See our account deletion page. We'll complete requests within 30 days.
How long we keep it
Without cloud sync, profiles and progress are only on your device, until you delete them there. In your account (cloud sync): until you turn cloud sync off or delete them, or at most until 12 months after your Family plan ends or 24 months after your family last used Sprout Pals, whichever comes first; we email you 60 and 30 days before. Deleted data leaves our database provider's backups within 7 days. Server logs are kept for about a week. Records of your consent: 3 years. There's no chat, so no conversations are kept, and records from earlier test versions that had chat have been deleted. Purchase records may be kept longer where tax law requires it.
Where your information is stored
Sprout Pals stores and processes account information in the United States (Supabase, Vercel and our other service providers). While it's there, it may be accessible to courts, law enforcement and national security authorities of the United States. Sprout Pals is offered in Canada (except Quebec, for now) and the United States.
Your rights
Parents can review their child's information, have it deleted, and refuse further collection at any time. Depending on where you live (including Canada's PIPEDA, the U.S. COPPA and state laws such as California's), you may have further rights to access, correct or delete personal information. Contact us below.
Security
Data is sent over encrypted connections and stored with strict access controls: each family's data is reachable only through checks that it belongs to that parent's account. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable steps to protect your family's information.
Changes
If we change this policy we'll update the date above. For important changes affecting children's information, we'll tell parents in the app and ask for consent again where the law requires it.
Contact
Operator: Charles Chang, operating as Bao Bao Gaming Studios
6-2160 Highway 7, Suite 818, Vaughan, Ontario L4K 1W6, Canada
Telephone: (647) 366-8241
Privacy questions and requests: support@baobaogaming.com
Person responsible for privacy (privacy officer): Charles Chang