Reader Tree — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 12 July 2026

Reader Tree is a small, non‑commercial pilot that helps children (roughly Grades 1–5) grow their vocabulary through short stories. A parent sets up and controls each account. We collect as little as we can, we never sell data, and there are no ads or third‑party advertising trackers. This page explains, plainly, what we collect and why.

Who runs Reader Tree

Reader Tree is run by an individual parent as a private pilot. You can reach us any time at hello@reader-tree.com.

What we collect

• Child’s first name and grade — entered by the parent, used only to label progress and pick suitable stories. Please use a first name or nickname; no last names are needed.
• Reading activity — which stories were opened or finished, quiz answers and first‑try correctness, words tapped, and timestamps.
• “In your own words” answers — if a child types or speaks an answer to a story, we store that text and, for spoken answers, a short voice recording and its written transcript.
• Parent account (only if you sign in) — if you choose “Sign in with Google,” we receive your Google account’s email address and a user ID, so your children’s progress is saved to your family account. You can instead use Guest mode, which keeps progress on the device and in our database without any account or email.

We do not collect precise location, contacts, advertising identifiers, or any data beyond what’s described here.

How we use it

• To show a child’s reading progress and suggest what to read next.
• To turn spoken answers into text and give gentle, encouraging feedback (see “AI processing” below).
• If you’re signed in, to send you an occasional warm summary email about your child’s reading, to your account email address.

AI processing of answers

When a child gives an open answer, we send that answer — and, for spoken answers, the audio — to Google’s Gemini AI to produce a transcript and a short, positive note. This is used only to give feedback within the app; the answers are not used to show ads or build a profile.

Service providers we rely on

We use a small number of trusted providers strictly to run the app. They process data on our behalf and are not permitted to use it for their own purposes:

• Google Firebase — hosting, database, file storage, and Google sign‑in.
• Google Gemini API — transcription and scoring of open answers, as above.
• Resend — delivering the summary email to signed‑in parents.

We never sell or rent your or your child’s information, and we don’t share it for advertising.

Children’s privacy

Reader Tree is designed to be set up and supervised by a parent or guardian, who provides the child’s first name and grade. There is no public profile, no chat with strangers, no advertising, and no behavioural tracking. If you believe a child has used the app without a parent’s involvement and you’d like the data removed, email us and we’ll delete it.

Where data is stored & how it’s protected

Data is stored using Google Firebase (Firestore and Cloud Storage) in Google’s India (asia‑south1) region. Access is restricted by security rules so that a family’s records can be read only by that signed‑in family account and by the app’s administrator.

Keeping and deleting data

We keep data only for as long as it’s useful for the pilot. You can ask us to show or delete your child’s data at any time — just email hello@reader-tree.com and we’ll take care of it. Guest‑mode progress also lives in your browser’s local storage, which you can clear yourself at any time.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we’ll update the date at the top of this page. For a pilot, changes will be modest and in the same spirit: collect little, be honest, keep it safe.