Privacy Policy

Last Modified: July 11, 2023

Welcome to the Privacy Policy for "Edkidu" , doing business as Edkidu.

Introduction

This Privacy Policy describes the policies and procedures of Edkidu., doing business as "Edkidu" ("we", "our" or "us") on the collection, use and disclosure of your information on edkidu.com, and the services, features, content, applications, and products we offer, including the educational mobile application referred to as "Edkidu" (such mobile application is referred to herein as the "App") (collectively, the "Service").

We value the privacy of children as well as their parents. Because the App is primarily intended for use by children under thirteen years old, this Privacy Policy is intended to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA"). We have posted this Privacy Policy to help both children and parents understand how a child's personal information will be treated as that child makes use of the Service.

Scope and Application

This Privacy Policy applies to persons anywhere in the world who use the Service. By using the Service, you consent to Edkidu’s collection, use and/or disclosure of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy. By allowing other people to use the Service via your account, you are confirming that you have the right to consent on their behalf to Edkidu's collection, use and disclosure of their personal information as described below.

Special Care for Privacy of Children under Thirteen

In order to provide the highest level of privacy for children's personal information, the Service does not store personal information obtained from children. All personal information collected from children using the Service is deleted immediately after processing. If any personal information is unintentionally collected from a child we immediately delete such information upon detection.

Collection of Information

You can use many elements of the Service without telling us who you are or revealing personal information about yourself. You can visit many pages on our website and use our App anonymously until you decide to tell us who you are and to disclose your personal information. To personalize our Service and tune it for you, we may ask you to share your personal information by filling out a form while using the Service. Children are protected from disclosing their personal information via a Parental Gate (see below).

The app Edkidu does use third-party services that may collect information used to identify you.

Link to the privacy policy of third-party service providers used by the app

Collecting information from children under 13

Most of the Service, including most pages of our website (edkidu.com), are built for a general audience of all ages, and does not collect or store personal data about children. Any parts of the Service, which may ask for personal information, are only accessible via a "Parental Gate" (see below).

Parental Gate

A "Parental Gate" is a standard measure to protect children from sharing their personal information online. A Parental Gate is a special page or screen with a knowledge-based authentication quiz targeted at adults. By solving an age-appropriate quiz, users of the Service prove that they are adults. The Parental Gate may also ask for a birth date, but only to identify whether a user is an adult or a child, to further confirm that the content beyond the Parental Gate is visible only to adults. Please note that information about age may be stored on our servers in aggregate depersonalized form, and may contribute to the analytical data we use to develop and enhance the Service.

We collect Information you provide to us

We do collect information you provide directly to us. For instance, when you send us an email, fill out a form, provide or request information, or otherwise submit information to or through the Service, we will collect and store such provided information. Such information may include personal information such as your name, email, and telephone number.

Children under 13 can use the Service without providing contact information. Any areas of the Service, which requires providing personal information are made available only to adults, and protected by a Parental Gate, as further described above.

Voice collection

The App involves a character that interacts with users via voice. The App captures Audio recordings during such interactions. Under COPPA, audio recordings containing children's voices ("Recordings") are considered to be "personal information."

Please note that we do not store or process Recordings. Instead, the Recordings are sent directly to Apple, Meta and Google for speech recognition and transcription purposes. Edkidu then receives transcripts (without attached audio) of such Recordings from Apple, Meta and Google and processes them to provide the Service, as further described below (see "Transcript Processing," below).

Please acknowledge that Apple, Meta and Google may use the audio data from these Recordings to improve and provide Apple products and services.

Transcript processing

The Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence technology (proprietary technology developed by Edkidu.) that enables the App and provides most of its features works with the transcripts of the Recordings that we receive from Apple, Meta and Google.

We do not store or process any Recordings, however, we do process the transcripts of such Recordings. We do not store any such transcripts locally on user devices. All transcripts are stored in aggregated and depersonalized form, and are used to improve the efficacy of our App's lessons. No audio recordings or transcripts are in any way associated with users' device IDs, IP addresses, or other identifiers that may be used to identify any users or their personal information. Thus, such information is not treated as personal information under this policy.

The App involves children talking with a virtual character. Since a child may say anything when interacting with the character, it is possible that a child may accidentally or inadvertently provide personal information that our character wasn't asking for. For instance, the child may say his name to the character. In this case, it is our policy to delete any transcripts associated with such information immediately upon detection.

Do we collect personal information from adults?

We collect personal information that Adults knowingly provide to us using special forms or emails. Access to any forms by which information may be disclosed to us is restricted by use of Parental Gates.

To learn more, please read the "Information you provide to us" and "Parental Gate" sections above.

Referral Services

If you choose to use our referral service to tell a friend about us, we will ask you for your friend's name and email address. We will use the information you provide to automatically send your friend a one-time email inviting him or her to visit our Services. We delete the email address shortly after fulfilling your request and will not share it with any third party.

Financial Information

The financial information that you enter to become a Member is not stored by Edkidu, but, instead, is retained by our payments processing vendor (i.e. Apple and Google) for the sole purpose of processing payments made to Edkidu.

Information we collect through your use of the Services

When you use our Services, we may automatically gather certain technical information including - operating system, device model, browser type, network information, time zone, language and location data.

The location information is being collected based on your IP address and is restricted to the name of your country. We are not using other technologies to determine your location (we do not use GPS, or other sensors). We do not collect location information about your exact whereabouts (i.e. name of the street or accurate address). When we have location information, we may use it to optimize our Services for you and others, allowing us to customize our website, understand and improve the services and develop new products, services, or features.

Additionally, we may also automatically collect certain information about your activities on the Service - including information about how various features of the service are used, as well as information about the frequency, number, and length of each use session. This information is used in the aggregate form only and it is not treated as personal information. For instance, we may use this data to develop appropriate educational content for particular age groups.

Ads

We do not allow advertising companies to gather data through our Service.

Cookies and beacons

We may use Cookies and other technologies such as pixel tags, web beacons, and clear GIFs to collect non-personal data to improve the Service. Emails we send you may contain code that enables us to track usage of this communication, including whether it was opened and acted upon.

Use of collected information

We use voice recordings only to get transcripts which are used directly to provide the App's core functions. (We do not store or process voice recordings, as further described in the Voice collection section)
We may use emails collected from adults to send notifications, updates, announcements, security alerts, news and special offers, support, administrative messages, and notifications of important changes to our Terms of Use or Privacy Policy.
We use non-personal data to monitor, analyze and improve usage for our website, App and Artificial Intelligence technology

What information do we share with third parties?

We will not share personal information we collect through our Service with third parties, except in the instances described below:

With voice recognition service providers such as Apple. Such voice recognition service providers may process the personal information we provide to them on our behalf, in order to test, improve, and further develop our speech recognition and artificial intelligence technologies.
For the purpose of operating our business, we may transfer information between Edkidu and certain trusted third party service providers (e.g. processing of purchase orders or marketing campaigns), that act as independent contractors on our behalf, in compliance with this Privacy Policy. We will remain responsible for their handling of your information per our instructions. We provide our service providers only with the information necessary for them to perform their services and we work with them to respect and protect your information. These parties are contractually prohibited from using personally identifiable information for any purpose other than for the purpose we specify.
When you give us your consent to do so, or if we notify you that in connection with the service the information that you provide will be shared.
As an act of good faith, we may disclose specific information in response to a court order, when required by law, to enforce our Service policies, or to protect our or others' rights, property, or safety.
We may transfer the personal information of our adult users in situations where personal information may be disclosed or transferred as one of the business assets of Edkidu. For example, in connection with (or during negotiations of) any merger, acquisition, financing or sale of a company's assets.

How do we protect your information?

We use a system of measures to protect the information we collect. Personal information is stored behind security networks and accessible only to a limited number of persons, who are required to keep the information confidential. We use encrypted communications to transfer personal information over the internet. We do not store voice recordings locally on the device or on our servers. However, please note that regardless of any efforts, no data transmission can be 100% secure and protected.

Controlling your personal information and account

To access, correct or delete your personal information please email us at edkidu2020@gmail.com. We will delete your personal information immediately upon your request, but please note that cached copies may exist for a certain period of time even after your information is deleted. Since our policy is not to keep children's personal information, such data will always be immediately deleted upon detection.

Parents or legal guardians may request that we terminate and delete their child's account. This may be done by contacting us by email at edkidu2020@gmail.com.

Changes to the Privacy Policy

Buddy.ai may change the Privacy Policy. We will update the date at the top of the Privacy Policy. We encourage you to review the Policy from time to time for the latest information on our privacy practices.

How can you contact us with privacy questions or concerns?

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or any concerns about your privacy, please email us at edkidu2020@gmail.com