Privacy policy
1. Who is responsible
Smart Kids Zone is operated under ZaQuest Ventures. Privacy and support contact: admin@smartkidszone.com. This policy covers the website and the current Android and iPhone online previews, which display the same learning service and use the same family accounts and backend. It does not describe future app features or store purchases as already available. The previews require internet access. Google sign-in currently uses the website in the system browser; a browser sign-in does not automatically sign the app in.
2. The service and the people using it
The service provides quizzes, short explanations and learning reinforcement. Children can try guest learning. A parent or guardian creates a family account to manage child learning accounts, saved results and optional paid membership. A child does not need a separate email address. The parent is responsible for managing the family account, but children's own privacy rights still apply. There is also a short, child-friendly explanation of how the service uses data.
3. Information used
For parents we use email address, an optional private parent nickname, password hash where a password is set, account/consent timestamps, chosen membership and child links. Passwords are hashed. The administrator dashboard is read-only and does not provide password or reset-link access. A parent reset email can be requested through the public Forgot password form; only the registered address receives it. That form uses a security maths check, sending limits and a browser-session request counter. The counter records requests, not confirmed email delivery.
Parents may optionally tell us how they heard about Smart Kids Zone. The listed source and any Other response (up to 20 characters) are visible only to authorised administrators. Leaving it blank does not affect registration or learning. We use these voluntary answers and aggregate counts to understand how families find the service, under our legitimate interests in improving outreach. This question does not capture browsing history or enable advertising tracking. Information linked to a learner or family account is personal information, even when a nickname is used instead of a real name.
For children we use nickname, unique username, password hash, selected school year, optional selected avatar, profile status and leaderboard permission. Do not use a child's real name, school name or identifying details as a nickname. Profiles do not require a date of birth, home address, school or child email.
Learning information includes quiz topics, year/difficulty, answers during a session, scores, accuracy, timing, dates and the progress records available to that family. A difficulty choice belongs to an activity, not a fixed child level.
Payments are handled by third-party providers through Stripe, with Google Pay and Apple Pay where available at checkout. We do not store card numbers, card expiry dates, security codes, bank-account details or payment-wallet credentials. We keep limited billing records: the plan, amount, payment/subscription status, relevant dates, trial use and provider references needed to verify membership, manage cancellations or refunds, and meet accounting obligations. We also record the policy and checkout wording versions accepted by the parent, the time of acceptance, the immediate-access request, recurring-charge agreement where relevant, and the agreed plan, trial, price and upgrade quote. We keep copies of the agreed terms and send transactional confirmation emails to the registered parent address after verified trials and payments. This is separate from marketing consent. No card or wallet credentials are added to these records. Confirmation email queue content is encrypted, removed after sending, and removed after seven days if delivery repeatedly fails. Delivery status is kept with the limited billing record; SMTP acceptance does not prove inbox delivery. Necessary paid-contract evidence may be retained with financial records after learning-account deletion under the retention rules below.
Support information includes what you enter in Contact Us or send by email.
Technical information includes network IPs needed to communicate, browser/device information and security controls. Our added sign-in history stores a masked IP, a broad device/browser label, time, role and sign-in method. It does not store the full raw IP in that history. Hosting/payment providers may keep their own logs.
4. Why information is used
We use it to provide learning and account access; save and show permitted progress; administer the family plan; verify payments and prevent fabricated scores; provide password recovery; answer enquiries; and protect accounts. Parents can see their own children's permitted records. Authorised administrators have read-only access to family details, membership status, learning content, reports and security history. They cannot change account emails, memberships, account status, publication status or passwords through the dashboard. Exceptional technical maintenance is separate from dashboard permissions. Security statistics count sign-in events; they are not a measure of learning ability. We do not build advertising profiles from children's learning results or sell children's information. There is no child-to-child messaging feature in this release.
5. Legal bases
For parent account administration, a purchased membership and requested steps before purchase, we rely on performance of our contract with the adult.
For limited child learning records, guest quiz processing, service security, fraud prevention, enquiries and voluntary discovery-source answers, we rely on our legitimate interests in providing and protecting the requested service and understanding how families find it. Children's rights and interests must be considered when deciding what information is necessary and proportionate.
Optional leaderboard participation and approximate sign-in location are off unless the parent enables them. We use these settings to provide the requested competition or account-security feature, under our legitimate interests in providing those optional features with privacy controls. Turning either feature off does not prevent basic learning; the sections below explain how to do this.
We rely on legal obligation for necessary tax/accounting records and binding legal requirements. If we use consent for a separately identified purpose, we will explain that purpose and how to withdraw it when asking. Withdrawing such consent does not affect earlier lawful processing or access to the basic service.
A parent's contract does not automatically provide the basis for all processing of children's information. Contact us if you wish to object or ask about a basis.
6. Guest learning
Guest learning does not create a parent or child account. Temporary session data supports the quiz, scoring and a later save request. The browser holds temporary session references. Unsaved work should not be relied on after closing the browser; some browsers may restore a session. The server's guest session expires after 2 hours and is removed by routine cleanup. If a parent signs in or creates a Free family account before expiry, they can assign eligible guest results to an authorised child. That action does not itself start a paid plan.
We count guest quiz starts, completions, saved guest results and verified links to newly created family accounts. A guest quiz is a learning session, not a unique person or a general website visitor. Where an unexpired completed guest quiz is linked to registration through its existing session reference, we can measure elapsed time from that quiz's start to registration. This is not a measurement of active study time, and cannot identify every unlinked conversion. Counts of successful sign-ins, new registrations, trials, first paid families and upgrades help us understand use of the service. Payment statistics keep test and live environments separate. These statistics do not change membership.
For guest location counts, the server uses the local IP-location database to estimate country at quiz start. Only daily country-level totals are kept for this feature; no raw IP, city, GPS location, browsing history or new tracking cookie is stored for it. Estimates can be unavailable or reflect a VPN/network. We use our legitimate interests in understanding service use and reliability for these limited operational statistics. Aggregate guest counts last up to 12 months. Short-lived hashed duplicate-prevention references last up to 30 days and are removed by routine cleanup; ordinary guest quiz records still expire after two hours. The existing scoped session reference used to save guest work can also verify a conversion. We do not combine these references into a persistent visitor tracking profile.
7. Leaderboards
Subject-quiz rankings show a learner nickname, average score, time and rank for comparable practice to signed-in learners with eligible Premium access. Times-table competition rankings are available to eligible signed-in Free and Premium learners, as described below. The leaderboard page itself can be reached by visitors, but the current rankings endpoint requires an eligible learner sign-in. Subject-quiz rankings require Premium eligibility. All displayed rankings require parent permission. Other families' eligible learners can see these rankings; they are not private family reports. They do not display parent email, learner username, internal learner identifier, sign-in history or location. Parents should choose a non-identifying nickname and can change leaderboard permission in the child's settings. A permission change can remove a learner from displayed rankings without deleting the whole learning account. Performance should be interpreted as practice feedback, not an official assessment or a prediction of examination success.
8. Optional sign-in location estimates
City/region estimates are OFF by default. A parent may enable them for future family sign-ins to help recognise unusual account access. Children are told in the Learner area that their parent can see the sign-in information. There is no browser GPS request, continuous route tracking, map of a child or storage of latitude/longitude by the sign-in feature. The server compares the connection's IP against a locally held DB-IP database. The visitor's IP is not sent to DB-IP as part of that lookup. An estimate can reflect a network, VPN or mobile gateway, and does not prove physical whereabouts. Authorised parents and site administrators can view permitted history; it is not public. The setting remains enabled until the parent changes it. Turning estimates off removes saved city/region/country values for that family's history. Sign-in records otherwise expire after 30 days.
9. Google sign-in and payments
Google sign-in is optional and for the parent. When chosen, we verify Google's response and use the provider's stable account identifier and verified email. We do not obtain the Google password or use the connection to read mail, contacts or files. The application does not retain Google's access/refresh tokens. An existing family is not silently merged by email; the signed-in parent must explicitly connect Google. A new Google family must confirm guardian responsibility. Stripe provides payment checkout and subscription management. Google Pay and Apple Pay may be offered through checkout where enabled and supported by the device, browser and plan. Those providers process information under their own notices, including payment security/fraud purposes. Only adults should use billing functions. Apple sign-in is not yet an active feature and is not represented as one here.
10. Hosting and other recipients
Hostinger supplies hosting and the site's email mailbox. The owner has confirmed that the website files and associated MySQL database are hosted in the United Kingdom. The current Hostinger Email mailbox storage has been identified as Frankfurt, Germany. Backup replica locations are not confirmed as UK-only. Google supplies the optional sign-in service; the current stylesheet also requests fonts from Google Fonts, which causes ordinary browser connection information to reach Google when those fonts load. Stripe and a selected payment method provider receive relevant payment information. The local DB-IP data supplies estimates without a per-user network lookup. We may share necessary information with professional advisers or authorities where there is an appropriate legal reason. We do not claim all suppliers act only as processors: some have independent responsibilities for their own security/payment services.
Hostinger's Data Processing Addendum addresses subprocessors and provides contractual safeguards, including the UK International Data Transfer Addendum where it applies. Its current terms are available at https://www.hostinger.com/legal/dpa. You may contact us for information about applicable safeguards.
Information may be processed outside the UK by these suppliers. Where a restricted transfer requires safeguards, applicable adequacy arrangements or contractual protections must be used. Contact the privacy email above to ask about the arrangements relevant to your information or request safeguard details. We do not represent every backup replica or supplier operation as UK-only.
11. Retention and deletion
- Account/profile information and Free basic learning records remain while the relevant account/profile exists. An automatic inactive-account purge is not currently implemented. No additional inactivity deletion period has been adopted.
- Premium learning history is scheduled for deletion one year after the relevant entitlement ends. Returning to Free does not make retained Premium history visible as a Premium report. Renewals/upgrades affect entitlement-linked retention.
- Temporary guest quiz sessions expire after 2 hours; cleanup follows expiry.
- Successful sign-in history expires after 30 days; routine cleanup removes it.
- Family hold, resume and deletion-action history is kept for 30 days and removed with the family account if sooner. Optional discovery answers are kept with the parent account and removed on permanent family deletion. Current hold and deletion dates remain as needed to manage the account and recovery request.
- Reset links expire after 30 minutes and are single-use. Short-lived encrypted email queue copies are cleared after sending, expiry or their retry limit. Reset-request metadata is eligible for deletion one hour after creation and is removed by the hourly cleanup; it can therefore remain until that run.
- Contact sending copies are encrypted and cleared after delivery or the retry limit. Undelivered messages expire after 24 hours, then routine cleanup removes them. Delivered support emails are kept for handling the enquiry and necessary follow-up, then deleted unless relevant extracts are needed for accounting, a complaint or a legal claim.
- We normally keep records required for Self Assessment for at least five years after the 31 January submission deadline for the relevant tax year. Different HMRC rules can apply to very late returns; records subject to an enquiry or other legal preservation requirement may need longer retention. This applies to necessary financial records, not all children's learning data.
- Limited contract, complaint and permission evidence is kept only as necessary to demonstrate compliance or establish, exercise or defend legal claims. For ordinary simple-contract claims in England and Wales, the usual limitation period is six years from accrual of the claim. This is not a requirement to keep every account, message or quiz for six years. Other claims, jurisdictions and circumstances can have different periods. Relevant records are reviewed when the matter and any applicable preservation requirement end.
- Hostinger's automatic daily website/database backups are normally retained for 7 days; weekly backups for 6 weeks. Deleted live records can remain in older snapshots until expiry. Individual records cannot be edited out through the customer backup tools. Restoring an older backup requires a separate process to reapply completed deletions before normal use resumes.
- Hostinger Email access logs are available for 30 days and can contain mailbox, IP, access time, client and protocol details. They are separate from our own family sign-in history. A whole deleted Hostinger mailbox can generally be restored for up to 30 days; this is not the retention period for a single message deleted from our active mailbox.
Individual-message recovery and website, firewall and infrastructure logs have separate provider retention processes. Mailbox-account recovery is not a 30-day deadline for removing every individual message. Manual downloaded backups are also separate from automatic backup expiry. Contact us for information about retention affecting a particular request or provider record.
Deleting an individual child profile removes its associated live learning records; putting that profile on hold keeps records. These individual-child actions do not themselves cancel renewal.
The parent can separately put the whole family account on hold or request whole-family deletion in the parent dashboard. Both whole-family actions stop automatic renewal and pause learning for all children. A hold keeps retained account records and can be resumed; it does not extend paid access or existing retention deadlines. Resuming does not automatically restart renewal.
A whole-family deletion request starts a 30-day recovery period. The account is held during that period. The parent can sign in to explicitly cancel the deletion request before the displayed deadline; signing in alone does not cancel it. After cancellation, the account remains on hold until the parent resumes it.
At the deadline, recovery and sign-in stop. Routine cleanup then permanently removes the parent's sign-in email and authentication records, child profiles and associated live learning data. Limited necessary financial evidence is retained separately with restricted access under the tax/claims rules above.
Payment-provider records, delivered correspondence and hosting backups may have separate lawful retention and deletion processes; this is not a promise that every copy at every provider vanishes at the same instant.
Use Contact Us for information-rights requests, including earlier erasure where applicable. The recovery option does not restrict statutory erasure rights or permit undue delay in handling them.
We may retain limited records where required by law or needed for a live dispute.
12. Rights, choices and complaints
Depending on the circumstances, you or your child can request access, correction, erasure, restriction or portability, object to processing, or withdraw consent where that is the basis used. Contact the privacy email above. We take reasonable steps to check the requester's authority without collecting unnecessary evidence. Children have rights in their own information; parental access is not unlimited regardless of a child's circumstances. We explain when an exception applies. You can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at https://ico.org.uk/. People outside the UK may also have rights or a local supervisory authority.
Requests are normally free. We normally respond within one month, subject to the applicable rules on identity checks, clarification and permitted extensions. If more time is allowed and needed, we will explain the reason and timing.
Account email and necessary authentication details are required for an account; without them we cannot provide that account. Guest learning remains available. Avatars, optional parent display names, leaderboard participation and location estimates are not required for basic learning. Payment-provider requirements apply when an adult chooses to purchase. We use automatic marking and rankings for practice feedback, not decisions about school admission or qualifications.
13. Security and changes
We use HTTPS, scoped account access, password hashing, restricted billing access, verified payment notifications and protected sign-in/reset flows. No system can promise absolute security. Report suspected account misuse promptly. We will update this policy when the service or data uses change and explain material changes and make the current policy version available on this page.
14. App previews and sign-in platform counts
The current app previews use the device web view to connect to smartkidszone.com. They do not add advertising identifiers, advertising SDKs, personal-photo collection, microphone recording, contact-book access or GPS location collection. Opening external links or checkout can use the system browser and its own cookies. Apple TestFlight, Apple and Google may separately process distribution, testing or device information under their notices.
We record the reported sign-in platform (iPhone app, Android app, web or unknown) with successful sign-in history. Parent and administrator views show this with the existing device and time. Administrators can view a family's latest retained successful sign-in source and 7/30-day counts of successful sign-ins and distinct parent/learner accounts by platform. One account can appear on more than one platform. Guest quiz sessions are counted separately. Platform information is descriptive and can be unavailable or inaccurate; it is not identity verification or a precise location. Older records are not retrospectively assigned an app platform.
Failed password sign-ins are counted separately in daily totals by platform and account role, without storing the attempted email, username, password, raw IP or location in those totals. Security-check failures, blocked memberships and social sign-in failures are not included in this password-failure count. Successful sign-in history expires after 30 days; daily failed-sign-in totals are kept for up to 30 calendar days and removed by routine cleanup. These operational counts use our legitimate interests in service security and reliability, do not create an advertising profile, and remain restricted to authorised administrators. Deleting an account removes its linked sign-in history; anonymous failure totals cannot identify a particular family.
For the current previews, payments remain provided through the existing website Stripe checkout where offered. Apple In-App Purchase and Google Play Billing are planned for a future store release and are not enabled by this update. We will update payment information and notices before those features are activated. See Child safety and safeguarding for reporting concerns and the present safety controls.
Android app update checks
The Android preview can use Google Play's in-app update service to check for, download and install versions available to the signed-in Google Play account. Google's update service uses device metadata, application version and installed module/asset-pack information to determine update availability and size. Google handles the update process. Smart Kids Zone does not receive a Google password or payment card details from an update check. Update checks do not require GPS permission. The menu also offers an explicit page refresh; the app does not automatically reload an unfinished quiz to apply website changes.
Optional plan-change reminders
A parent may request one operational email reminder. We keep the requested plan, parent account reference, due date and delivery status, and use the registered parent email when needed. Cancel in Parent area. Completed, cancelled or delivery-attempt records are removed after 30 days; pending requests after at most 400 days. Permanent family deletion removes the reminder.
Activity display on Free and Premium
Free displays the selected learner’s latest three retained activity summaries. Older retained activities are saved but hidden on Free. Premium can display retained history, subject to the existing retention periods and deletion requests. Upgrading cannot restore deleted records or recreate detailed answers that were not recorded on Free. Premium also unlocks extra questions; each topic shows its current Free and Premium question-pool sizes. Each quiz still has ten questions.
Apple TestFlight payment records
The approved TestFlight pilot additionally uses Apple StoreKit, Apple's App Store Server API and signed server notifications. We keep a random family account token, product and transaction references, verified access dates, renewal/trial status and purchase consent evidence to grant access and prevent duplicate or cross-family claims. These references are personal data when linked to a family. We do not receive the parent's Apple password or full card/payment credentials. Apple processes App Store payments under its own privacy terms. No GPS access is required. The same family deletion and applicable financial-record retention rules apply. Apple renewal must be stopped in Apple settings before account hold/deletion. Notifications are used for renewals, cancellation and refunds; the pilot does not enable public production Apple billing.
Times-table competitions and rankings
Maths Champions, Times Table Champion and Times Table Extra are Free, including their leaderboards. Ranked play requires parent permission to display a learner nickname. Rankings use a fixed competition year, Computer or Mobile/tablet category, and the latest ten eligible ranked attempts. Lower-year subject quizzes do not qualify. Country rankings use a country code estimated locally from the network IP; city, region, GPS and nationality are not collected for this feature. A country estimate can be wrong. Parents can withdraw display permission at any time. Learning access is unaffected.
Practice is separate from ranked play. A started ranked round counts even if abandoned. We retain competition round summaries and the minimal ranking data with the learner account; Free displays the latest three competition rounds and Premium displays up to one hundred retained rounds. Submitted-answer details are removed after seven days and completed question decks after one day by the scheduled cleanup. Account deletion removes associated competition records. No child chat, school names, contact details or public profiles are added. Device categorisation is best-effort; physical-keyboard attempts belong in Computer. IP Geolocation by DB-IP.
Your parent chooses your school year in Manage child. This sets your default learning year and leaderboard group. You can practise other years without changing that group. If your parent confirms a school-year change, all your leaderboard results start fresh and any active competition round ends. Saved learning and competition history remain subject to the usual history limits. Ten new eligible attempts are needed in each ranking category.
Maths Champions uses the same one-minute competition, parent permission, year group, device, country and rolling last-ten ranking rules. It has a separate leaderboard and mixes mental maths skills for the parent-selected school year. Free shows the latest three competition rounds; Premium shows up to one hundred retained rounds. No additional personal information is collected for Maths Champions.
Spelling Bee
Spelling Bee and its leaderboard are Free. Words and meaning hints use saved British English recordings, with a male or female voice chosen before a round. The microphone is not used and children’s voices are not recorded. No child information is sent to Google Text-to-Speech during play. The same parent permission, school year, device and country rankings, latest-ten scoring and history limits apply. Submitted spellings are checked on the server; a hash used to handle retries and answer feedback are removed with competition answer details after seven days. Premium reveals the correct spelling after an incorrect answer; it does not change points or ranking eligibility.
Guest competition samples
Guest practice uses a separate small set of spelling and maths samples. No sign-in, child nickname, country estimate or leaderboard entry is needed. Guest typed answers, scores and timers are processed in the browser and are not sent to the account database. Results are not saved: they clear when finishing, starting another round, refreshing or closing the page. Sample questions and saved audio are downloaded as ordinary website files; usual hosting request logs and browser caching may apply. No microphone or live voice-generation service is used. A parent can create a Free account for more questions, saved progress and rankings with parent permission.
Times Table Extra rounds now last three minutes; other competition rounds last one minute. New Extra rankings use three-minute results only, preserving earlier personal history. Unfinished registered practice rounds can be quit without saving; ranked rounds still count if ended early. Spelling Bee offers in-page letter buttons to avoid phone spelling suggestions. Guest times-table rounds contain at most twenty questions. Guest result-clearing actions ask for confirmation; browser warnings on refresh or leaving depend on device support.