Privacy Policy
Sum & Story is a learning service for children, managed by parents. We designed it to collect as little personal information as possible, and this page explains — in plain language — exactly what we collect, why, and what we do with it.
The account belongs to the parent
Accounts are created and managed by a parent or legal guardian who is at least 18 years old. During signup, the parent confirms this and consents to their child using the service. We do not knowingly allow children to create their own accounts.
What we collect
- Parent email address — used to sign in, confirm the account, reset your password, and for the emails listed in the next section.
- Child’s first name (or a nickname) — shown on their worksheets. A nickname is fine; we never require a real or full name.
- Child’s school grade — you tell us this once so the warm-up that finds their level starts at the right difficulty.
- Interests (optional) — chosen by your child from a fixed list of themes on the warm-up’s result card, so a word problem can be set in something they actually like. You can change them from the dashboard.
- Language and region — which language worksheets are written in, and whose spelling, units and examples they use.
- Learning history — worksheets, answers, scores, levels, and the skills your child is practicing. This is what makes the service adaptive.
- Child’s age and what your child finds hard — no longer asked. Until October 9, 2026 the check-in also asked, optionally, for your child’s age and, in your own words, what they found hard. We no longer ask either question. An age given then is still kept, and is still used, as a number, to suit a worksheet’s examples to your child’s age (see below). Anything you wrote about what your child finds hard is still kept with the child’s record, but since October 24, 2026 it is no longer used or sent anywhere. To have either removed, email us from the account’s address.
- Steps on the way in — we count how many visitors reach each step, like opening a page of the site or starting to sign up, so we can see where families give up. We use no cookies for this, and nothing this counting keeps in your browser can tell you apart from another visitor. Your internet address and browser are used only to make a code that changes every day, and neither is stored. Once you are signed in, the steps are tied to your account. When you create an account, we also keep four facts with it, each picked from a short fixed list and never anything you type: which page led you to the sign-up form, as your browser last recorded it, on this visit or an earlier one (the “Try 5 questions” page, once it had shown its result, with whether you or your child answered its questions; the home page; or another page), which of our own links brought you, if one did (an invitation, a link another parent shared, or a link in an email), the form’s language, and whether you used a phone, a tablet or a computer; until you sign up, your browser keeps the first two on your device.
That’s the whole list. We do not collect addresses, phone numbers, photos, location, contacts, or anything from other apps.
The emails you receive
About the account: the confirmation email when you sign up, sent by our login provider, Supabase (if it is not confirmed within a day we send it once more, and never a third time), and a password reset when you ask for one. These are needed to run your account and have no unsubscribe link.
From us: a welcome email once your account is confirmed; a summary on Sundays in any week your child has practised (none on a quiet week); and one short note if your family goes quiet for five days or more — never twice for the same quiet spell. Each of these three carries a one-click unsubscribe link, and one click stops all three. When you write to us, a person answers, and now and then the founder may write to you about your account.
About your child’s safety: when your child hands in a worksheet with words about hurting themselves or someone else typed into an answer box, we send you one short email that day naming the worksheet and the question number, never repeating what your child typed; the words are found by our own code, with no AI involved, and this email is sent even if you have unsubscribed from the three above, because it is about your child’s safety.
How the AI tutor works with data
Worksheets, feedback, and on-demand help are generated by an AI model provided by Anthropic. When we ask for one, we send the subject and the level, the skill names involved (like “fractions”), the worksheet’s own questions and their answers, and the handful of things that change how a worksheet should be written: your child’s interests, the language and region, and, for families who gave it before October 9, 2026, your child’s age, as a number. Those last few are why a worksheet can be in Hindi, set in a world your child likes, and written for a child of their age. We never send anything your child types. For the feedback after a worksheet, the AI is told which answers were right and which were wrong, which of our own choices your child picked, and at most one short note per question from a fixed list we wrote, such as “the box was left empty”.
We never send your child’s name, your email address, or any account identifier. The AI is not handed your child’s records, but it is told a little of their recent history, as skill names and counts only: which skills your child has recently found hard, so the next worksheet can include a question or two on them, and how many worksheets ago a skill was last revisited, so a review question can return to it.
What we never do
- No advertising, and no ad tracking of any kind.
- We never sell or rent personal information.
- No social features, public profiles, or messaging between users.
- No profiling beyond the learning level and skills the service exists to teach.
Where data is kept, and how it is protected
Our database is in Canada, with Supabase in Montréal. It holds the accounts and everything listed above, and once a week a backup copy of it is written to a private storage area of the same Supabase project, also in Canada. Some of the services that run the site process data in the United States: Vercel (hosting), Resend (email), Anthropic (the AI), Google (fonts, and the mailbox your emails to us arrive in) and Namecheap (the forwarding that carries them there); the list of providers below says what each one receives.
Account data is protected by row-level security, which means an account can only ever read its own records. Answer keys are graded on our servers and are never sent to the browser before submission. All traffic is encrypted with HTTPS.
How long we keep it
- Your account and your child’s records — until you delete them, from the dashboard or by writing to us. We do not delete accounts for inactivity.
- Backups — each weekly backup is deleted 35 days after it is made, so a deleted account is gone from the backups too within about five weeks. (The two most recent copies are kept whatever their age, so that a backup that stopped running would not delete its last copies.)
- Error records — when a page or our server fails, we keep a record of what went wrong: the page, the message, the browser type and, for a signed-in family, the account id. Some of our own technical notes about a worksheet also name your child by an internal id, a random code, never a name. Each record is deleted automatically 90 days after it is made; a copy in a weekly backup goes when that backup does. When you delete your account, your account id and your children’s internal ids are removed from these records the same day, from their own field and from their text, and what went wrong stays until the record is 90 days old. When you remove one child from your account, that child’s internal id is removed from the text of these records the same day.
- Steps on the way in — kept as counts, with nothing that identifies a visitor; a signed-in family’s steps are deleted with the account.
- Our messages to you, and changes we make for you — if the founder writes to you from our admin console, our copy of that message (your address, the subject and the text) is kept so we can tell what you were told. If the founder changes something for your child, such as their level, our record of the change names your child by first name. When you delete your account, your address, the subject and the text of our messages and your child’s name are removed from these records the same day. What stays is what was done and when, filed under your former account’s internal id: a random code that, once the account is gone, leads nowhere. When you remove one child from your account, that child’s name is removed from these records the same day, our messages to you included; your address stays with your account.
Your rights as a parent
You can review your child’s information at any time from the dashboard, and delete the account and everything in it from there too — worksheets, answers, progress and badges. That deletion is immediate in our database, and the backup copies follow within 35 days while the weekly backup keeps running (if it stopped, its two newest copies would be kept, as the section above says). A few things are kept, and only in a form that no longer names you or your child, as the section above says: if you reported a question as wrong, the question itself stays so we can fix it for other children, with your account, your child and anything you typed removed from it; our record of what the founder did for your family keeps what was done and when; and an error record keeps what went wrong until it is 90 days old. To request a copy of the data we hold, or to have something corrected, email us at hello@sumandstory.com from the account’s email address, and we answer within 30 days. You may also withdraw consent at any time, which ends your child’s use of the service.
Children’s privacy laws
We built this service to respect children’s privacy laws, including COPPA in the United States, PIPEDA in Canada and Québec’s private-sector privacy law (Law 25): parents hold the account, consent is collected at signup, data collection is minimal, and parents can review or delete their child’s data on request.
Service providers
- Supabase — database, authentication, account data and the weekly backup, in Montréal, Canada.
- Anthropic — AI generation of worksheets and feedback, in the United States, with the data described above: never your child’s name, your email, or an account identifier.
- Resend — sends every email we write to you (the welcome, the Sunday summary, the quiet-family note and the safety note), so it handles your email address and whatever the email says, such as your child’s first name and the week’s scores in the Sunday summary. United States.
- Vercel — hosts the website. Its Analytics and Speed Insights scripts load on every page and report which pages are opened and how fast they load. They set no cookies; Vercel receives your internet address and browser type with each request, as any web host does, and shows us counts, not people. United States.
- Google Fonts — the site’s typefaces are loaded from Google’s servers, so Google receives your browser’s request for them (your internet address and browser type) when a page loads. Nothing about your account is sent.
- Namecheap — when you email hello@sumandstory.com, your message passes through Namecheap’s email forwarding, in the United States, into the founder’s Gmail inbox, at Google, also in the United States. Your message and your address are what they handle; nothing about your account is sent to either.
Changes to this policy
If we make meaningful changes, we’ll update the date at the top and, for significant changes, notify parents by email before they take effect.
Who is responsible, and where to complain
The person responsible for your family’s personal information is Priti Kumari, Founder — hello@sumandstory.com. Questions, requests and complaints go there first, and we answer within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and, in Québec, to the Commission d’accès à l’information.