Acceptable use policy

TaleTykes is a place for children to practice reading and writing. This policy sets out the rules that keep it safe and working for everyone. It is part of our Terms of service and, for schools, our School terms. Words such as "Service" mean what they mean in those documents.

If something here is unclear, ask us through Contact us before you act. If you see something that breaks these rules, report it to safety@taletykes.com.

Who this policy applies to

This policy applies to everyone who uses TaleTykes or our website:

• parents, guardians and other grown-ups in a family account;
• teachers, co-teachers, school and district administrators;
• anyone who visits our public pages, help center or blog;
• anyone who connects to TaleTykes through an integration, an API or the iPhone and iPad app.

Children use TaleTykes only through a grown-up, and their spaces are built so they can't break most of these rules. The grown-up who set up a child's space is responsible for the child's use of it. We don't hold a child responsible under this policy.

Rules for grown-ups

When you use TaleTykes, you must:

• give accurate information when you create an account, and keep it current;
• keep your own sign-in methods to yourself, and invite other grown-ups with their own accounts instead of sharing yours;
• set up a child space only for a child in your care, or with the permission of the child's parent or guardian;
• give consent for a child honestly, and only if you are entitled to give it;
• use the Service only for reading and writing practice for children in your care or your classes;
• follow the law, including laws about children's privacy, copyright and consumer protection.

You must not:

• pretend to be someone else, or misstate your relationship to a child, school or organization;
• create accounts to get extra free trials, or use another person's card without permission;
• harass, threaten or abuse our staff or other users, including in messages to our support or safety teams;
• use the Service to collect information about other people, families or children;
• use TaleTykes in a way that could harm a child.

Rules about children

Children's spaces are designed so children never type to a model, chat, or share anything with strangers. These rules help keep it that way.

Never share a child's space with strangers

• Don't share a child's sign-in, picture password, passphrase, class badge or trusted device with anyone outside the child's family or class.
• Don't trust a device you don't control or supervise, such as a public computer or a device that belongs to someone outside your household.
• Don't post screenshots or recordings of a child's space online in a way that shows the child's name, picture password, or sign-in details.
• Remove a trusted device as soon as it is lost, sold or given away.

Don't put identifying details into free text

In a few places a grown-up can type, such as when asking for a book on a topic, or when writing to us. These fields are not for personal information.

• Don't type a child's full name, last name, home address, school name, phone number, email address, birthday, health or medical details, or photos into any free-text field.
• Don't try to get a child's or another person's personal information into a book by any route.
• Use the settings the Service gives you, such as the child's first name choice, instead of typing details into a request.

Don't misuse child sign-in

• Don't use a child's sign-in to see another child's records or to get past a grown-up gate.
• Don't try to guess another child's picture password, passphrase or badge.
• Don't create child spaces for children who don't exist, or for adults.
• Don't use a child's space to show a child content from outside TaleTykes.

Prohibited content in grown-ups' free text

Anything a grown-up types into TaleTykes must not contain:

• sexual content of any kind, or anything that sexualizes a child;
• violence, threats, or content that encourages self-harm or harm to others;
• hate, harassment or demeaning content about any person or group;
• content about weapons, drugs, alcohol, gambling or other topics our Content standards block for children;
• real brands, franchises, celebrities or copyrighted characters you ask us to put into a book;
• personal information about anyone, including yourself;
• links, phone numbers, email addresses or advertising;
• instructions aimed at an AI model (see "AI misuse" below);
• anything illegal, or that infringes anyone's rights.

Free text from grown-ups is checked and reduced to structured choices before any of it is used to make a book. We may refuse, edit or ignore a request that breaks these rules.

Security abuse

You must not:

• try to get into an account, child space, system or network that you aren't allowed to use;
• probe, scan or test the security of the Service, except under our vulnerability disclosure rules on the Security page;
• get around or interfere with sign-in, the grown-up gate, consent checks, rate limits, time limits, content checks, or any other safety or security feature;
• introduce malware, or send traffic meant to overload or disrupt the Service;
• intercept, collect or tamper with other users' data or traffic;
• use stolen or leaked sign-in details, sign-in codes or session cookies.

If you find a security problem, please tell us at security@taletykes.com. We welcome good-faith reports and describe our safe harbor on the Security page.

Scraping and automated access

You must not use bots, crawlers, scrapers, scripts or other automated tools to access, copy or collect anything from the Service, including books, pictures, audio, lessons, help articles or user information, except:

• search engines that follow our robots.txt file on public pages;
• integrations we offer and you or your school have turned on, used as we document them;
• any access we agree to in writing.

You must not use books, pictures, lessons or anything else from TaleTykes to build a dataset, or to train or test an AI model.

Reverse engineering

You must not copy, change, decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer any part of the Service or the app, or try to find its source code, except where the law allows it despite this rule. You must not remove or change any notice, mark or AI label on a book or other material.

Reselling and commercial use

A family plan is for one family. You must not:

• resell, rent, lease, sublicense or give access to the Service to people outside your family;
• use a family account to run a classroom, tutoring business, after-school program or other service for children who aren't in your family;
• sell, publish or distribute books from TaleTykes, in print or online, or use them in a product of your own;
• use our name, logo or trademarks to suggest we endorse you.

Teachers may share books with the students and co-teachers covered by their plan, for classroom use. Schools and organizations that want broader use need an agreement with us at schools@taletykes.com.

Misuse of reports

Reporting tools help us keep books and spaces safe. Don't misuse them:

• don't file reports you know are false;
• don't file large numbers of reports to overload our review team;
• don't use a report or an appeal to harass someone;
• don't put a child's personal information into a report unless we ask for it to resolve the report.

AI misuse

TaleTykes uses AI models to help write and illustrate books, with checks before a child sees anything. You must not:

• try to make the Service produce unsafe, inappropriate, hateful, sexual or violent content, or content that breaks our Content standards;
• put instructions to an AI model into free-text fields, such as "ignore your rules", hidden commands, or text written to change how a model behaves ("prompt injection");
• try to get a model to reveal our instructions, settings, or other users' information;
• try to get around the checks that run on books before a child sees them, or the human review of flagged books or writing;
• use the Service to create content about real people;
• use output from TaleTykes to train, test or improve any AI model.

If you notice a book that looks like an AI mistake, report it. That helps us, and doing so is never a breach of this policy.

Teachers' extra duties

Teachers, co-teachers and school administrators handle student records on behalf of their school. In addition to the rules above, you must:

• add students only with your school's authority, and only for the school's educational purposes;
• follow your school's policies and the laws that apply to student records, including FERPA and state student privacy laws;
• add co-teachers only when they have a legitimate educational reason to see the class;
• set up class badges and classroom devices only in places where you or school staff supervise them;
• remove students and co-teachers who have left the class, and remove classroom devices that are no longer in use;
• not export, copy or share student records except as your school allows and our School terms describe;
• not use TaleTykes data to make decisions about grading, placement, eligibility or discipline on its own. It is practice, not an evaluation;
• tell your school, and us at safety@taletykes.com, promptly if you think student records were accessed by someone who shouldn't have them.

How to report a violation

Email safety@taletykes.com with as much detail as you can: what happened, when, and where in the Service. Don't include a child's personal information unless it is needed to understand the report. You can also use Report this book on any book page for a problem with a book. For security problems, write to security@taletykes.com. For copyright complaints, follow our Copyright and DMCA policy.

If you believe a child is in immediate danger, call 911 or your local emergency number first.

What we do about violations

We look at each report and decide what to do based on how serious it is, whether it puts a child at risk, whether it was deliberate, and whether it has happened before. We may:

• take no action, if we find no violation;
• remove or block the content, book or request involved;
• send you a warning explaining what rule was broken and what to do next;
• limit features, such as free-text requests or integrations, for a time;
• suspend a grown-up's access, a child's space, a device, or an integration while we look into a problem;
• close an account, with the refund rules in our Terms of service;
• report the matter to law enforcement or other authorities, where the law requires or a child may be at risk;
• tell the account holder, or for school accounts, the school.

We may act without warning when a child's safety is at risk, when the law requires, or when a warning would harm an investigation. Where we can, we tell you what we did and why.

Appeals

If you think we made a mistake, you can appeal. Reply to the email we sent you, or write to safety@taletykes.com with "Appeal" in the subject line, within 30 days of our decision. Tell us what you think we got wrong and anything we should know.

A different person from the one who made the first decision reviews your appeal. We tell you the result and the reason. While an appeal is open, we may keep a restriction in place if lifting it could put a child at risk. Our decision on appeal is final for the purposes of this policy, but it doesn't affect any rights you have under our Terms of service or the law.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the Service changes. We post the new version on this page with the date. If a change matters to you, we tell account holders by email before it takes effect, as our Terms of service describe.