1. Who we are
AlfieReading is run by Sentium Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 16512683), with its registered office at Suite Ra01, 195–197 Wood Street, London E17 3NU, United Kingdom. Sentium Ltd is the data controller for the personal data described here.
For any privacy question, write to support@sentium.app.
2. What we keep about you, the grown-up
- Your email address, to sign you in and to send account emails such as sign-up and password codes. We do not send marketing emails.
- Your password, as a one-way hash. We never store or see the password itself. When you choose one, we check it against known breached passwords using a method that sends only the first five characters of its hash, never the password.
- A display name, if you give one, and the date you accepted our terms.
- Subscription details if you subscribe: the customer and subscription identifiers our payment provider gives us, the subscription’s status and renewal date. We never see or store card details.
Why: to provide the account and subscription you ask for (performance of a contract), and to keep the service secure (legitimate interests).
3. What we keep about your child
- The first name or nickname you enter, an avatar you choose, and an age band such as 4–5.
- Their reading progress: which lessons and stories they have done, the answers they gave in activities, the stars they earned, and which sounds and words they have learned.
We never ask for a date of birth, a surname, a photo, a school or a location, and your child never types an email address or a password. Children do not have accounts; their profiles live inside your household.
Why: so the lessons can pick up where your child left off and move on only when they are ready, and so you can see how their reading is going. This is part of providing the service you set up for them.
4. Trying activities without an account
The free lessons and stories can be played without signing in. When they are, nothing about the child or their answers is sent to us or stored by us. The only thing kept is a small count on your own device of how many free activities have been finished, used to decide when to suggest an account. It never leaves the device and you can clear it by clearing your browser’s site data.
5. Your child’s voice
AlfieReading does not record or listen to your child. Every word, sound and story your child hears was prepared in advance using a synthetic British English voice. Your child is never talking to an AI model.
6. What we never collect
- Advertising identifiers, device fingerprints or cross-site tracking
- Precise or approximate location
- Contacts, photos, camera or microphone access
- Anything for advertising or marketing profiling
7. Cookies and similar storage
We use one kind of cookie: an encrypted, first-party session cookie that keeps you signed in. It is strictly necessary, so we do not ask for consent to it, and it is not used for anything else. The free-activity count described in section 4 is stored in your browser, not in a cookie. There are no advertising, analytics or social media cookies.
8. Who helps us run AlfieReading
These organisations process data on our behalf, under contracts that limit them to doing so:
- Microsoft (Azure) hosts the app, the database, the lesson content and sends account emails. Your account and your child’s progress are stored in Azure’s UK South region.
- Stripe takes subscription payments and runs the page where you manage your subscription. Stripe receives your email address, your payment details (which we never see) and an identifier for your household. Stripe may process data outside the UK under the safeguards UK law requires. See Stripe’s privacy policy.
We never sell data and we never share it with advertisers.
9. How long we keep things
- Your account, your household and your children’s progress are kept while you have an account.
- When you ask us to erase your household, it is permanently deleted 30 days later. The delay lets you change your mind; you can cancel the request during that time.
- A downloaded copy of your data is available to download for 7 days, then deleted.
- Operational logs, which help us keep the service running and never contain your child’s name, are kept for up to 90 days.
- Stripe keeps payment records for as long as financial regulations require, even after your household is erased.
10. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask to access, correct, erase, restrict or move your data, and to object to how we use it. In practice:
- Download everything from Your household → Download everything we hold.
- Erase your household from your account. Erasure ends any subscription first, so you are not charged for something that no longer exists.
- Anything else, email support@sentium.app. We reply within one month.
If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.
11. Built for children
AlfieReading follows the ICO’s Age Appropriate Design Code. Settings are private by default, we collect the minimum we need, and there are no nudges designed to keep a child playing: no streaks to lose, no timers, and nothing a child earns is ever taken away. Anything to do with accounts or payment sits behind a grown-up check, and prices are only ever shown to grown-ups.
12. Security
- Everything is encrypted in transit and at rest.
- The database and secrets are on a private network, reachable only by the app itself.
- Passwords are hashed and never stored in a form that can be read back.
13. Changes to this policy
If we make a material change, we will tell you by email at least 30 days before it takes effect.