Children's Privacy Policy

Last updated: March 2026

1. Introduction and Our Commitment to Children's Privacy

Tellmora, Inc. (“Tellmora,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) operates the interactive storytelling platform known as “The Land of Tellmora,” accessible at tellmora.com, app.tellmora.com, and related subdomains (collectively, the “Service”). We recognize the special obligation we have to protect the privacy and safety of children who use our platform, and we take that obligation seriously.

This Children's Privacy Policy (“Children's Policy”) applies specifically to users under the age of 13 (“children” or “child users”) and supplements our General Privacy Policy. Where this Children's Policy conflicts with the General Privacy Policy, this Children's Policy controls with respect to the personal information of children. We encourage parents and guardians to read both policies in their entirety.

Tellmora is designed as a mixed-audience platform. Our Kids shelf (ages 4–12) offers age-appropriate, editorially reviewed interactive stories where children can become AI-illustrated characters in branching choose-your-path adventures. Because children are among our primary audience, we have built our platform from the ground up with children's privacy as a core design principle — not an afterthought.

This Children's Policy is drafted and maintained in compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (“COPPA”), as amended, and the Federal Trade Commission's COPPA Rule (16 CFR Part 312). We also adhere to the FTC's guidance on COPPA compliance, including the 2013 amendments addressing persistent identifiers, geolocation data, photos, videos, and audio recordings. Where applicable, we also comply with the UK Age Appropriate Design Code, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) as it pertains to children's data, and state-level children's privacy protections including the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”).

Operator Information

As required by Section 312.4(d) of the COPPA Rule, the operator of this Service is:

2. Information We Collect from Children

We adhere strictly to COPPA's data minimization mandate. We collect only the personal information that is reasonably necessary to allow a child to participate in the storytelling activities offered by our Kids shelf. We do not condition a child's participation on disclosing more information than is reasonably necessary.

2.1 Information We Collect

For child accounts, we collect the following categories of information, and only after obtaining verifiable parental consent (see Section 3):

• Child's first name only: Used as the display name within the Service to personalize the story experience. We do not collect the child's last name, full legal name, or any name-related identifiers beyond a single first name.
• Age range: We collect the child's age range category (e.g., 4–8 or 9–12) rather than exact date of birth. This is used solely to determine eligibility for the Kids shelf and to ensure age-appropriate content delivery.
• Parent or guardian's email address: Collected during the parental consent process. Used exclusively for parental consent verification, essential account notifications (such as consent confirmation and privacy policy changes), and responding to parental requests. The parent's email address is never used for marketing purposes in connection with a child account.
• Photographs (optional, with separate parental consent): If a parent explicitly consents to the photo upload feature, a child's photo may be uploaded to generate an AI-illustrated character. See Section 4 for the comprehensive safeguards that apply to photo handling for child accounts.
• Character Creator selections (optional): If the child uses our Character Creator — a privacy-first alternative to photo upload — we store the aesthetic selections made (hair style, hair color, eye color, skin tone, face shape, archetype). These are categorical choices (e.g., “brown hair, curly”), not biometric data, and are used solely to generate and regenerate the child's illustrated character. The child version of the Character Creator omits body-type selections that are available to adult users, further minimizing data collected.
• Story session data: Choices made at story branching points, reading progress, bookmarked pages, and session timestamps. This is strictly functional data necessary to save the child's place in a story and allow them to resume or replay stories.

2.2 Information We Explicitly Do Not Collect from Children

To be unambiguous about our data practices, the following categories of information are never collected from child users under any circumstances:

• Last name or full legal name
• Home address, school address, or any physical location information
• Phone number or any telephonic identifier
• Precise geolocation data (GPS coordinates, street-level location)
• Contact lists, friends lists, or address books
• Social media accounts or social login credentials (child accounts use parent-managed credentials only)
• Persistent identifiers for behavioral advertising (advertising IDs, cross-site tracking cookies, fingerprinting data)
• Browsing history beyond the Service itself
• Voice recordings or audio data from the child
• Video or live camera feeds
• Biometric identifiers of any kind (see Section 4 regarding photo handling)
• Health, financial, or educational records

We do not use cookies, web beacons, pixel tags, or any similar tracking technology to collect behavioral or analytics data from child accounts. The only cookies set during a child session are strictly necessary session cookies required to maintain authentication and save story progress. These session cookies contain no personally identifiable information and cannot be used to track the child across websites.

3. Parental Consent

In accordance with COPPA (16 CFR § 312.5), we do not collect, use, or disclose personal information from a child under 13 without first obtaining verifiable parental consent (“VPC”). When a user identifies as under 13 during our age-gate verification at registration, we immediately halt all data collection from the child and initiate the parental consent workflow. No child account is created or activated until VPC has been successfully completed.

3.1 Consent Methods

We offer the following FTC-approved methods for obtaining verifiable parental consent:

• Method 1 — Credit card micro-transaction: The parent or guardian authorizes a micro-charge of $0.01 (one cent) to their credit card through our payment processor, Stripe, Inc. This charge is automatically refunded immediately and serves solely as a verification mechanism to establish that the consenting individual possesses a financial instrument that would typically only be held by an adult. This method is approved by the FTC as a means of providing verifiable parental consent under 16 CFR § 312.5(b)(2). The parent's credit card information is processed and stored exclusively by Stripe (PCI DSS Level 1 certified) — we never see, store, or have access to the full card number.
• Method 2 — Signed parental consent form: The parent downloads a consent form from our platform, completes and signs it (handwritten or electronic signature), and uploads the signed form back to the Service. Our team reviews the signed form to verify it is complete and authentic. This method is approved under 16 CFR § 312.5(b)(1) as a print-and-send method of consent.

3.2 What Consent Covers

The parental consent process clearly discloses the specific activities for which consent is being requested, including:

• Collection of the child's first name and age range
• Creation and maintenance of the child's profile on the Service
• Storage of story session data (reading progress, choices, bookmarks)
• Use of the Character Creator to generate an illustrated character (if applicable)
• Generation of AI illustrations that appear within stories the child reads

3.3 Granular Consent for Photo Upload

Consent for photo upload is separate and granular. A parent may consent to the general use of the platform for their child while declining consent for photo upload. In such cases, the child can still fully participate in story experiences using the Character Creator (a photo-free character illustration alternative) or with pre-generated, non-personalized scene illustrations. We do not bundle photo consent with general platform consent — they are independent choices that a parent can make at any time.

3.4 Withdrawing Consent

A parent or guardian may withdraw consent at any time. Withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of data processing that occurred prior to withdrawal. Upon withdrawal:

• We will cease collecting personal information from the child within 24 hours of receiving the withdrawal request.
• All personal information previously collected from the child will be deleted within 48 hours (see Section 9 for full data retention details).
• The child's account will be deactivated and the child will no longer be able to access the Service.
• If consent for photo upload specifically is withdrawn (while maintaining general platform consent), any stored photos and photo-derived illustrations will be deleted within 48 hours, but the child may continue using the Service with the Character Creator or non-personalized illustrations.

To withdraw consent, a parent may use the Family Management controls in their account dashboard, email us at hello@tellmora.com with the subject “Withdraw Parental Consent,” or use our contact form.

4. Photo Handling for Child Accounts

We understand that a child's photograph is among the most sensitive categories of personal information. For this reason, we have implemented heightened safeguards for photo handling on child accounts that go beyond the protections afforded to adult accounts and beyond what COPPA strictly requires.

4.1 Prerequisite: Separate Parental Consent Required

No photo may be uploaded to a child account unless the parent or guardian has provided specific, separate consent for the photo upload feature (see Section 3.3). This consent is in addition to the general consent required for platform use. The photo upload interface for child accounts displays a clear notice that the parent must have consented to this feature before proceeding.

4.2 Transmission and Storage Security

• Encryption in transit: All photos are transmitted from the parent's or guardian's device to our servers over connections encrypted with TLS 1.2 or higher. Photos are uploaded directly to Amazon S3 via presigned URLs — they do not pass through or linger on our application servers.
• Encryption at rest: While temporarily stored in Amazon S3, all photos are encrypted using AES-256 server-side encryption. Access is restricted by Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies to only the specific services that need to process the photo.

4.3 Processing

The child's photo is used for a single purpose: to generate a stylized, artistic character illustration for use within our interactive stories. The photo is sent to our AI image generation provider (Replicate, using PhotoMaker technology, or Amazon Bedrock) which uses the photo as a visual reference to create an entirely new, illustrated image. The AI model produces a hand-drawn-style artistic rendering — not a photographic reproduction of the child.

4.4 Automatic Deletion

The original source photo is permanently and automatically deleted from our storage within 24 hours of processing. This deletion is automated, irreversible, and applies without exception. After deletion:

• No copy, thumbnail, derivative, cache, or backup of the original photo exists on our systems.
• Our AI processing providers (Replicate and AWS Bedrock) process photos in memory during the generation request and do not retain the image data after the request completes, in accordance with our data processing agreements.
• Only the AI-generated character illustration is retained. This illustration is a stylized artistic rendering that cannot be reverse-engineered to reconstruct the original photograph.

4.5 No Facial Recognition or Biometric Data

We want to be explicitly clear on this point:

• No facial recognition: We do not perform facial recognition, facial geometry mapping, face template creation, or any form of face-matching on children's photos.
• No biometric data: We do not extract, create, store, or process biometric identifiers or biometric information as defined under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), the GDPR, the CCPA, or any comparable statute. The AI models use the photo as a general visual reference for artistic style transfer, not as a biometric template.
• No training: Children's photos are never used to train, fine-tune, or improve any AI or machine learning model. They are processed solely for the purpose of generating the child's specific character illustration.

4.6 Character Creator: The Photo-Free Alternative

We strongly encourage the use of our Character Creator as a privacy-first alternative to photo upload, particularly for child accounts. The Character Creator allows children to design their story character by selecting visual attributes (hair style, hair color, eye color, skin tone, face shape, and character archetype) through a guided, age-appropriate interface. The resulting character illustration is generated entirely from these categorical selections — no photograph is involved at any stage. Parents who prefer maximum privacy for their child can decline photo consent entirely without any diminishment to the child's story experience.

4.7 Parental Right to Immediate Deletion

Although source photos are automatically deleted within 24 hours, a parent or guardian may request immediate deletion of any photo at any time before the automated 24-hour window. To request immediate deletion, use the Family Management controls in your account dashboard or email us at hello@tellmora.com with the subject “Immediate Photo Deletion Request.” We will process immediate deletion requests within 4 hours during business hours.

5. How We Use Children's Information

We use information collected from children for strictly limited, pre-disclosed purposes. Each use is directly related to providing the child's story experience and is within the scope of the parental consent obtained:

• Providing access to age-appropriate stories: The child's first name and age range are used to present personalized story experiences from the Kids shelf (ages 4–12 only). The child's name may appear within story text to personalize the narrative.
• Generating AI-illustrated characters: Photos (if parental consent was given) or Character Creator selections are used solely to generate the child's illustrated character within stories.
• Saving reading progress and library: Story session data (branching choices, bookmarks, current page) is saved so the child can resume stories where they left off and revisit completed stories.
• Maintaining account functionality: Session cookies are used to keep the child logged in and to maintain reading state. These are strictly necessary functional cookies.

5.1 What We Explicitly Do Not Do with Children's Information

The following practices are categorically prohibited for child accounts. We do not and will not:

• Engage in behavioral advertising: No behavioral, contextual, or targeted advertising of any kind is displayed to child users. No advertising identifiers or advertising cookies are set during child sessions. The Kids shelf is entirely ad-free.
• Conduct analytics or tracking: No analytics cookies, pixels, web beacons, or tracking scripts are loaded during child sessions. We do not track page views, click patterns, time on page, scroll depth, or any other behavioral metrics for child accounts.
• Enable social features: Child accounts have no access to social features of any kind. There is no user-to-user communication, no chat, no messaging, no comments, no friend lists, no following, no sharing, no public profiles, and no way for a child user to interact with or be contacted by any other user on the platform.
• Share data with third parties for marketing: Children's personal information is never shared with, sold to, rented to, or disclosed to any third party for marketing, advertising, or promotional purposes under any circumstances.
• Profile or make automated decisions: We do not create profiles of children for commercial purposes, subject children to automated decision-making, or use children's data for predictive analytics, recommendation algorithms based on behavioral patterns, or any form of profiling.
• Send marketing communications: No marketing emails, push notifications, promotional messages, or commercial communications of any kind are sent to child accounts or to the parent email associated with a child account. The only communications sent to the parent email are transactional: consent verification, consent confirmation, privacy policy change notifications, and responses to parental requests.

6. Third Parties and Children's Data

We share children's personal information only with the minimum set of service providers necessary to operate the Service, and only to the extent required for the specific service they provide. Each provider is bound by data processing agreements that require them to: (a) process data only on our instructions; (b) implement appropriate technical and organizational security measures; (c) not use the data for any purpose other than providing services to us; and (d) delete or return the data upon termination of services.

6.1 Service Providers That May Process Children's Data

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) — Infrastructure: AWS provides our cloud infrastructure, including data storage (Amazon S3), content delivery (CloudFront), AI image generation (Amazon Bedrock with Nova Canvas), and email delivery for transactional messages to parents (Amazon SES). Children's data stored on AWS is encrypted at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.2+). AWS processes data under their Data Processing Addendum. Photos sent to Amazon Bedrock for illustration generation are processed in memory and not retained by the Bedrock service after the generation request completes.
• Replicate — AI Processing: For “Star of the Story” identity illustration features, children's photos (with parental consent) may be sent to Replicate's PhotoMaker service to generate character illustrations. Replicate processes photos in memory during the generation request and does not retain, store, cache, or log the image data after the request completes. Replicate does not receive the child's name, age, or any other personal information — only the photo and illustration generation parameters.
• Vercel — Hosting: Vercel provides web hosting and serverless deployment. Vercel may process request metadata (IP addresses, request headers) as part of serving our applications, but this data is processed transiently and is not associated with individual child accounts.

6.2 Service Providers That Never Receive Children's Data

The following providers are used by Tellmora for adult accounts or business operations but are completely walled off from children's data:

• Stripe, Inc. — Payment Processing: Stripe processes the parental consent micro-charge verification ($0.01 refunded). This transaction is between Stripe and the parent — Stripe never receives any information about the child (no child name, age, photo, or any other child data). Stripe's role is limited to verifying the parent's identity through the credit card transaction.
• Brevo (email marketing): Brevo is used for email marketing to adult users who have opted in to marketing communications. Children's data and parent email addresses associated with child accounts are never transmitted to Brevo under any circumstances.
• Lulu Press (print-on-demand): Print orders for child account materials, if offered, are placed by and shipped to the parent or guardian. The child's personal information is not shared with Lulu; only the parent's shipping information and the book content are provided.

6.3 Categories of Third Parties That Never Receive Children's Data

The following categories of third parties never receive personal information from child accounts:

• Advertising networks or ad exchanges
• Data brokers or data resellers
• Analytics providers (e.g., Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude)
• Social media platforms or social login providers
• Market research firms
• Any third party for direct marketing purposes

7. Children's Content Restrictions

In addition to data privacy protections, we enforce strict content restrictions for child accounts to ensure a safe, age-appropriate experience:

• Kids shelf only: Child accounts are restricted exclusively to the Kids shelf (ages 4–12), which contains stories that are editorially curated, reviewed, and approved for age-appropriate content. Children cannot browse, access, or be shown stories from the Young Adult (13–18), Romance, or Adult Adventures (18+) shelves, regardless of direct URL access or any other method.
• Editorial review: All stories published to the Kids shelf are reviewed by our editorial team before publication to ensure they meet our content standards for children, including appropriate themes, language, imagery, and narrative content.
• No user-to-user communication: Child accounts have no mechanism to communicate with, contact, or be contacted by other users on the platform. There is no chat, messaging, commenting, forum, or any other communication channel available to child users.
• No public profiles: Child accounts do not have public profiles. A child's name, illustrations, reading history, and all other account information are visible only to the child and their parent or guardian. No other user can search for, find, or view a child's profile.
• No social sharing: Child accounts cannot share stories, illustrations, progress, or any other content to social media platforms, external websites, or other users within the Service.
• No user-generated content: Children cannot post, upload, or publish content that would be visible to other users. The only “content” a child creates is their character illustration and story choices, both of which are private to the child's account.

8. Parental Rights and Controls

COPPA grants parents and guardians specific rights regarding the personal information collected from their children. We honor all of these rights and have designed our platform to make exercising them as straightforward as possible.

8.1 Your Rights as a Parent or Guardian

Under COPPA (16 CFR § 312.6), you have the right to:

• Review your child's information: You may request a complete accounting of all personal information we have collected from your child. This includes the child's first name, age range, Character Creator selections (if used), AI-generated illustrations, and story session data (reading progress, choices, bookmarks).
• Have your child's information deleted: You may request that we delete all personal information collected from your child, including their account, profile, all AI-generated illustrations, all story session data, and any associated records. Deletion is comprehensive and permanent.
• Refuse further collection or use: You may direct us to stop collecting personal information from your child going forward, and to stop using any personal information already collected. If you refuse further collection, the child's account will be deactivated as continued use of the Service requires the minimal data described in Section 2.
• Download your child's data: You may request a copy of all personal information collected from your child in a portable, machine-readable format (JSON). This includes all data categories listed in Section 2.1.
• Revoke consent for specific features: You may revoke consent for specific activities (such as photo upload) while maintaining consent for general platform use. This allows your child to continue using the Service in a more limited capacity.

8.2 How to Exercise Your Rights

You may exercise any of the above rights through any of the following methods:

• Account dashboard: Log in to your parent account at app.tellmora.com, navigate to Account Settings, and use the Family Management controls to review, download, or delete your child's information.
• Email: Send a request to hello@tellmora.com with the subject line “Children's Privacy Request.” Please include your name, the email address associated with your parent account, and a description of the action you are requesting.
• Contact form: Use the contact form on our website at tellmora.com/contact, selecting “Children's Privacy” as the inquiry category.

8.3 Response Timeline

We will verify your identity and parental relationship before processing any request, to protect against unauthorized access to your child's data. Once verified:

• Deletion requests: Processed within 48 hours.
• Data review and download requests: Fulfilled within 48 hours.
• Consent withdrawal: Effective within 24 hours; data deletion completed within 48 hours.
• All other requests: We will acknowledge receipt within 24 hours and complete the request within 5 business days.

8.4 What Happens When a Child's Account Is Deleted

When a parent requests account deletion for their child, the following actions are taken:

• The child's profile (first name, age range, Character Creator selections) is permanently deleted.
• All AI-generated character illustrations associated with the child are permanently deleted from our storage and CDN.
• All story session data (reading progress, choices, bookmarks) is permanently deleted.
• All session illustrations (personalized “Star of the Story” illustrations) are permanently deleted from our storage and CDN.
• Any source photos still within the 24-hour processing window are immediately and permanently deleted.
• The parental consent record is retained for a period of 2 years as evidence of compliance with COPPA, as permitted under 16 CFR § 312.10. This record contains only the fact that consent was obtained, the method used, and the date — not the child's personal information.

9. Data Retention for Child Accounts

We retain children's personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected, and we delete it promptly when it is no longer needed or when a parent requests deletion. Specific retention periods are as follows:

When a parent withdraws consent or requests account deletion, the same deletion timelines apply: all child personal information is purged from primary systems within 48 hours and from backup systems within 30 days. We do not retain children's data in anonymized or aggregated form after deletion — deletion is complete and comprehensive.

10. Security Measures Specific to Child Data

Children's data benefits from all of the security measures described in our General Privacy Policy (Section 10), including encryption in transit (TLS 1.2+), encryption at rest (AES-256), access controls, rate limiting, and infrastructure security certifications. In addition, we implement the following measures specifically for children's data:

• Data segregation and flagging: Child accounts are flagged in our database with an age-range indicator that triggers enhanced protections throughout our system. This flag ensures that child data is automatically excluded from analytics pipelines, marketing systems, and any data processing that is not strictly necessary for the child's story experience.
• Access restrictions: Access to children's personal information within our organization is restricted to a limited number of authorized personnel who require access to perform their specific job functions (e.g., customer support handling a parental request, engineering maintaining the child account system). Access is logged and auditable.
• COPPA training: All employees and contractors who have access to children's data or who are involved in the development of child-facing features receive training on COPPA requirements, our children's privacy practices, and their obligations regarding child data. Training is renewed annually.
• Compliance audits: We conduct regular internal audits of our COPPA compliance practices, including data collection, consent workflows, data retention, third-party data sharing, and security measures. Audit findings are documented, and any identified gaps are remediated promptly.
• Automated enforcement: COPPA protections (content shelf restrictions, blocking of analytics cookies, prohibition of social features, restriction of data collection) are enforced programmatically in our application code. They are not dependent on manual processes or configurations that could be inadvertently misconfigured.
• Incident response for child data breaches: In the event of a security breach that affects children's personal information, we will: (a) notify the parent or guardian via the email address on file within 72 hours of becoming aware of the breach; (b) notify the Federal Trade Commission and any applicable state attorneys general as required by law; (c) provide a clear description of the data involved, the nature of the breach, and the steps we are taking to mitigate harm; and (d) offer guidance to the parent on steps they may take to protect their child. We treat any breach involving children's data as a highest-severity incident requiring immediate response.

11. Changes to This Children's Privacy Policy

We may update this Children's Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, technology, legal requirements, or FTC guidance. Because this policy governs the treatment of children's personal information, we apply a higher standard for change notification than we do for our General Privacy Policy:

• Material changes require fresh parental consent: If we make any material change to how we collect, use, or disclose children's personal information, we will obtain fresh verifiable parental consent before applying the new practices to any existing child account. The updated practices will not take effect for any child account until the parent has reviewed and consented to the changes. This is required by 16 CFR § 312.5(a)(2).
• Advance notice to parents: Parents will be notified via the email address associated with their account at least 30 days before any material change takes effect. The notification will clearly describe what is changing and why, and will include instructions for how to provide or decline consent.
• Non-material changes: For non-material changes (e.g., clarifications, formatting, updated contact information), we will update the “Last updated” date at the top of this policy. We will provide reasonable notice of such changes through the Service or via email.
• Right to decline and delete: If a parent declines consent for a material change, the child's account will continue to operate under the previous version of this policy for a reasonable transition period (not less than 60 days). If the changes cannot be avoided due to legal requirements or technical necessity, we will notify the parent that the child's account will be deactivated and offer full data deletion.
• Archived versions: Prior versions of this Children's Policy will be retained and made available upon request so that parents can compare changes.

12. Contact Information

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Children's Privacy Policy, our COPPA compliance practices, or the personal information of a child under 13, please contact us:

We take every inquiry regarding children's privacy seriously and prioritize these requests in our support queue. You can expect an acknowledgment of your inquiry within 24 hours and a substantive response within 48 hours.

Filing a Complaint with the FTC

If you believe that we have not adequately addressed your concern, or that our practices violate COPPA or the FTC's COPPA Rule, you have the right to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission:

We encourage you to contact us first so that we have the opportunity to address your concern directly. However, filing a complaint with the FTC is always your right and we will cooperate fully with any FTC inquiry.