Privacy and safety

• Children never sign in, type an email, or make an account.
• A child's progress is saved on the device they use, and stays there unless a grown-up chooses to save it to their own account.
• There are no ads, no ad trackers, and nothing to buy inside the activities.
• We never sell information or share it with advertisers.
• You can delete a learner, or your whole account, at any time.

When a grown-up adds a learner, Ladderling saves a nickname, an animal buddy, and (if you pick one) a school grade. As the child plays, it saves their stars, levels passed, practice, stories read, the writing they do on the Learning Path, coloring and drawings, and the last 90 days of detail for the grown-ups' page: when they played, for how long, and which questions they missed with the answer they gave.

All of this is kept in the browser's own storage on that device. It isn't sent anywhere unless you sign in (below). Clearing the browser's data, or removing a learner on the grown-ups' page, erases it.

We suggest a nickname or first name only. A learner's name is only ever shown on the screen and on the grown-ups' page.

Signing in is optional and only for grown-ups. When you sign in with Google, Google tells Ladderling your name, email address, and an account number. Ladderling then saves a copy of your learners' progress (everything listed above except coloring and drawings, which stay on each device) in a private record tied to your account.

Only your account, and the children's tablets you link with a short code, can open that record. A linked tablet doesn't use a Google account: it gets an anonymous login that only works for your family's record, and you can unlink it at any time.

The record is stored with Google Firebase, which runs Ladderling's website, sign-in, and database. The people who run Ladderling can technically reach that database; we only look at a family's record if you ask us to help with a problem.

To learn whether Ladderling is working for families, the site keeps daily totals such as “devices that visited today” or “devices that passed a level today.” Each total is only a date, the name of the event, and a number.

Nothing about the child, the family, the device, or the page is sent with it, and no cookies are used. Each device adds at most one to each total per day, and only the people who run Ladderling can read the totals.

• No advertising, and no advertising or analytics companies' scripts on the site.
• No chat, comments, or messages between users. Children can't contact anyone, and nobody can contact them.
• No links that take a child to other websites from inside the activities.
• No camera, microphone, photos, or location. Read-aloud uses recordings we made ahead of time, or your device's built-in voice.
• We don't sell or rent information to anyone.

Like every website, the servers that deliver Ladderling see the network address of the device asking for a page, as part of how the internet works. Ladderling doesn't save it.

• See everything about a learner on the grown-ups' page, and download it as a spreadsheet (CSV) from there.
• Remove a learner, with all of their progress, under Settings on the grown-ups' page.
• Delete your account under Settings. This erases everything saved to it and unlinks your tablets. Each device keeps its own copy until you remove the learner there or clear the browser.
• The detailed history (missed questions and play times) is kept for 90 days, then deleted automatically.

Ladderling is run by the Ladderling team. For any privacy question, or to ask us to delete something, write to taylorelrod@gmail.com. If this page changes in a way that matters, we'll say so on the grown-ups' page.