Fritzie's Reading Nook
For kids
- Your nickname, stars and stories stay on your iPad.
- We never see them, and we never show you ads.
- The microphone only listens if a grown-up turns it on. It helps check your reading, and it never saves your voice.
- If something about the app worries you, tell a grown-up.
For grown-ups: the short version
Fritzie's Reading Nook (the "App") is a reading app for children in the early grades, made by Gritspace Edtech LLC ("we", "us"). The App has no accounts, ads, analytics, tracking or links to other websites, and it has no servers to send anything to. What the App saves stays on your device, where only you control it.
| Information | Where it is kept | Can we see it? |
|---|---|---|
| Reader profiles, progress, stories and settings | On your device, and in your own device backups if you use them | No |
| Your child's voice during read-aloud checking | Nowhere. It is processed on the device as your child reads and is never recorded | No |
| Purchases | With Apple, under your Apple Account | No. We learn only which grades are unlocked, on your device |
| Emails you send us | Our support mailbox | Yes, so we can answer you |
| Anonymous App Store statistics from Apple | App Store Connect | Only totals that cannot identify you |
| Visits to fritzie.app | Briefly with Cloudflare, our web host | No. There are no cookies or analytics |
1. Information on your device
To work, the App saves the following in its own storage on your device:
- Reader profiles: a nickname, grade, chosen world, color and reading mode. Please use a first name or a nickname, never a full name.
- Progress: lessons finished, stars and scores, stickers, rewards, the reading streak and the date of the last lesson.
- Stories: stories your child writes in Story Quest, and whether a grown-up has approved them. We suggest children leave out full names, addresses, schools and other details that identify a real person.
- Settings and unlocks: reading speed, US or UK English, whether read-aloud checking is on, and which grades are unlocked.
The App never sends this information to us or to anyone else, and we have no way to see it. If your device makes iCloud or computer backups, Apple includes the App's storage in those backups, which are kept under your Apple Account and Apple's privacy terms.
Deleting it: in the App's Grown-ups area you can delete one reader, with their progress and stories, or erase everything. Deleting the App also deletes this information from the device.
2. Microphone and speech
Read-aloud checking is off until a grown-up turns it on inside the Grown-ups area, which is behind a parental gate. Turning it on shows your device's own permission requests for the microphone and speech recognition, and you can withdraw those permissions at any time in your device's Settings.
When it is on, the device's built-in speech recognition listens while your child reads a word or sentence and tells the App which words it heard, so the App can check the reading. The App requires this recognition to happen on the device itself. If the device can only recognize speech over the internet, the feature does not run. Audio is never recorded, saved or sent anywhere, and the words heard are used for that moment only and then discarded.
3. The reading voice
Fritzie reads aloud with your device's built-in voice and with sounds recorded for the App. Both play on the device. Nothing your child does is sent anywhere to produce them.
4. Purchases
Purchases and restores are handled entirely by Apple, with Family Sharing where available. We never receive your name, email address, Apple Account details or payment details. The App learns only which grades have been unlocked, and keeps that on the device. Apple's handling of purchase information is described in Apple's Privacy Policy.
5. What we do receive
The App itself collects nothing. Outside the App, information reaches us or our providers in only these ways:
- When you contact us. If you email us, we receive your email address and what you write. We use it only to answer you and keep a record of the conversation. Please do not send us information about your child.
- Statistics from Apple. Apple gives developers totals such as downloads, sales and, from people who agree to share it with developers, crash and usage counts. These come to us as totals or without names, and we cannot use them to identify you or your child.
- Visiting fritzie.app. This website has no cookies, analytics, advertising or tracking, and it serves its own fonts. Our host, Cloudflare, processes your IP address and basic request details to deliver the pages and protect them from attacks, as described in Cloudflare's Privacy Policy. We do not use this information to identify anyone.
6. Children's privacy
The App is made for children, and we built it so that no personal information about a child ever leaves the device. We do not collect personal information from children as defined by the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and its rules, so the App does not ask for a parent's contact details or consent.
The Grown-ups area, settings and purchases are behind a parental gate. The App has no chat, no sharing between users, no social features, no links out and no advertising of any kind.
If we ever wanted to collect personal information from children, we would first update this policy, tell parents directly, and obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting anything. If you believe we have received information about a child, please contact us and we will delete it.
8. Your rights
Depending on where you live, including under the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation and US state privacy laws, you may have the right to ask what personal information we hold about you, to correct or delete it, to object to or limit how we use it, and to receive a copy. You will not be treated differently for asking.
Information in the App is already in your hands: you can see and delete it in the Grown-ups area. For emails you have sent us, contact us at the address below and we will respond within one month. We will not ask for more information than we need to confirm the request is yours.
For the support emails we hold, our legal basis under the UK and EU GDPR is our legitimate interest in answering you. If you are in the UK or the EU and are unhappy with how we have handled your information, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) or your local data protection authority. We would appreciate the chance to put things right first.
9. How long information is kept
- Information in the App: on your device until you delete it or the App.
- Support emails: deleted 12 months after the conversation ends, unless the law requires us to keep them longer.
- Children's information: we hold none. If we learn we have received any, we delete it promptly.
10. Security
The App's storage is protected by your device's own security, including its passcode and encryption, so please keep a passcode on the device your child uses. We keep support email in a business email service, with access limited to the people who answer it and protected by two-step sign-in. We do not run servers or databases.
11. Where information is processed
Information in the App stays on your device. We are based in the United States, and support emails are read and kept there. If you write to us from the UK or the EU, your email is transferred to the United States, and we rely on the safeguards the law provides for such transfers, such as an adequacy decision or standard contractual clauses.
12. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we will update the effective date above and post the new version at this address. For an important change, we will also tell you in the App or in the App Store update notes before the change takes effect. We will never begin collecting personal information from children without first obtaining verifiable parental consent.
13. Contact us
Questions or requests about privacy go to: