Privacy Policy

Personal information we collect

Information you provide to us:

• Contact and account information, such as your first and last name, email address, username and password.
• Usage information, such as information about how you, or your child, uses the Services and interacts with us through use of the Services.
• Information about your child, such as the name, age, pronouns, and reading level you enter in your child’s profile, the characters and story settings you create, and the stories your child reads. See Children.
• Class information, such as the class code you enter, the class your child is linked to, and whether you have chosen to share your child’s reading with their teacher. See Sharing with your child’s teacher and school.
• Feedback or correspondence, such as information you provide when you contact us with questions, feedback, product reviews, or otherwise correspond with us online.
• Marketing information, such as your preferences for receiving communications about our activities, events, and publications, and details about how you engage with our communications.
• Other information that we may collect which is not specifically listed here, but which we will use in accordance with this Privacy Policy or as otherwise disclosed at the time of collection.

Information we obtain from third parties:

• Social media information. We may maintain pages on social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other third-party platforms. When you visit or interact with our pages on those platforms, the platform provider’s privacy policy will apply to your interactions and their collection, use and processing of your personal information. You or the platforms may provide us with information through the platform, and we will treat such information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
• Third-party login information. When you link, connect, or login to the Services with a third party service (e.g. Google, Facebook, or Apple), you direct the service to send us information such as your registration, friends list, and profile information as controlled by that service or as authorized by you via your privacy settings at that service.
• Teachers and school staff. If you choose to share your child’s reading with their teacher, the teacher and school staff who support your child may send you story picks for your child, with a note to you, from Wanderly’s teacher portal. Wanderly may also send you stories for your child. We store what is sent with your account until you delete it.

Automatic data collection

We and our service providers may automatically log information about you, your computer or mobile device, and your interaction over time with our Services, our communications and other online services, such as:

• Device data, such as your computer’s or mobile device’s operating system type and version, manufacturer and model, browser type, screen resolution, RAM and disk size, CPU usage, device type (e.g., phone, tablet), IP address, language settings, mobile device carrier, radio/network information (e.g., WiFi, LTE, 4G), and general location information such as city, state or geographic area.
• Online activity data, such as pages or screens you viewed, how long you spent on a page or screen, browsing history, navigation paths between pages or screens, information about your activity on a page or screen, access times, and duration of access, and whether you have opened our marketing emails or clicked links within them.

We use the following tools for automatic data collection:

• Cookies, which are text files that websites store on a visitor’s device to uniquely identify the visitor’s browser or to store information or settings in the browser for the purpose of helping you navigate between pages efficiently, remembering your preferences, enabling functionality, helping us understand user activity and patterns, and facilitating online advertising.
• Local storage technologies, like HTML5, that provide cookie-equivalent functionality but can store larger amounts of data, including on your device outside of your browser in connection with specific applications.
• Web beacons, also known as pixel tags or clear GIFs, which are used to demonstrate that a webpage or email was accessed or opened, or that certain content was viewed or clicked.

How we use your personal information

To operate our Services:

• Provide, operate, maintain, secure and improve our Services
• Provide information about our Services
• Communicate with you about our Services, including by sending you announcements, updates, security alerts, and support and administrative messages
• Understand your needs and interests, and personalize your experience with our Services and our communications
• Respond to your requests, questions and feedback

For research and development

To analyze and improve the Services and to develop new products and Services, including by studying use of our Services.

Marketing and advertising

We and our advertising partners may collect and use your personal information for marketing and advertising purposes, including:

• Direct marketing. We or our advertising partners may from time-to-time send you direct marketing communications as permitted by law, including, but not limited to, notifying you of special promotions, offers and events via email. You may opt out of marketing-related communications by following the opt out or unsubscribe instructions contained in the marketing communication we send you. You may continue to receive service-related and other non-marketing communications.
• To comply with law. As we believe necessary or appropriate to comply with applicable laws, lawful requests, and legal process, such as to respond to subpoenas or requests from government authorities.

For compliance, fraud prevention, and safety

To: (a) protect our, your or others’ rights, privacy, safety or property (including by making and defending legal claims); (b) enforce the terms and conditions that govern our Services; and (c) protect, investigate and deter against fraudulent, harmful, unauthorized, unethical or illegal activity.

To create anonymous data

To create anonymous data from your personal information and other individuals whose personal information we collect. We make personal information into anonymous data by removing information that makes the data personally identifiable to you. We may use this anonymous data and share it with third parties for our lawful business purposes, including to analyze and improve our Services and promote our business.

How we share your personal information

Service providers

We may share your personal information with third party companies and individuals that provide services on our behalf or help us operate our Services (such as customer support, hosting, analytics, email delivery, marketing, identity verification, and database management services).

Professional advisors

We may disclose your personal information to professional advisors, such as lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers, where necessary in the course of the professional services that they render to us.

For compliance, fraud prevention and safety

We may share your personal information for the compliance, fraud prevention and safety purposes described above.

Your child’s teacher and school, only if you choose

If you link your child to a class and turn on sharing, we share your child’s reading with their teacher and school staff who support them. Sharing is off unless you turn it on, and you can turn it off at any time. See Sharing with your child’s teacher and school.

Business transfers

We may sell, transfer or otherwise share some or all of our business or assets, including your personal information, in connection with a business transaction (or potential business transaction) such as a corporate divestiture, merger, consolidation, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets, or in the event of bankruptcy or dissolution. In such a case, we will make reasonable efforts to require the recipient to honor this Privacy Policy.

AI partners for story creation

To create custom stories, we securely share your story customization choices with our trusted AI partners. This can include custom character descriptions and names, so that Wanderly can create a story that is unique to you.

What data we share with AI partners

When you request a custom story, we share only the information necessary to generate that story, which may include:

• Custom character names and descriptions you provide
• Story theme and style preferences
• Story choices and customization settings
• Story context needed for narrative generation

We do not share your account information, contact details, payment information, or other personal data beyond what is specifically needed to create your custom story.

How your data is protected

Data Transmission Security

All data shared with our AI service partners is transmitted using industry-standard encryption protocols (HTTPS/TLS) to ensure secure transmission. This encryption protects your data while it's in transit between our servers and our AI partners' systems.

Partner Selection and Standards

We carefully select AI service partners based on their privacy practices and data protection standards. We only work with partners that commit to:

• Not using customer data for model training purposes
• Retaining data only as necessary for service delivery (typically up to 30 days for API services)
• Maintaining strong data protection and privacy standards
• Complying with applicable privacy regulations

Data Retention and Training

Based on our agreements with our current AI partners, API data is not used for model training, and data is retained for up to 30 days for service delivery and abuse monitoring purposes. We verify these commitments as part of our partner selection and ongoing evaluation process.

Regular Evaluation

We regularly evaluate our AI partners' privacy policies, terms of service, and data handling practices to ensure they continue to meet our standards. If a partner's practices change in ways that conflict with our privacy commitments, we will either renegotiate our agreement or transition to alternative partners.

Current Partners

A current list of our AI service partners and their specific roles is maintained separately and can be provided upon request. This list may change as we evaluate and adopt new AI technologies that better serve our users while maintaining our privacy standards.

Your consent and control

We will obtain your explicit consent before sharing your data with AI partners. This consent is requested when you first attempt to create a custom story, or you can grant or revoke consent at any time by navigating to Manage Account in the app.

Important: If you choose not to share data with AI partners, you will not be able to use the custom story creation features. However, you can still use all other features of Wanderly. If you revoke consent after sharing data, any data already shared will be deleted by our AI partners according to their retention policy, and no new data will be shared going forward.

Sharing with your child’s teacher and school

If your child’s school uses Wanderly, you can link your child to their class with a class code from their teacher or school. Linking a class and sharing your child’s reading are two separate choices. You can link a class without sharing anything, and you decide separately for each child on your account.

Linking a class without sharing

Linking a class means you get the class’s weekly story picks to read with your child at home. We record which class your child is linked to and when, but your child’s teacher and school staff cannot see your child or their reading in Wanderly’s teacher portal.

What teachers can see and do if you choose to share

Sharing is off unless you turn it on. If you turn it on, your child’s teacher and school staff who support your child, such as special educators and counselors, can use Wanderly’s teacher portal to:

• See your child’s name as it appears in your child’s profile, and the class they are linked to
• See which stories your child reads and how often
• Send you recommended and personalized story picks for your child, based on what your child is working on. Picks come to you in the app, and you decide what your child reads.
• Include a note to you with a story pick, and suggest how to set the story up
• See whether your child has read the stories they sent

What teachers never see

• The choices your child makes inside stories
• Your account information, such as your name, email address, subscription, or payment details
• Any other child on your account, unless you separately share for that child

You can stop sharing at any time

You can turn sharing off at any time, for any reason. You keep getting the class’s weekly stories for your child. To stop sharing, you can:

• Turn off sharing in the app. Open your child’s profile and turn off "Share reading with" their teacher.
• Unlink the class. Unlinking ends sharing and stops the class’s weekly stories. Stories your child already has stay in their library.
• Email us. Write to hello@wander.ly and we will turn sharing off for you.

Turning off sharing takes effect right away. Your child, their reading history (including reading from before you turned sharing off), and the stories and notes staff sent you are removed from the teacher portal. Teachers and schools cannot turn sharing back on. Only you can.

We cannot recall information a teacher or staff member already viewed, or copied outside of Wanderly, before you turned sharing off.

How we handle class information

• We share your child’s reading with their school because you asked us to. We do not have an agreement with the school that gives it control over your child’s information or your account.
• We use class information and the notes staff send you only to provide the class features described here. We do not sell it, and we do not use it for advertising or share it with advertising partners.
• Each time you turn sharing on or off, we record when you did and which version of the sharing explanation you saw, so we can show what you agreed to.
• You can ask us for a copy of the stories and notes sent to you for your child by writing to hello@wander.ly.

Stories shared with you

Stories and notes that school staff, or Wanderly, send you for your child appear in the app under Shared with you. They are yours to keep or remove: you can hide one, bring it back later, or delete it, note and all. Deleting a story a teacher sent also removes it from their portal.

Turning off sharing or unlinking the class doesn’t delete what was already sent to you; it stops staff from seeing it. Deleting your account deletes all of it.

Data sharing for advertising and analytics

Hashed identifiers for conversion tracking

When you create an account and log in to our Service, we may use your email address and other account information to measure the effectiveness of our advertisements and to improve our marketing campaigns. This information is cryptographically hashed (converted into a string of characters that cannot be reversed to reveal your original information) before being shared with our advertising and analytics partners, including but not limited to Meta (Facebook) and AppsFlyer.

Your control and right to opt-out

You have several options to opt out of this type of tracking:

• In-App Controls: You can opt out directly through our app by navigating to Manage Account > Terms & Data and toggling off "Allow Conversion Tracking."
• Third-Party Opt-Out: You can visit AppsFlyer's official opt-out page at https://www.appsflyer.com/legal/opt-out/ and follow their process to opt out of tracking across all apps using their services.

Please note that opting out may affect the relevance of advertisements you see, but will not reduce the number of advertisements or impact your ability to use our service.

Your choices

In certain circumstances providing personal information is optional. However, if you choose not to provide personal information that is needed to use some features of our Service, you may be unable to use those features. You can also contact us to request updates or corrections to your personal information.

Sharing your child’s reading with their teacher is always optional, and you can turn it off at any time in your child’s profile. See Sharing with your child’s teacher and school.

Data Retention and Account Deletion

Your personal data will be processed and stored for as long as required to provide the service and may be retained for longer due to applicable legal obligation.

You have the right to delete your account with our Services at any time. Here are the ways you can do this:

• Email Request: Send an email to hello@wander.ly with your account details and a deletion request. We will process your request and confirm once your account and associated personal information have been deleted.
• Direct Deletion Through Services: Log into your account, navigate to the "Manage Account" page, and select the "Delete Account" option. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the process.

If a user deletes their account, their account data, beyond any payment data required to be retained by law, will be removed from our system within 60 days after the request for account deletion has been acknowledged. This includes your children’s profiles, class records, and the stories and notes sent to you. Sharing with teachers ends as soon as you ask to delete your account.

Handling of Payment Information Post-Deletion

While we do not store your credit card or bank account information, as payments are processed by Stripe, the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store, we retain limited transactional data for legal, tax, and auditing purposes. This includes transaction identifiers, amounts, dates, and general transaction types. This information is retained in accordance with financial and legal obligations, particularly under California law, and is not used for any other purpose.

After your account is deleted, this payment-related information will remain in our records for the period required by law. It will be protected and accessed only when necessary for legal, tax, or auditing purposes.

Please note that Stripe, Google and Apple, as our payment processors, maintain their own records of transactions. For details on how these companies handle data upon account deletion, please refer to Stripe's Privacy Policy, the Google Play Terms of Service or Apple's App Store Privacy Policy.

Other sites, mobile applications and services

Our Services may contain links to other websites, mobile applications, and other online services operated by third parties. These links are not an endorsement of, or representation that we are affiliated with, any third party. In addition, our content may be included on web pages or in mobile applications or online services that are not associated with us. We do not control third party websites, mobile applications or online services, and we are not responsible for their actions. Other websites and services follow different rules regarding the collection, use and sharing of your personal information. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of the other websites and mobile applications and online services you use.

Security practices

We use reasonable organizational, technical and administrative measures designed to protect against unauthorized access, misuse, loss, disclosure, alteration and destruction of personal information we maintain. Unfortunately, data transmission over the Internet cannot be guaranteed as completely secure. Therefore, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of personal information.

Measures we take to ensure secure data handling include but are not limited to:

• Utilization of secure cloud infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services.
• Implementation of Google and Facebook account signin to leverage their security measures.
• Restricting access to user data to authorized personnel only.
• Regularly updating our systems to apply security best practices.

Children

Wanderly accounts are created and managed by a parent or guardian, who sets up a profile for each child and decides how that child uses the Services. We collect information about a child only as the parent or guardian directs, and we use it to provide and personalize the child’s stories. This information includes:

• The child’s name or nickname, age, pronouns, and reading level, as entered by the parent or guardian
• Characters and story settings created for the child
• The stories the child reads and the choices the child makes inside them
• If the parent or guardian links a class, the child’s class, and, if they turn on sharing, stories and notes sent for the child by their teacher, school staff, or Wanderly

We share a child’s information only as described in this Privacy Policy, such as with our AI partners when you create a custom story and with the child’s teacher if you choose to share. We do not sell children’s information or use it for advertising. A parent or guardian can review, change, or delete their child’s information at any time in the app or by writing to hello@wander.ly, and can stop any further collection by deleting the child’s profile.

If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13 without the consent of the child’s parent or guardian as required by law, we will delete it.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you by updating the date of this Privacy Policy and posting it on our Services. We may also provide notification of changes in another way that we believe is reasonably likely to reach you, such as via e-mail (if you have an account where we have your contact information) or another manner through our Services.

Any modifications to this Privacy Policy will be effective upon our posting the new terms and/or upon implementation of the new changes on our Services (or as otherwise indicated at the time of posting).

How to contact us

Please direct any questions or comments about this policy or privacy practices to hello@wander.ly.