Legal & Privacy
Children’s Privacy Notice (COPPA Notice)
Effective Date: May 31, 2026
This notice is for parents and guardians of children under 13 using HIS Pods.
It explains what personal information we collect about your child, how we use it, and what rights you have under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). If you have questions at any time, email privacy@hispods.com.
Who We Are
HIS Pods, Inc. is a non-profit educational technology organization based in Cape Coral, FL. We operate HIS Pods, a K–12 mastery learning platform. This Children’s Privacy Notice explains how we collect, use, and protect personal information from children under 13 who use our service.
Contact us at any time:
HIS Pods, Inc.
Cape Coral, FL
Email: privacy@hispods.com
Who This Notice Applies To
This notice applies to children under 13 who use HIS Pods. We comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the FTC’s COPPA Rule. We do not collect personal information from children under 13 without verified parental consent, except as described below for school users.
How Children Access HIS Pods
Family accounts
A parent or legal guardian creates the account, provides verifiable consent, and the child uses the platform under the parent’s supervision.
School accounts
When a school provides HIS Pods to students, the school acts as the responsible party under the “school official” exception to COPPA. Schools sign a Data Processing Agreement with us and are responsible for ensuring that appropriate parental consent or school-official authorization is in place. In this case, the school — not HIS Pods — manages the consent process with families.
What Information We Collect From Children Under 13
We collect only what is necessary to provide the educational service. We do not collect more information than is reasonably necessary.
Account and profile information
- Display name (chosen by the parent — this does not need to be the child’s legal name)
- Age or grade level (used only to place the child at the right starting point in the curriculum)
- Avatar selection (a cosmetic character image chosen from our library)
Learning and progress data
- Lessons completed and mastery scores
- Practice answers and response patterns (used to adapt instruction)
- Stars earned and in-app economy activity (part of the educational engagement system)
- Session frequency and learning streaks (used to help the child stay on track)
What we do not collect from children
- No photos, videos, or audio recordings
- No precise or approximate geolocation
- No social features, direct messaging, or user-generated content sharing
- No behavioral advertising profiles
- No third-party advertising trackers or cookies for commercial purposes
How We Use This Information
We use the information we collect solely to provide and improve the educational experience:
- To place the child at the appropriate level in the curriculum
- To adapt lessons and practice problems based on the child’s progress
- To track mastery and award stars within the learning system
- To allow parents and teachers to review the child’s progress
- To maintain the child’s account and session continuity
We do not use children’s personal information for advertising, marketing to the child, or any commercial purpose unrelated to education.
Adaptive Assessment and AI
HIS Pods uses an adaptive placement and assessment tool called PathFinder, which is powered in part by Claude AI (provided by Anthropic). When PathFinder analyzes a child’s responses, it sends only anonymized performance data — specifically whether answers were correct or incorrect and how long the child took to respond. No name, display name, age, grade, or any identifier is included in this data. Under our agreement with Anthropic, this data is not used to train their AI models.
Do We Share Children’s Information With Third Parties?
We share children’s personal information only in these limited circumstances:
- Service providers: We use trusted technology providers (such as Microsoft Azure for secure cloud hosting) who process data on our behalf under strict data protection agreements. They are not permitted to use children’s data for any other purpose.
- AI processing: As described above, Anthropic receives anonymized, non-identifying performance data only.
- Schools (school tier only): For school accounts, the school has access to the student’s progress data as part of the educational service.
- Legal requirements: We may disclose information if required by law or to protect the safety of children or others.
We do not sell children’s personal information. We do not share it with advertisers or data brokers. We do not disclose it to any third party for marketing purposes.
Parents’ Rights Under COPPA
As the parent or legal guardian of a child under 13 who uses HIS Pods on a family account, you have the following rights at any time:
Right to review your child’s information
You may request a copy of the personal information we have collected about your child.
Right to refuse further collection or use
You may withdraw your consent and direct us to stop collecting or using your child’s personal information going forward. If you withdraw consent, your child will no longer be able to use the service, since the information is necessary to provide it.
Right to have your child’s information deleted
You may request that we delete the personal information we have collected about your child. We will complete deletion within 30 days of a verified request.
No participation conditioned on unnecessary disclosure
We will never require a child to provide more personal information than is reasonably necessary to use HIS Pods. A child’s access to the educational content is not conditioned on disclosing information beyond what is described in this notice.
How to Exercise Your Rights
You can exercise any of the rights above through any of the following methods:
- In the app: Go to Account Settings → Privacy → Manage Child Data
- By email: Send your request to privacy@hispods.com — please include your name, your child’s display name, and the email address associated with your account
We will respond to all verified requests within 30 days. We may ask you to verify your identity before fulfilling a request, to ensure we do not share or delete a child’s data in response to an unauthorized request.
A Note for School Users
If your child accesses HIS Pods through a school, the school manages the consent process on your behalf under the COPPA school official exception. HIS Pods provides the school with access to your child’s educational data as part of the service. To exercise your rights regarding your child’s data in a school account, please contact your school’s administrator directly. Schools may also direct inquiries to us at privacy@hispods.com, and we will work with the school to fulfill your request.
Data Security
We take reasonable measures to protect children’s information, including encrypted storage, access controls, and secure data transmission. We retain children’s personal information only as long as necessary to provide the educational service or as required by law.
Changes to This Notice
If we make material changes to this notice — particularly changes that affect what information we collect from children or how we use it — we will notify parents before the changes take effect and, where required by COPPA, obtain fresh consent. The effective date at the top of this notice will always reflect when it was last updated.
Contact Us
If you have questions about this notice or your child’s privacy, please contact us:
HIS Pods, Inc.
Cape Coral, FL
Email: privacy@hispods.com
We are committed to responding to all privacy inquiries within 30 days.