Privacy Policy

Story of Your Own ("we", "us") is an Australia-based membership service that emails parents a custom, safety-reviewed bedtime story their child stars in. We are privacy-first by design: accounts belong to parents and guardians, children never sign in, and we deliberately collect as little about your child as possible. This policy explains what we collect, why, where it goes, and the rights you have under the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).

What we collect

Your account

• Your email address and (optionally) a display name.
• Your password, stored only as a secure hash by our authentication provider.
• A record of the consent you give at sign-up and at checkout (what you agreed to, and when).
• Delivery preferences: your timezone, preferred nightly delivery time, story length.

Your child's profile (intentionally minimal)

To write a personalised story we keep a small profile: a nickname, an age band (for example "3–5" — never a date of birth), a reading level, interests, the names of chosen recurring characters and their relationship to your child, and optional values or themes and content to avoid. That is all.

We do not collect a child's date of birth, photographs, location, address, school, contact details, or any other identifying personal information.

Membership & payments

Payments are processed by Stripe. We do not see or store your card number — Stripe does. We keep your subscription status and tier, trial end date, and the Stripe identifiers needed to manage your membership.

Generated content

We store the stories created for your child (text, and on the illustrated tier, images) together with the automated safety-moderation result for each one. Some older stories also have narration audio, from a narrated tier we no longer offer; we still store and serve that audio, but no new narration is created.

Technical

We use a session cookie to keep you signed in. We do not run third-party advertising networks, ad SDKs, or tracking/analytics cookies.

Book recommendations (free plan)

On our free plan we may show a small number of children's-book recommendations, chosen from a hand-picked list to match your child's interests. These are ordinary first-party links (for example to Amazon) — if you follow one and buy, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We do not share your or your child's information with advertisers or ad networks to show them, and no third-party ad or tracking code runs on the page. Paying members do not see these recommendations.

How we use your information

• To generate and deliver your child's nightly story.
• To run automated safety moderation on every story before it is sent.
• To manage your membership, billing, and account.
• To respond to support requests and keep the service secure.

AI-generated and safety-reviewed

Stories are generated by AI and pass an automated safety review before delivery. Moderation is designed to be strict and fails closed — an unsafe story is blocked rather than sent — but no automated system is perfect. We recommend a parent reads each story.

Overseas processing (APP 8)

Your data is stored in Australia (our database and application are hosted in Sydney). To create stories and run the service, some information is processed by trusted providers located in the United States:

• Anthropic — story text generation and text safety moderation.
• Google (Gemini) — illustration generation (illustrated tier).
• Stripe — payment processing.
• Resend — sending your nightly story emails.

We only send these providers the minimum needed to do their job. For example, the minimal story profile (including your child's nickname and chosen character names) and the story text, to generate, narrate, and deliver a story, or your email address to send it. Because we never collect a child's real name, date of birth, photograph, location, or contact details, none of that information is ever sent.

Storage & security

Our database, sign-in, and file storage are provided by Supabase in its Sydney (Australia) region, and our application is hosted on Vercel, also served from Sydney. Data is held with row-level security, so one account cannot read another's data. Connections are encrypted in transit. Administrative access is limited.

Sharing a story

You can choose to publish a single story to an unguessable public link. While shared, that story (and the child's nickname that appears within it) is publicly viewable by anyone with the link, until you unshare it. Sharing is entirely optional and per-story.

How long we keep it

We keep your account and your child's data while your account is active. When a solo account or the household owner deletes their account, the profile, children, stories, and billing records are removed. If a co-parent (a non-owner member) deletes their account, only their own login and access are removed — the shared children and stories stay with the account owner.

Your rights

• Access & correction — you can view and edit your child's profile and your settings at any time while signed in.
• Deletion — you can permanently delete your account and all associated data by contacting us at privacy@storyofyourown.com. We action deletion requests promptly.
• Withdraw consent — you can cancel your membership at any time from your Subscription page, and request deletion of your account as above.

Children's data

There are no child accounts; a parent or guardian controls everything. We keep the child profile minimal by design to align with the Australian Privacy Principles. We will review our practices against Australia's Children's Online Privacy Code as it is finalised.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the service evolves. Material changes will be reflected here with a new "last updated" date.

Contact

Questions or requests about your privacy: privacy@storyofyourown.com.