Last updated August, 2023

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. It has important information about us, and how and why we collect, store and use personal information, your rights and on how to contact us or complain.

About Curious World / Kidsy & the Plato Media Group of Companies

The Curious World website and application are operated by Kidsy Limited, trading as Curious World. We are a company dedicated to the operation and development of apps and other digital products for children, aiming to engage, educate, and entertain. For more information, please see the About Us section of the Curious World website.

Please note that due to a change in ownership in September 2020, Kidsy Limited is now wholly owned by Sandbox International Holdings Ltd . Kidsy Limited forms part of the Sandbox International Holdings Ltd. Sandbox International Holdings Ltd also owns and operates the ‘Hopster’ website and application - Sandbox International Holdings Ltd.

This privacy policy is issued on behalf of Kidsy Limited and the Plato Media Group of Companies. References to “Curious World”, “we”, “us”, or “our” relate to the relevant company in the Plato Media Group of Companies responsible for processing your personal information.

We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal information about you. We are regulated under the General Data Protection Regulation which applies across the European Union (including in the United Kingdom) and we are responsible as 'controller' of that personal information.

Our service

The Curious World App can be downloaded without requiring a user to subscribe or provide any personal information. The app is available to download on selected mobile devices and as a web app hosted at kidsy.curiousworld.com.

Please note that your and your children's interactions with a mobile or tablet device where Curious World is installed may involve Apple (or other device manufacturer or provider) and those interactions are governed separately by Apple's (or such other party's) privacy policies and terms.

We may also send alerts or notifications to your device as part of the usage and features of the Curious World App. These may include prompts or reminders to pay for a subscription that has lapsed or expired, or to notify you of important information about the usage of the app.

Interactions with third-party sites

On the www.curiousworld.com website, which is intended solely for use by parents, guardians, or other adults, there is certain functionality that allows users to interact with and post or send user-generated content in a pre-templated fashion to Facebook or other third party platforms, social media sites and/or other applications or offerings.

The www.curiousworld.com website is separate from our web app hosted at kidsy.curiousworld.com. The web app has been created to be used by children in the same way as the Curious World mobile apps.

Personal information

The personal information we collect about you depends on the particular activities carried out through our website or app. Such information includes:

your name and email address
details of any feedback you give us by phone, email, post or via social media
information about the services we provide to you
your account details, such as username, login details
information you chose to give us in relation to a Child Profile within your account, such as your child's first name and date of birth

We use this personal information to:

create and manage your account with us;
verify your identity;
communicate with you about your purchase, account information, or customer service needs;
provide goods and services to you;
customize and/or personalize the viewing and content consumption experience of you and/or your child;
notify you of any changes to our website or app or to our services that may affect you;
improve our services;
provide technical support to you; and
perform any other lawful acts.

What information do we collect on parts of our app directed to children?

We have taken steps to have the Curious World App comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and with all the protections required for the protection of children under the General Data Protection Regulation and associated legislation and guidelines (GDPR). For example, we do not use the Curious World App to collect personal information (as broadly defined by COPPA and GDPR) for purposes of online behavioural advertising. We may, however, in compliance with COPPA and GDPR, collect or share certain information to support our internal operations, such as for performing analytics, enabling or delivering certain types of content or features, and for improving or maintaining the Curious World App.

If you believe that we have collected personal information from someone under the age of 13, please contact us at: privacy@curiousworld.com.

Our legal basis for processing your personal information

When we use your personal information we are required to have a legal basis for doing so. There are various different legal bases upon which we may rely, and these will depend on the personal information in question and the specific context in which we collect it.

The legal bases we may rely on include:

consent: where you have given us clear consent for us to process your personal information for a specific purpose
contract: where our use of your personal information is necessary for a contract we have with you, or because you have asked us to take specific steps before entering into a contract
legal obligation: where our use of your personal information is necessary for us to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations)
legitimate interests: where our use of your personal information is necessary for our legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party (unless there is a good reason to protect your personal information which overrides our legitimate interests)

We rely on your consent to use your personal information, and the limited information you may provide us about your children in setting up an account.

The table below explains what we use (process) your personal information for and our reasons for doing so:

What we use your personal information for	Our reasons
To provide services to you	For the performance of our agreement with you or to take steps at your request before entering into this agreement
Conducting checks to identify our customers and verify their identity Other processing necessary to comply with professional, legal and regulatory obligations that apply to our business, eg under health and safety regulation or rules issued by our professional regulator	To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Gathering and providing information required by or relating to audits, enquiries or investigations by regulatory bodies	To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Ensuring business policies are adhered to, eg policies covering security and internet use	For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to make sure we are following our own internal procedures so we can deliver the best service to you
Operational reasons, such as improving efficiency, training and quality control	For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service for you at the best price
Statistical analysis to help us manage our business, eg in relation to our financial performance, customer base, product range or other efficiency measures	For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service for you at the best price
Preventing unauthorised access and modifications to systems	For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, ie to prevent and detect criminal activity that could be damaging for us and for you To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Updating and enhancing customer records	For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, eg making sure that we can keep in touch with our customers about existing orders and new products

Who we share your personal information with

Third parties

We may share personal information collected with the companies within the Sandbox International Holdings Ltd. We will not share any personal information about you with any third party (a party not affiliated with Sandbox International Holdings Ltd.), except as otherwise stated in this Privacy Policy and in the following circumstances: (a) in response to subpoenas, court orders or legal process, to the extent permitted and as restricted by law; (b) when disclosure is required to maintain the security and integrity of this site, or to protect any user's security or the security of other persons, consistent with applicable laws; (c) when disclosure is directed or consented to by the registered member who has inputted the personal information; (d) in the event that Sandbox International Holdings Ltd. (the owner of Curious World) or any of its subdivisions or units goes through a business transition, such as a merger, divestiture, acquisition, liquidation or sale of all or a portion of its assets, your personal information will, in most instances, be part of the assets transferred; or (e) in limited circumstances, we may disclose your email address in order to comply with laws and regulations, including the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM of 2003).

We do disclose (or permit third parties to collect on our behalf) information in order to provide services to us (such as hosting, operating online services, tracking activities and analytics, delivering content), and to enable some or all of the App's functionality. Our service providers are not permitted to use your Personal Information for their own purposes without your express consent, and we will not share your personal information with any other third party.

Some of these third party service providers may be based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) — for further information including on how we safeguard your personal data when this occurs, see 'Transfer of your information out of the EEA'.

Transfer of your information out of the EEA

We may transfer your personal information to service providers which are located outside the European Economic Area (EEA), as follows:

Service providers based both within and outside of the EEA, such as IT administration or infrastructure provision;
Communications and customer service providers based outside the EEA, such as Groove;
Analytics providers based outside the EEA, such as Google Analytics;
Companies within Sandbox’s group of companies

Some of the countries in which these services are based do not have the same data protection laws as the United Kingdom and EEA. Any transfer of your personal information to these territories may be required to be subject to a European Commission approved contract (as permitted under Article 46(5) of the General Data Protection Regulation), that is designed to help safeguard your privacy rights and give you remedies in the unlikely event of a misuse of your personal information. Please contact us if you would like more information (see 'How to contact us' below).

We will take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is kept secure and treated in accordance with this privacy policy and applicable data protection laws, including, where relevant, by entering into appropriate contractual terms with the receiving party outside of the EEA.

Cookies and similar technologies

A cookie is a small text file which is placed onto your device (e.g., computer, smartphone or other electronic device) when you use our website. We use cookies and other similar tracking technologies on our website.

For information on our use of cookies, please see our Cookie Policy.

For further information on cookies generally, you can visit the third party websites www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

Marketing

We would like to send you information about Curious World and other Sandbox products including competitions and promotions, which may be of interest to you. Where we have your consent we may do this by post, email, telephone, text message (SMS) or automated call.

As mentioned above, Curious World is part of the Plato Media Group of Companies - which includes Hopster website and application. We would also like to send you information about Hopster from time to time where we have your explicit consent.

We will only ask whether you would like us to send you these marketing messages when you tick the relevant boxes when you create a Curious World account. You may also sign up to receive messages from us through the homepage of our Website.

If you have previously agreed to being contacted in this way, you can unsubscribe at any time by:

contacting us at support@sandboxkids.io
using the 'unsubscribe' link in emails or 'STOP' number in texts

It may take up to seven (7) days for this to take place.

For more information on your rights in relation to marketing, see 'Your rights' below.

We will only ask whether you would like us to send you marketing messages when you tick the relevant boxes when you create a Curious World account. You may also sign up to receive messages from us through the homepage of our Website.

How long your personal information will be kept

We automatically delete any child profile data from profiles with no active subscription or app activity after 14 days. We will keep other personal information while you have an account with us. After that, we will only keep your personal information for as long as is necessary:

to respond to any questions, complaints or claims made by you or on your behalf;
to show that we treated you fairly;
to keep records required by law.

We will not retain your personal information for longer than necessary for the purposes set out in this policy. Different retention periods apply for different types of personal information

When it is no longer necessary to retain your personal information, we will delete or anonymise it.

Your rights

Under the EU General Data Protection Regulation you have a number of important rights free of charge. In summary, those include rights to:

fair processing of information and transparency over how we use your personal information
access to your personal information and to certain other supplementary information that this Privacy Policy is already designed to address
require us to correct any mistakes in your information which we hold
require the erasure of personal information concerning you in certain situations
receive the personal information concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to a third party in certain situations
object at any time to processing of personal information concerning you for direct marketing
object to decisions being taken by automated means which produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you
object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information
otherwise restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances

For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the Guidance from the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on individuals rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.

If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please:

email us at privacy@curiousworld.com, or write to us at Kidsy Ltd, 54 Commercial Street London E1 6LT,
let us have enough information to identify you (e.g., the email address you registered with, your Apple ID),
let us have proof of your identity and address (a copy of your driving licence or passport and a recent utility or credit card bill), and
let us know the information to which your request relates, including any account or reference numbers, if you have them

Parental access rights

Parents can review their child’s personal information, or request that their child’s information be deleted or no longer collected or used, at any time.

To exercise these rights, please email your request to us at privacy@curiousworld.com, or write to us at Kidsy Ltd, 54 Commercial Street London E1 6LT.

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

Protecting your information

We use all reasonable efforts to safeguard and secure your personal information while stored on our computer systems. We use a variety of industry standard security measures, such as requiring of a unique username and password for each user as well as encryption and authentication tools, to maintain the confidentiality of your personal information.

Your personal information is stored behind industry standard firewalls and is only accessible by a limited number of persons who are authorized to access such systems, and are required to keep the information confidential. We also use commercially reasonable efforts to safeguard and secure the transmission of your personal information from your computer to our computers. However, we are unable to guarantee that the security measures we take will not be penetrated or compromised or that your personal information will remain secure under all circumstances.

To help protect you and your children's personal information, please make sure you have current anti-virus and firewall software installed on your device(s) and update such software and each device's operating system software on a regular basis. Each user is responsible for maintaining the secrecy of his or her own or their children's login and account or profile information and associated passwords. Also, please review the statements for your credit cards or other payment methods carefully and on a timely basis and please verify that all transactions are authorized and report any discrepancies immediately to your credit card company, bank or payment service provider.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

Updating your information

If you would like to update your information at any time, or to correct any errors, please contact us at privacy@curiousworld.com.

How to complain

We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information. The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in particular in the European Union (or European Economic Area) state where you work, normally live or where any alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at ico.org.uk/concerns.

Changes to this privacy policy

This privacy policy was published on 10th July 2018 and last updated in November 2020.

We may change this privacy policy from time to time, when we do we will inform you via email, using the email address you registered with. We will obtain prior parental consent if any changes we make affect users under the age of 13 in a way that requires consent under COPPA or other applicable data protection legislation, including GDPR.

How to contact us

Please contact us if you have any questions about this privacy notice or the information we hold about you or if you wish to update or change this information.

If you wish to contact us, please send an email to privacy@curiousworld.com, or write to Attn: Privacy, Kidsy Ltd, 54 Commercial Street London E1 6LT, United Kingdom. You can also call us on +44 20 7237 0313, but please note that this phone number is not constantly manned. The best way to get in touch is by email.

Do you need extra help?

If you would like this privacy policy in another format (for example: audio, large print, braille) please contact us (see 'How to contact us' above).

Privacy Policy