Privacy Policy

Secret Scribe is operated by House of Holder LLC (“Secret Scribe,” “we,” “us”). This policy explains what information we collect through the Secret Scribe app and website, why we collect it, who sees it, how long we keep it, and the choices you have. Secret Scribe is a service for families. Accounts belong to parents and legal guardians. Children use Secret Scribe only through a parent's account and with that parent's consent.

1. Information we collect

From parents. Your email address, a password or Apple sign-in credential, a record of the consent you give (date, method, and scope), and the device tokens needed to send you notifications if you allow them. If you join the waitlist on our website we collect your email, your first name if you give it, your state, your child's age range, and how you heard about us.

About your child, provided by you. Your child's first name, date of birth, and the mailing address letters are delivered to. We assign your child a pen name from a curated list. We do not collect a child's last name, school, photo, or precise location.

Letters. A photo of each handwritten page your child scans, a text transcription we generate from it, safety-screening scores, and delivery tracking events from our mail partner. Letters received by your child are stored the same way.

Game activity. The clues your child chooses to share, the clues they pin to their detective board, and the guesses they log.

Automatically. Basic technical information needed to run the app, such as device type and app version. We do not use advertising trackers or sell data to data brokers.

2. How we use it

To run the pen-pal season: match your child with a pen pal in the same age band, screen letters for safety, print and mail them, track delivery, and run the detective game. To keep your child safe: review flagged letters, respond to reports, and enforce our rules. To communicate with you: notifications and emails about letters that need your approval, letters that mailed or arrived, matches, and the reveal. To support you and to comply with the law.

3. What other families see

The other pen pal and their family see your child's pen name, the handwritten letter itself, and your child's home state. They do not see your child's first name, last name, address, school, or photo. First names and photos are exchanged only at the reveal, and only after both families have approved it in the app.

4. Who else receives information

Print-and-mail partner (Lob). To print and mail a letter we send the page image, the recipient's pen name, and the recipient's mailing address to our print-and-mail partner. They use it only to print and deliver the letter. The sender's address is never on the mailing; the return address is a Secret Scribe PO box.

AI provider (Anthropic). To transcribe and screen letters we send the page image and text to our AI provider under terms that prohibit using it to train their models.

Infrastructure. We store data with Convex (database and file storage), manage sign-in with Clerk, send push notifications through Expo, and send email through Resend. Each provider processes data only on our instructions.

Our review team. Trained reviewers read flagged letters and, during the founding cohort, may spot-check letters to make sure screening works.

Legal. We may disclose information when required by law or to protect the safety of a child or the public.

We do not sell personal information. We do not share it for advertising.

5. Children's privacy (COPPA)

We collect personal information from children under 13 only with verifiable parental consent, which we obtain before any child profile is created. Children under 13 have no login of their own; every action in the app for a child under 13 is taken by the parent. We collect only what is needed to run the service and do not condition a child's participation on disclosing more information than is reasonably necessary.

As a parent you can review the personal information we hold about your child, ask us to delete it, and refuse to allow any further collection or use, at any time, by using the Family tab in the app or by contacting us at the address below. Deleting your child's information ends their participation in the season.

6. How long we keep it

Letter scans and transcriptions are deleted 90 days after the letter is delivered. Mailing addresses are deleted when you close the account. Clues, board entries, and match history are deleted when you close the account. Consent records and safety-incident records are kept as long as the law requires, then deleted. Waitlist entries are deleted when you join or on request.

7. Security

Mailing addresses are encrypted at rest and decrypted only inside the server step that hands a letter to our print partner. Access to letters and personal information is limited to the people and systems that need it to run the service. No system is perfectly secure; if we learn of a breach affecting your family's information we will notify you as the law requires.

8. Your choices

You can turn notifications off in your phone's settings. You can require approval of outgoing letters, hold incoming letters, pause your child, end a match, and close the account from the Family tab. You can ask us to see, correct, or delete your family's information at any time.

9. Changes

If we change this policy in a way that affects how we use children's information, we will ask for your consent again before continuing.

10. Contact

House of Holder LLC · Secret Scribe
30 E Broadway, Suite 203 #1053, Salt Lake City, UT 84111
hello@secretscribe.app