Privacy Policy

Who we are

SocialOrbit (“we”, “us”) is a social-skills practice app for students in grades 5 to 8, operated by SocialOrbit in California, USA. Questions about privacy, and requests about your information or your child's, go to info@socialorbit.org.

The short version

• We collect what we need to run lessons and save progress. We don't show ads, sell or rent personal information, or build advertising profiles.
• If you are under 13, we don't collect personal information from you until a parent or guardian gives verifiable consent. Until then, lessons work with progress saved only on your device.
• AI chats and voice are sent to our AI providers to respond in the moment. SocialOrbit doesn't save them to your account. Camera video never leaves your device.
• You can delete your account in Settings. Parents can review, download and delete their child's information from the parent dashboard.

What we collect, why, how long we keep it, and who we share it with

• Email and password (13+ and parent accounts)

  Why

  Log in, password resets, account emails

  How long

  Until you delete the account

  Shared with

  Supabase (hosting and login)

• Birth month and year (13+ and parent accounts)

  Why

  Decide whether the account needs a parent's consent

  How long

  Until you delete the account

  Shared with

  Supabase

• Child username and password (set by the parent)

  Why

  Let the child log in without an email address

  How long

  Until the parent deletes the account or withdraws consent

  Shared with

  Supabase

• Display name, setup answers (grade, goals, comfort level, optional autism support level), settings

  Why

  Tailor lessons and the app to you

  How long

  Until you delete it or the account

  Shared with

  Supabase

• Lesson progress, XP, streaks, game saves

  Why

  Save your place on the path

  How long

  Until you delete it or the account

  Shared with

  Supabase

• What you say in AI practice chats (typed, or spoken and turned into text)

  Why

  Generate the practice character's reply, check which lesson goals you've met, and write your end-of-session feedback report

  How long

  Not stored by SocialOrbit. Requests go only to AI providers that don't store or train on them.

  Shared with

  OpenRouter (routes requests to AI models), Google (Gemini models)

• Short voice recordings (voice studio, if turned on)

  Why

  Turn what you say into text, and speak the character's replies aloud

  How long

  Not stored by SocialOrbit. Requests go only to AI providers that don't store or train on them.

  Shared with

  OpenRouter, OpenAI (speech-to-text), Google (spoken replies)

• Camera video (voice studio, if turned on)

  Why

  Feedback on eye contact, facial expression and smiles

  How long

  Never leaves your device. It is analyzed in your browser and not saved.

  Shared with

  No one

• Feedback scores from a practice session (eye contact, volume, pace)

  Why

  Write your end-of-session feedback report

  How long

  Not stored by SocialOrbit unless you email the report

  Shared with

  OpenRouter, Google

• Reports you choose to email (13+ only)

  Why

  Send a practice summary to people you pick

  How long

  A log of each email (recipient, time, delivery status) is kept so we can handle bounces and unsubscribes. Email us to have it removed.

  Shared with

  Resend (email delivery), the recipients you choose

• Public reviews (13+ only)

  Why

  Show what learners think of SocialOrbit

  How long

  Until you delete the review or the account

  Shared with

  Shown publicly with the name you choose

• Parent's email for a consent request

  Why

  Ask a parent for consent

  How long

  Deleted 14 days after the request if consent isn't completed

  Shared with

  Supabase, Resend

• Signed parental consent form and consent record

  Why

  Show that a parent gave verifiable consent

  How long

  Form: until consent is withdrawn or the child account is deleted. Record: up to 3 years after withdrawal.

  Shared with

  Supabase; seen only by our consent reviewers

On your device: without an account, progress, sound settings and the answer to the age question are kept in your browser's local storage and never sent to us. The on-device face analysis in the voice studio downloads its model files from public servers (jsDelivr and Google), which see your IP address like any website. No camera images are sent with those downloads.

Technical data: our hosting providers record IP addresses and request details in server logs for security and troubleshooting. They keep these logs for a short time, usually days, under their own policies. We don't use advertising or analytics cookies, and if we ever add analytics we'll update this policy first.

Do Not Track: we don't track you across other websites, so a browser's “Do Not Track” signal doesn't change anything we do.

How we use information

• To run the app: log you in, save progress, and tailor lessons.
• To provide the AI features you or your parent turned on.
• To keep the service safe and working, for example to prevent abuse and fix bugs.
• To meet legal duties, including children's privacy law.

We don't use children's information for advertising, and we don't use any user's chats to train AI models. We send AI requests only to providers that don't store or train on them.

Who we share information with

We share personal information only with service providers that help us run SocialOrbit, under contracts that limit their use of it to providing their service to us:

• Supabase: database, login and file storage.
• OpenRouter: passes AI chat, lesson-goal, report and voice requests to the AI models below.
• Google: Gemini models write the practice character's replies, check lesson goals, write feedback reports and speak replies aloud. Google also handles login if you choose “Continue with Google”.
• OpenAI: turns voice recordings into text.
• Resend: sending emails.
• Vercel: serving the website.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect someone's safety, or as part of a merger or sale of the service, in which case this policy's protections continue to apply. We don't sell or rent personal information.

Children under 13

SocialOrbit is designed for students in grades 5 to 8, so many of our users are under 13. We designed SocialOrbit to follow the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Before a parent consents

• When someone starts to sign up, we ask for their birth month and year without suggesting an answer. If they are under 13, we don't create an account.
• The child can enter a parent's or guardian's email so we can ask for consent. That email is the only thing we collect, and we use it only for that purpose. If consent isn't completed, we delete it within 14 days.
• The child can still do lessons, with progress kept only in their browser. AI chats and the voice studio are off.

How a parent gives verifiable consent

• The parent opens the link in our email, which explains what we collect and why, and creates a parent account (18+) with that email address.
• The parent prints, signs and uploads our consent form. A member of our team checks it by hand before consent is marked verified. A checkbox alone is never treated as consent.
• After verification, the parent creates the child's username and password. We don't collect the child's email address.
• Lessons and progress are always on. AI chats and the voice studio stay off unless the parent turns them on.

What we collect from a child, with consent

The child's username, setup answers (grade, goals, comfort level, and, only if the child chooses to answer, autism support level), lesson progress, XP, streaks, game saves and settings. If the parent turns them on, AI chat text and voice are processed by OpenRouter, Google and OpenAI as described above, and aren't stored by SocialOrbit. Camera video is analyzed only on the child's device. Children can't post public reviews, message other users, or email reports. We collect only what the activity needs, and we never require more information for a child to take part.

Parents' rights

From the parent dashboard, a parent can at any time:

• see and download the information we hold about their child;
• delete their child's activity data;
• turn AI chats and the voice studio on or off;
• withdraw consent, which deletes the child's account and all of their information right away.

Parents can also contact us at info@socialorbit.org. Deleted information is removed from our live database right away and from backups within 30 days.

Teens 13 to 17

Teens can create their own account. We collect the same information described above, and recommend that teens talk with a parent or guardian about using AI features. If you live in California and are under 18, you can remove anything you posted publicly on SocialOrbit, such as a review, yourself or by emailing info@socialorbit.org.

Your choices

• Change your name and settings in Settings.
• Delete your account in Settings → Privacy. This deletes your progress, settings, answers and reviews.
• Turn off sound, reminders and email updates in Settings.
• You can ask us what personal information we hold about you, ask for a copy, or ask us to correct or delete it, by emailing info@socialorbit.org. We'll reply within 30 days. Depending on where you live, you may have more rights under local law.

How long we keep information

We keep information only as long as we need it for the purposes above, as shown in the table. Account information is kept until the account is deleted. A parent can delete their child's account at any time from the parent dashboard.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit and stored with access rules that let each account reach only its own information. Signed consent forms are kept in private storage that only our review team can open. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your information, we will notify you as the law requires.

Changes to this policy

If we make material changes, especially to how we handle children's information, we'll notify parents and ask for new consent where the law requires it before the change applies.