TruTube Kids — Privacy Policy
TruTube Kids is a place where a guardian decides what a child can watch. We collect what we need to run a guardian's account and a child's profile, and to keep a record of what the guardian has decided. We don't show our own advertising, we don't sell anything about you or your child, and we don't run third-party analytics on this site.
1. Who we are
TruTube Kids is operated by TruTube Limited, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17492227), 128 City Road, London EC1V 2NX ("TruTube", "we"). We are the data controller for the personal data described here. Contact: privacy@trutube.kids.
This policy covers the child app at trutube.kids.
2. Who uses TruTube Kids
A guardian — an adult responsible for a child — creates the account, sets up one or more child profiles, and decides what each child may watch and where they may go. An older child in the family can be trusted to open a profile for a younger one on a device the guardian has signed into; the account and the decisions stay the guardian's. A child uses the app under those decisions. Children do not create accounts, do not give us their email address, and are not asked for personal details by the app.
3. What we collect, and why
| About the guardian | Why |
|---|---|
| Name and email address, from Google sign-in or from what you enter when your account is created | To run your account and contact you about it |
| When you signed in, and whether with Google or email. Not your location or device | To keep your account secure |
| The PIN you set for guardian controls, stored in a form we cannot read back | So only you can change what a child may reach |
| If you sign in with Google, or connect YouTube from an email sign-in: your Google name and email, and read-only access to your YouTube playlists (including Liked and Watch Later) and subscriptions, asked for at the same time. We never read your YouTube watch history | So you can bring videos you already trust into a child's list. We do not post, edit or delete anything on your YouTube account. If you disconnect YouTube in the app, we cancel our access with Google and delete what we imported from your YouTube account: your playlists, liked and saved videos, subscriptions, and the Google name, email and picture we stored with the connection. Videos you have already approved for a child stay in that child's list, because you chose them. |
| What you write in the app: names for lists, notes on restrictions, and anything you tell us about a child's needs | To carry out your choices for your child |
| About each child | Why |
|---|---|
| A display name you choose and the child's age (for example 5). Not a date of birth | To show the child their own profile and to suit the app to their age |
| The profile icon chosen for the child | So the child can pick their own profile on a device you have signed into |
| A sign-in for the child's profile, held in our database two ways: a one-way form the sign-in checks against, and an encrypted copy that only you, as the account's guardian, can ask to see. The password is never saved in your browser | So the app can open the child's profile under your account, and so you can look the sign-in up later. The child doesn't type it: you sign in to the device, the child picks their icon |
| Optional: health conditions or needs you choose to tell us about, and any notes you add | So choices and safety checks can take them into account. You decide whether to tell us; nothing in the app requires it, and you can remove them at any time. We store them encrypted, they are never saved in your browser, and only our servers can decrypt them |
| The list of videos and creators you have approved, and any you have excluded | This is the product: what the child may watch |
| What the child watched, and when; where they left off | So you can see it, and so the app can resume where the child left off |
| Each time a link would have taken the child out of TruTube: where it pointed (without the rest of the web address), whether it came from our app on a phone, tablet or computer or from a browser, what you decided, and when. Also when no decision was needed, for example because the video was already on the child's list | So your decisions are carried out next time without asking again, so you can review and reverse them, and so we can count, by age group only, how often children try to leave |
Each child's account is handled separately. A decision for one child never applies to another.
4. Why we are allowed to use it
- To provide the service you signed up for — your account, your children's profiles, their lists and history.
- Our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure and in improving how we assess videos.
- Your explicit consent for any health condition or need you tell us about. You can withdraw it by removing the information.
- Legal obligations, where the law requires us to keep or disclose something.
5. What we don't do
- We do not use automated algorithms to serve content to your child with the view to encouraging their retention on the platform. Any content served to your child, the order in which it is served and the duration it is served for is decided by you — through the list you build, the limits you set, and the options you agree to before anything is delivered.
- We use AI to analyse videos and to decide what is safe for your child. We don't use it to make decisions about you or your child as people.
- We show no advertising of our own on trutube.kids and we don't let advertisers see who uses it.
- We don't sell, rent or trade personal data.
- We don't run third-party analytics or tracking on trutube.kids.
- We don't build profiles of a child's interests for anyone's benefit but the guardian's view.
- We don't ask a child for their name, age, address, school, photo or anything else about themselves.
6. Your browser and device
We set no cookies. The app keeps your settings and your children's lists in your browser's own storage so it works quickly; it never stores passwords or anything you have told us about a child's health there. Signing out and clearing your browser's site data removes what it keeps. Our hosting provider records the address (IP) each request comes from, as every website host does. When a page loads, YouTube's player and thumbnails, and the web fonts the app uses, also receive your IP address from your browser.
TruTube Guardian, our optional browser extension for Chrome, Edge and Brave, lets you decide whether a website your child tries to open from TruTube, and any YouTube page in that browser profile, may open. It reads the address of a page that is about to open in a tab, and acts only on a tab TruTube opened, a TruTube tab leaving trutube.kids, and YouTube pages; it ignores every other page. When it stops a page, it sends that one address to trutube.kids so TruTube can ask you about it. It keeps, in that browser only, whether it is switched on, the name of the TruTube child profile it was last used with, and its last ten events with their addresses, which you can see on its settings page. It never receives or keeps your PIN, runs nothing on any website's pages, and sends nothing anywhere except trutube.kids. Removing the extension removes everything it keeps.
7. YouTube's player, and YouTube's rules
Videos play inside YouTube's embedded player. On your child's screens it is YouTube's privacy-enhanced player; in the guardian view it is the standard one, which may set YouTube's own cookies. Either way, YouTube and Google receive the same information they would from any page that embeds their player. That is governed by Google's privacy policy, which we don't control. YouTube's player may show YouTube's own advertising.
The information we use to describe videos — titles, descriptions, how many views they have — comes from YouTube through its official services, and we refresh or remove it at least every 30 days, in line with YouTube's rules for developers.
When you connect YouTube, we use YouTube API Services. You can disconnect YouTube in the app at any time: we cancel our access with Google straight away and delete what we imported from your YouTube account. You can also withdraw access at myaccount.google.com/permissions; when Google tells us access has been withdrawn, we delete what we imported. Deleting data from TruTube does not delete anything on YouTube — to do that, use YouTube itself.
8. Who helps us, and who can see your data
We use a small number of service providers to run TruTube. Each handles data only on our instructions and may not use it for its own purposes:
- Hosting and database providers — store your account and your children's profiles, and serve the app.
- Google — sign-in for guardians and YouTube's services, as described above.
- AI service providers — analyse the text of videos and the words you search with.
- A transcript service — fetches a video's transcript. It receives only the YouTube video's ID.
How we use AI. To decide what is safe for your child, we run analyses on the minimum parameters needed: an age, a condition you have told us about, and the content you want excluded. Nothing that identifies you or your child goes with them, so our AI service providers cannot tell who an analysis is for. They act only on our instructions and may not keep or use it for anything else. If you type notes in your own words, those words are sent as you wrote them. To protect your anonymity and your child's, before any such text is saved the app asks you to check it and leave out names or anything else that could identify your child.
You can ask us for the names of the providers we use at privacy@trutube.kids.
Some of these providers store data outside the UK. Where they do, the transfer is covered by safeguards recognised under UK data protection law — adequacy regulations or the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, depending on the provider.
We disclose personal data only where the law requires it, or, if TruTube is ever sold or merged, to the business that takes it over, which must keep to this policy. Our own staff open an account's data only to help you or to keep the service safe, and each such access is recorded.
9. How long we keep it
We keep your account, your children's profiles and their history while your account is active. To delete your account, or a child's profile and everything in it, email privacy@trutube.kids and we will delete it within 30 days, apart from anything the law requires us to keep.
10. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you or your child, ask us to correct or delete it, object to how we use it, or ask us to restrict it. You can exercise these rights for a child in your care. Write to privacy@trutube.kids; we reply within one month.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, tell us first at the same address and we will respond. If we don't resolve it, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
11. Children's privacy, in particular
TruTube Kids is designed for children under the oversight of a guardian, and we follow the UK Age Appropriate Design Code: settings default to the most protective option, we collect the minimum, we use no nudges to keep a child watching, and we don't share a child's data for others' purposes. If you are a guardian and believe we have collected something about a child we shouldn't hold, contact us and we will remove it.
For families in the United States: we do not knowingly collect personal information from a child under 13 except through a guardian's account and under the guardian's control, as described here.
12. Security
Guardian PINs are stored in a form we cannot read back. Each child profile's sign-in is checked against a one-way form; the copy you can view is encrypted, decrypted only for you, and never written to a log. A child never sees or types it. Anything you tell us about a child's health conditions or needs is encrypted with its own key, separate from every other key we use, and the encrypted form never leaves our servers. No password or health information is saved in your browser. Access to our systems is limited to the people who operate the service.
13. Changes
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we tell guardians by email before it takes effect. Each version carries its own date.