Privacy Policy

Who uses Gramo

Grown-ups (parents, guardians, grandparents and other trusted adults) create an account in the app with an email address. You must be 18 or older to create an account.

Kids use the Gramo box. A kid has no account, no screen, no username and no way to type, browse or contact anyone outside their Pod. A grown-up sets up each Gramo and decides which Pod it belongs to.

A Pod is a private group: the Gramos in it and the grown-ups who look after them. Everything recorded in a Pod goes to the whole Pod and to nobody else.

What we collect from grown-ups

• Your email address, to sign you in with a one-time code and to send you messages about your account.
• Your name, and the name you choose to go by in each Pod (for example, “Grandma Bea”). Other people in the Pod see it.
• Voice messages you record in the app. They go to every Gramo and every grown-up in the Pod.
• Which messages you’ve played, so the app can show what’s new.
• A push notification token for your phone, with its platform and app version, so we can tell you when a message arrives.
• Settings you choose, such as Pod names, message limits, quiet hours and volume limits. For quiet hours we store the time zone your phone reports.
• Invite links you create. They expire after two days.

Your sign-in session is kept on your phone in its secure storage (the iOS Keychain, or its Android equivalent). The app also keeps your name, email and a copy of recently played messages on your phone so it opens quickly.

What we collect through a Gramo box

Children’s information is covered in its own section below. From the box itself we receive:

• Voice recordings made when a kid holds the Record button. The box records only while the button is held down and does not listen at any other time.
• When each message was played on each Gramo.
• Technical information: the box’s device ID, its firmware version, when it last checked in, and an approximate time zone worked out from its internet connection (used for daily message limits and quiet hours). When a box is first connected, we record its network hardware (MAC) address and delete that record seven days later.

The box does not send us your Wi-Fi network name or password, its location, or any audio outside a recording.

Children’s privacy

Gramo is designed for children, and we take the U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) seriously. This section is our notice to parents.

What we collect from or about a child

• The child’s voice, in the messages they record on their Gramo.
• The name and colour a grown-up gives their Gramo. This is usually the child’s first name.
• When they play messages, and the box’s technical information described above.

We do not collect a child’s email address, phone number, photo, precise location, or date of birth. A child cannot create an account.

How we use it. Only to run Gramo: to deliver the child’s messages to their Pod, show who a message is from, and apply the limits their grown-ups set. We never use a child’s information for advertising, profiling, or training AI models, and we never sell it.

Who sees it

• The people in the child’s Pod. A child’s messages are delivered to every Gramo in the Pod and can be heard by every grown-up in it. A grown-up who joins a Pod later can hear the messages from the previous 30 days that are still there.
• Our service providers (listed below), only as needed to run the service. For example, the Gramo’s name appears in the notification that tells a grown-up a new message has arrived, and that notification passes through Apple or Google.

Parental consent. A grown-up sets up each Gramo in the app and chooses its Pod. Before a Gramo is connected, that grown-up is shown this notice and asked to agree to their child’s voice messages being shared with the Pod they choose. If you don’t agree, don’t connect the Gramo.

Your rights as a parent. At any time you can:

• Review your child’s messages: every message in the Pod is in the app.
• Delete any message in the app, straight away.
• Stop further collection by removing the Gramo from its Pod in the app, or by unplugging it.
• Delete everything by deleting the Pod or your account (see “Deleting your information”).
• Ask us to review or delete your child’s information by emailing support@hellogramo.com. We’ll confirm who you are before acting, and we won’t make your child’s use of Gramo depend on them sharing more than it needs.

How long we keep things

Deleted data can remain in our hosting provider’s short-term recovery backups for up to 30 days before it’s gone for good.

Deleting your information

• A message: tap it in the app and delete it. It’s removed from every Gramo and every phone in the Pod.
• A Gramo: remove it from its Pod in the app. It stops sending and receiving straight away.
• A Pod: the Pod’s owner can delete it in the app. Every message in it is deleted for everyone, and each Gramo is freed with a new box code.

• Your account: go to Settings, then Delete account. We delete your email, your name, your sessions, your push tokens and your messages.
  • Pods where you are the only grown-up are deleted.
  • Pods you own that have other grown-ups pass to the grown-up who has been there longest.
  • Gramos you added are freed.

Without the app: you don’t need the app installed to delete your account. Email support@hellogramo.com from the address you sign in with and ask us to delete your account. We’ll confirm the request by replying to that address, then delete everything listed above, normally within 30 days. You can ask us to do any of the other deletions this way too.

Who we share information with

We don’t sell or rent personal information, and we don’t share it for advertising. We use these service providers to run Gramo. Each one receives only what its job needs:

We may also disclose information when the law requires it, to protect someone’s safety, or as part of selling or reorganising the business. If the business changes hands, this policy (including the 30-day deletion of messages) still applies to information already collected.

The website and our mailing list

hellogramo.com uses Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages people use. If you join the early backers list, we store your first name and email with Kit and send you emails about Gramo. Every email has an unsubscribe link. If you reserve a Gramo, Stripe handles the payment and we receive your name and email address. We also mark you on our Kit list as someone who reserved, so we can keep the launch-price promise we made you.

The Gramo app and box contain no advertising or analytics trackers.

Security

• In transit: everything between the app, the box and our servers is encrypted (HTTPS).
• Box authentication: each Gramo signs every request with its own key, so another device can’t pretend to be it.
• At rest: messages and account data are stored with Cloudflare, which encrypts them at rest.
• Sign-in: codes and session tokens are stored only as one-way hashes, and repeated sign-in attempts are limited.
• Staff access: access to production systems is limited to the people who run Gramo, and each use is logged.

Messages are not end-to-end encrypted. We keep a written security program and review it annually. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, we’ll tell you as the law requires.

Other things you should know

• Pod members can see each other. Grown-ups in the same Pod can see each other’s names and email addresses, and the names of the Gramos in it.
• Anyone in a Pod can hear anything recorded in it. Only invite people you trust with your child’s voice.
• Where your data is stored: in the United States and other countries where Cloudflare operates.
• Your state’s privacy laws may give you more rights, such as the right to know, correct or delete personal information. Email us and we’ll honour them. We do not sell or “share” personal information as California law defines those terms.

Changes

If we change this policy, we’ll update the date at the top. If a change affects how we handle children’s information, or is otherwise significant, we’ll tell account holders by email before it takes effect. If the change covers children’s information in a new way, we’ll ask for consent again.

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