ABCmouse.com helps kids learn to read through phonics, and offers lessons in math, social studies, art, and music. The terms say that ABCmouse may occasionally hold contests or similar activities where a child may create and submit free-form artwork or other content. The terms describe that account registration and login pages use encryption and they employ physical, technical, and administrative security measures to safeguard all information collected by their services. In addition, the terms describe how ABCmouse requires adults to register for its service through various family, teacher, librarian, and community center accounts to provide verifiable parental consent and ensure that any child or student authorized by them to use and access the services does so in accordance with their terms.

The terms say that accounts for children under 13 will never include any pop-up ads or other advertisements and information collected from children is never used for marketing or for targeted advertising purposes. However, parents and teachers should be aware that the terms of ABCmouse say they sell data about adult users to advertising partners who may target ABCmouse ads to those adult users. Also the services may use third-party advertising networks to collect information about adult users' visits to the non-child-directed portions of the services and to deliver interest-based advertising to those adult users. Interest-based ads may include ABCmouse-branded advertising when those adult users visit other third-party applications and websites across the internet.

ABCmouse can be accessed through its website, and is available for download at the iOS App Store, the Google Play Store, and Amazon Appstore. The Privacy Policy and Terms of Use accessed for this evaluation can be found on ABCmouse’s website, iOS App Store, the Google Play Store, and Amazon Appstore. This evaluation only considers policies that have been made publicly available prior to an individual using the application or service.

Safety

The terms of ABCmouse say they may occasionally hold contests or similar activities where a child may create and submit free-form artwork or other content. Upon submission, ABCmouse may review this content and may publish it along with the child's first name on a page that may be viewed by other ABCmouse users with parental consent. The terms also say that if a parent would like to review all of a child's content, they can access their content by clicking on the "My Files" menu item in their child's "About Me" section of the services. Additionally, with parental consent, Teacher Accounts can be linked to a student’s Family Account, or parents with no Family Account can be given access through a separate limited access account (a Classroom-Linked Account) to a student’s lessons that have been assigned by a Teacher.

Privacy

The terms of ABCmouse clearly describe the personally identifiable information and non-personal information automatically collected, as well as behavioral and analytical information collected from users who use the site. The terms say that during registration, the only information ABCmouse may ask a child who will be using the services to provide is the child’s first name, birth date, and gender.

The terms of ABCmouse say that it is "Child Safe" because it is committed to providing children with a learning environment where every activity is just as fun as it is educational, and where parents can feel confident that their children’s privacy is protected. The terms say that accounts for children under 13 will never include any pop-up ads or other advertisements and information collected from children is never used for marketing or for targeted advertising purposes. However, parents and teachers should be aware that the terms of ABCmouse say they sell data about adult users to advertising partners who may target ABCmouse ads to those adult users. Also the services may use third-party advertising networks to collect information about adult users' visits to the non-child-directed portions of the services and to deliver interest-based advertising to those adult users. Interest-based ads may include ABCmouse-branded advertising when those adult users visit other third-party applications and websites across the internet.

Lastly, ABCmouse says in their terms that they may disclose de-identified or aggregated information to third parties for any purpose, for example, the distribution of de-identified user records to outside researchers or the distribution of reports containing aggregate user demographic and traffic patterns.

Security

The terms of ABCmouse say that account registration and login pages use encryption and ABCmouse uses physical, technical, and administrative security measures to safeguard all information collected by their services. In addition, the terms state ABCmouse limits employee access to children’s personal information to only those employees with a need to access the information to fulfill their job. Lastly, the terms say that in the event of a data breach ABCmouse will provide notice to users.

Compliance

The terms of ABCmouse say it requires Adults to register for its service through various family, teacher, and community center accounts to provide verifiable parental consent and ensure that any child or student authorized by them to use and access the services does so in accordance with their terms.

The terms say an adult user can review or change the information they provided when registering for the services, including by adding or removing child users to the account, by updating information through the parent section of the services or, for teacher accounts or community center accounts, by using the class builder or settings feature in the teacher dashboard. In addition, at any time, adult users may contact ABCmouse to request that they provide for their review, or delete from their records, any personally identifiable information that has been provided about child users associated with their account, or to cease collecting personally identifiable information from those child users.

Where parents or legal guardians have linked a family account to a teacher account, the adult users of both accounts will be able to review the progress and details of their child users within both accounts. Additionally, with parental consent, teacher or community center accounts can be linked to a child or student’s family account. The terms describe that linking accounts allows a child user or student to complete their teacher’s assignments outside the classroom or community center, and linking a family account to a teacher account gives parents the opportunity to view their own child’s overall progress in the community center account or teacher account (but not the progress of other children).