Privacy policy

Last updated 15 September 2026

About this policy

Balakatha is a website and installable web app operated by Parents in Tech. This policy explains what happens to data when your family uses Balakatha.

The short version

There are no ads, no tracking, no analytics and no accounts. We do not ask you or your child for a name, email address or location. Optional parent feedback and notification subscriptions are described below.

Requests handled by Cloudflare

To deliver pages, illustrations and audio, your device sends requests to Cloudflare, our hosting and content-delivery service provider. Like any web request, these requests include an IP address, basic browser or device information, the requested file and the time of the request.

Cloudflare processes this request data to deliver content, prevent abuse and keep the service secure and reliable. It may retain limited operational and security logs under its own retention practices. Parents in Tech does not use this data to identify, track or profile your family.

We do not sell personal information or share it for advertising or analytics. Cloudflare receives request data to provide infrastructure and spam protection as described below.

Voluntary feedback and requests

Parents and caregivers may send a private message to share feedback or request stories, languages or improvements. We ask for no name, email address or login. Please do not include personal information. We store your message, category, form language and submission date, together with internal review notes, to plan our work. Cloudflare AI classifies messages and extracts requests. Sanitized story briefs are sent to Google Gemini for research, and sanitized feature requests and bug reports may become issues in our private GitHub repository. Raw messages are not published. AI can make mistakes; uncertain requests and detected personal information are held for maintainer review. All stories still require human approval.

After the parental gate, Cloudflare Turnstile checks for automated spam. It processes browser and network information for this security check and to improve bot detection. We do not store CAPTCHA tokens, IP addresses or device identifiers with feedback, or use the check for advertising or tracking.

Optional new-story notifications

Parents can enable new-story notifications in the installed web app after the parental gate and browser permission prompt. Cloudflare D1 stores the browser push endpoint and encryption keys, a hash of the management credential, installation origin, notification language, and registration, confirmation and expiry dates. These technical identifiers are used only for delivery and subscription management, not to identify families or track reading. A management credential and notification preferences are saved on your device. Notification language is sent to us separately from your local reading preferences.

Cloudflare Turnstile runs after the parental gate to prevent automated subscriptions, processing browser and network information as described above. Encrypted notifications pass through browser-provider push services such as Apple, Google or Mozilla. Those providers process delivery and network information under their own policies. We do not measure notification opens or clicks.

Turn notifications off in Parent settings to delete the subscription. Interrupted deletion retries when you reopen the app online. Subscriptions expire after 180 days without app confirmation, or earlier on browser expiry or a provider invalid-subscription response. Completed delivery records are kept for 30 days; story-only announcement markers prevent repeat announcements. Clearing site data or uninstalling does not guarantee immediate server deletion; expiry and invalid-subscription cleanup still apply. Messages already accepted by a provider may still arrive.

What stays on your device

Your language, colour theme, playback speed, background-music choice and install-reminder dismissal are saved in your browser. These preferences are not sent to us.

Balakatha may also cache pages, illustrations and audio on your device so stories you have opened can work offline. Clearing Balakatha’s browser data or removing the installed web app deletes these preferences and cached files.

Security, retention and deletion

Balakatha uses HTTPS to protect information while it travels between your device and our hosting provider. We do not maintain accounts or personal profiles. Voluntary parent feedback is stored privately in our Cloudflare database.

We keep feedback and its AI review records while useful for reviewing requests and planning improvements. Administrators can permanently delete submissions and their AI summaries, drafts and review records, and remove personal information found during review. Deletion cancels pending actions; research or issue creation already in progress may finish. Resulting story proposals and sanitized GitHub issues are retained separately for planning. To request deletion, contact us with the message text and approximate submission date so we can locate it; no account is required. You control the data stored on your device and can remove it by clearing site data or uninstalling the web app. Questions about deletion can be sent to the contact below.

Children

Balakatha is made for children and families. We do not ask children for personal information. The private feedback form is for parents and caregivers, behind a parental gate. There is no chat, public sharing, publicly posted user content or way for another person to contact a child through Balakatha.

Changes and contact

Privacy questions can be sent to namaste@balakatha.app. If this policy changes, we will update the date above and publish the revised policy on this page.