News Owl — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 25 June 2026

News Owl is a daily news-reading app made for children aged 6–14. We have designed it to collect as little information as possible. This policy explains what the app does and does not do with data.

The short version

• We do not require an account. There is no sign-up, login, email, or password.
• We do not ask for personal information. We never ask for a child's name, age, address, phone number, photos, contacts, or location.
• We do not show ads. There is no advertising and no third-party advertising or analytics tracking in the app.
• We do not sell or share data. We have no personal data to sell or share.
• Your reading activity stays on your device. Streaks, badges, experience points (XP), bookmarks, and which stories you've read are stored only on the device, not on our servers.

Information stored on the device

To make the app work, the following is saved locally on your device and is not sent to us:

• The interests/topics you choose (e.g. Sports, Space, Music).
• Your selected age band and region preference.
• Reading and quiz streaks, XP, levels, and earned badges.
• Articles you have read or bookmarked.

You can erase all of this at any time by deleting the app.

Information sent to our servers

To show you news, the app connects to our own server over a secure (HTTPS) connection. In doing so it sends only what is technically necessary to deliver content:

• Article requests. The app asks our server for stories matching your chosen age band, region, and topics. These preferences are sent with the request but are not tied to any identity and are not stored as a personal profile.
• Word lookups. If a reader taps a word to see a simple, kid-friendly definition, that single word is sent to our server, which uses an AI service to generate the definition. We do not attach any identity to these requests and do not use them to build a profile of the reader.

Standard, short-lived technical information (such as an IP address) may be processed by our hosting provider to deliver the request and protect the service from abuse, as happens with any website. We do not use this to identify or track individual children.

Where the news comes from

News Owl gathers stories from reputable, publicly available news sources (such as the BBC, The Guardian, NASA, NPR, and National Geographic) and rewrites them to be age-appropriate. Content is automatically filtered to remove material that is violent, scary, explicit, or otherwise unsuitable for young readers before it appears in the app.

There is no chat, messaging, social networking, or user-generated content, so children cannot communicate with strangers or post anything publicly.

Links that leave the app

Each story links to its original source. Because those external websites are outside our control and not designed for children, any link that leaves the app is protected by a parental gate (a simple challenge an adult can pass) so young children cannot open external websites unsupervised.

Children's privacy

News Owl is intended to be safe for children. Consistent with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the GDPR, we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. Because the app does not collect personal information from anyone, we do not create profiles of children or use their data for advertising.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will update the "Last updated" date above and post the new version at this address.

Contact

If you have any questions about this policy or your privacy, please contact:

Email: hello@newsowl.app