Children's and Students' Privacy Notice
For parents and guardians. This notice explains our practices for children under 13 under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act ("COPPA") and the Federal Trade Commission's COPPA Rule, our practices for teenagers 13 to 17, and our commitments to students. It is part of our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service. If you have any question, write to privacy@theoreticalphysics.ai.
1. Who operates the Service
The Service is operated by Mark T. Fulwider, doing business as TheoreticalPhysics.ai. Contact: 4100 Cedar St., Rocklin, California 95677; telephone (916) 412-9720; email privacy@theoreticalphysics.ai or mark@theoreticalphysics.ai. No other operator collects or maintains personal information from children through the Service.
2. How the Service is designed to protect children
2.1. The Service keeps a student's work on the family's own device: projects, notes, questions, sources, drafts, equations, the AI Record and files are saved in the browser and in the TP.AI folder chosen on the computer. They are not sent to us. We have no advertising, no public profiles, no chat with other users, no public posting, and no tracking across other websites.
2.2. A child under 13 cannot create an account. When a person who says they are under 13 tries to sign up, the sign-up stops and asks them to have a parent or guardian set up the account.
3. Children under 13: family accounts and verifiable parental consent
3.1. Who holds the account. A child under 13 may use the Service only through a family account that the child's parent or legal guardian creates and holds in the parent's own name, using the parent's own email address. The parent must be at least 18.
3.2. Notice to the parent. Before the parent gives consent, we show the parent this notice, and after the account is made we also send it to the parent's email address. This notice is our direct notice to parents under COPPA.
3.3. How consent is given and verified. The parent gives consent by confirming, at sign-up, that the account is for a child under 13 in the parent's care, that the parent has read this notice, and that the parent consents to the collection, use and disclosure described in Section 4. The parent's consent is then verified by the parent's purchase of a paid plan using a credit card, debit card or other online payment system that notifies the account holder of each transaction, which the FTC's COPPA Rule recognizes as a method of verifiable parental consent. For this reason, family accounts for children under 13 do not include a free trial or the free plan. The child cannot use the account until the payment has been completed.
3.4. Consent to disclosure is separate. We do not disclose a child's personal information to third parties except to the service providers that run the Service for us (Section 4.3), which is integral to providing the Service. We do not ask a parent to consent to any other disclosure, because we make none. A parent may consent to the collection and use of the child's information without consenting to any further disclosure.
3.5. No more than necessary. We do not require a child to give more personal information than is reasonably necessary to take part in any activity of the Service.
4. What information is collected about a child under 13, and how it is used and disclosed
4.1. Collected from the parent. In a family account, the account's name, email address and password are the parent's, and the payment is made by the parent through Stripe or PayPal. We record that the account is a family account, the date the parent's consent was given and verified, and the version of this notice that was shown.
4.2. Collected while the child uses the Service. We do not ask the child for a name, email address, photograph, voice recording, location or other contact information. While the child uses the Service:
- the child's work stays on the family's device and is not collected by us;
- a sign-in cookie and the technical information every browser sends (such as an IP address and browser type) are used only to keep the child signed in, deliver the pages, keep the Service secure, and meet legal requirements, which COPPA calls "support for the internal operations" of the Service; they are not used to contact the child, build a profile, or for advertising;
- if the child chooses to share a copy of a project, the copy is locked (encrypted) in the browser before it is stored, and we cannot open it. We store it only for the period chosen (no longer than 240 days), and only those who receive the link can open it. A parent may switch off or remove sharing at any time by asking us, and may delete shared copies in the Service.
4.3. Disclosure. We do not sell, rent or share children's personal information, do not show advertising, and do not disclose it to third parties, except to the service providers that host and run the Service for us under contracts that limit their use to providing the Service and require them to protect it (our hosting, database, storage, email and payment providers, named in Section 5 of our Privacy Policy), and where the law requires.
4.4. AI services. The AI assistants a student may use (such as ChatGPT, Grok, Claude or Gemini) are operated by other companies under their own terms, privacy policies and age rules, and are not part of our Service. We do not send them a child's information. Some of them do not allow users under 13 or under 18. Parents should decide whether, and which, AI services their child may use, and supervise that use. The AI Record add-on copies conversations only into the child's own AI Record on the family's device.
5. Parents' rights
5.1. A parent may at any time: (a) review the personal information we hold about the child; (b) ask us to delete it; (c) refuse to allow further collection or use of the child's information; and (d) withdraw consent, which closes the family account. To do so, write to privacy@theoreticalphysics.ai from the email address on the account, or to the mailing address above. We will take reasonable steps to confirm that the person asking is the child's parent before acting, and we will respond within 10 business days. A parent may also cancel the plan at any time on the Your plan page.
5.2. If a parent refuses further collection or withdraws consent, we will close the account and delete the information we hold, except what the law requires us to keep (Section 6). The child's work on the family's device is not affected.
6. How long we keep children's information
6.1. We keep a child's personal information only as long as reasonably necessary to provide the Service for which it was collected, and we do not keep it indefinitely. Specifically: account information is kept while the family account is open and deleted within 30 days after it is closed; shared copies are deleted at the end of the period chosen (no longer than 240 days after they are made) or when the account is closed; technical request information is kept by our servers for minutes and by our hosting provider for a limited period; and the record of the parent's consent and payment is kept for the period the law requires (generally three years for consent records and up to seven years for payment records), after which it is deleted.
7. Security
7.1. We maintain a written information-security program for children's personal information, with safeguards suited to its sensitivity and to the size of our business. A named person, Mark T. Fulwider, is responsible for it. We assess risks to children's information, put safeguards in place against them, test those safeguards, and review the program at least once a year. Before giving a child's information to any service provider, we take reasonable steps to make sure the provider can keep it secure and confidential and to obtain its written assurance that it will.
8. If we learn a child under 13 gave us information without consent
8.1. If we learn that a child under 13 created an account or gave us personal information without verified parental consent, we will delete the information and close the account promptly. If you believe this has happened, please write to privacy@theoreticalphysics.ai.
9. Teenagers 13 to 17
9.1. A teen may create an account only with a parent's or guardian's agreement to our Terms and Privacy Policy. At sign-up the teen confirms that the parent has agreed and gives us the parent's email address, and we send the parent a notice with links to our Terms, Privacy Policy and this notice. We keep the parent's email address only as a record of that agreement and to answer the parent's requests.
9.2. A parent of a teen has the rights in Section 5, and may ask us to close the teen's account. A teen may delete any copy the teen has shared at any time, and may ask us to remove it, as our Privacy Policy explains.
9.3. Teens may not buy a plan without a parent's consent and payment method.
10. Students and schools
10.1. Our commitments to students. We do not use students' personal information for targeted advertising, on our Service or anywhere else. We do not build profiles of students except as needed to run their accounts. We never sell students' information. We do not disclose it except as Section 4.3 describes. We maintain reasonable security for it. We delete it when asked by the student's parent, by the student once 18, or by the school, subject to the law. Students can download and keep their own work at any time; it is already on their device.
10.2. Families who teach at home. Parents who teach their children at home use the Service as parents, under Sections 3 to 9.
10.3. Schools. If a school, teacher or school district wishes to use the Service with its students, it must contact us first at privacy@theoreticalphysics.ai so that we can agree in writing how the Service will be used, including any consent the school gives on parents' behalf for school purposes and our obligations under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and state student-privacy laws such as California's Student Online Personal Information Protection Act.
11. Changes to this notice
11.1. If we make a material change to how we collect, use or disclose children's personal information, we will notify parents by email and obtain new consent before the change applies to their children's information.
12. The parent's signature
12.1. At sign-up the parent signs the consent electronically by typing the parent's full legal name and checking the consent box; that electronic signature has the same effect as a handwritten one. A parent who would also like to give or confirm consent on paper may use our parental consent form: print it, sign it, and send a scan or photograph to privacy@theoreticalphysics.ai, or mail it to the address above, from or naming the email address of the family account. We will keep it with the account's consent record. The paper form does not replace the verification by payment described in Section 3.3.
