Privacy Policy for WordHop
A note for parents: WordHop is an English phonics app for young children. It collects no personal information from your child and none from you. It has no ads, no analytics, no tracking, no accounts, no sign-in, no chat, no social features, and no links out to the open internet. The app makes no network requests at all — everything it teaches is built into the app and works entirely offline.
1. Who we are
WordHop is published by zcode ("we", "us"). For any privacy question, including a question from a parent, guardian or school, contact support@zcode.ltd.
2. Our commitment regarding children
WordHop is designed for young children learning English phonics (the app's in-app age selection covers ages 6 to 8). We have built it so that the question of children's personal data does not arise:
- We do not collect any personal information from children. No name, no age beyond a purely local difficulty setting, no email address, no photographs, no voice recordings, no location, no contacts and no persistent identifier of any kind ever leaves the device.
- There is no registration and no sign-in. A child can use the whole app without an account.
- There is no way for a child to communicate with anyone through WordHop. There is no chat, no messaging, no comments, no user-generated content, no photo upload and no social network integration.
- There is no behavioural advertising. In fact there is no advertising of any kind.
- Nothing is transmitted. The app has no networking code, so no information about your child can be sent anywhere, whether to us or to a third party.
Because no personal information is collected from children, we have no need to obtain verifiable parental consent under the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and no children's personal data is processed under the UK/EU GDPR or the UK Age Appropriate Design Code. If you believe a child has somehow provided us with personal information, contact support@zcode.ltd and we will investigate and delete anything found.
3. Personal data we collect
None. WordHop does not ask for, transmit, or store any personal data about any user, child or adult. There are no accounts, no profiles and no sign-in.
4. Data WordHop stores on the device
WordHop saves the following learning data locally, on your iPhone or iPad only, using Apple's SwiftData framework. It is never transmitted, and we have no ability to read it:
| What is stored | Why |
|---|---|
| Lesson progress (which lessons have been started and completed) | To resume where your child left off |
| Individual question attempts (which answers were right or wrong) | To bring back previously missed words for extra practice |
| The age band selected during setup | To pitch content at a suitable level; it is a difficulty setting, not an identity record |
| A local record of the purchase entitlement | So the app knows which lessons are unlocked while offline |
This data stays in the app's private storage on the device. It is included in your device backups if you use iCloud Backup or encrypted local backups — those are controlled by Apple and by you, not by us. Deleting WordHop deletes this data.
5. Network activity
WordHop contains no networking code. All 10 lessons, all sentences, all images and all learning content are compiled into the app itself. The speech your child hears is generated on the device by Apple's built-in speech synthesiser; no audio is recorded, and no audio is sent anywhere.
The only network activity connected with WordHop is performed by Apple's operating system when a purchase is made, restored or managed. Those transactions are handled entirely by Apple through the App Store and StoreKit, and are governed by Apple's Privacy Policy.
6. Purchases
WordHop includes a free portion and offers the full course through two optional in-app purchases:
- Lifetime unlock —
com.zcode.wordhop.lifetime(a one-time, non-consumable purchase) - Yearly subscription —
com.zcode.wordhop.yearly(auto-renewable)
Purchases are protected behind a parental gate: a short question that a young child is not expected to answer, shown before any purchase screen, any settings screen and any external link. This is intended to keep purchasing decisions with the adult.
All payments are processed by Apple. We never see or receive payment details, and we do not receive your name, email address or Apple Account identifier. The app receives only a signed confirmation from Apple of whether an entitlement is active, stored locally as described in section 4. Apple provides us with aggregate, anonymised sales reports that cannot identify any individual.
7. Analytics, advertising and tracking
WordHop contains no analytics software, no advertising software and no tracking software. Specifically:
- No third-party analytics or crash-reporting SDKs.
- No advertising networks, no ads, no in-app promotions of other products.
- No Advertising Identifier (IDFA), no SKAdNetwork, and no App Tracking Transparency prompt — there is nothing to track.
- No attribution or install-measurement software of any kind.
- No cookies, pixels, fingerprinting, or cross-app or cross-site tracking.
- We do not sell or share personal information, and never have.
The app writes ordinary diagnostic messages to the device's system log while running. These stay on the device and are never transmitted to us.
8. Third-party services
WordHop includes no third-party advertising, analytics or social SDKs. Its only external dependency is our own in-app-purchase component, which is a thin wrapper around Apple's StoreKit and performs no network communication of its own. The only third party involved in your use of the app is Apple, in its role as the App Store operator and payment processor.
9. Rights of parents and guardians
Parents and guardians normally have the right to review, delete, and refuse further collection of their child's personal information. We hold no personal information about your child, so there is nothing for us to show you or delete on our side. You have complete control of the learning data stored on your device and can erase all of it at any time by deleting the app.
If you have any question about this, or want us to confirm in writing that we hold nothing about your child, write to support@zcode.ltd and we will respond.
10. Data retention and security
We retain no personal data, so no retention period applies to us. Data on the device is kept until you delete it or delete the app, and is protected by the device's own security and encryption, including its passcode and Apple's file protection.
11. Changes to this policy
If we change how WordHop handles data, we will update this page and change the "Last updated" date. Given the audience, we will not introduce advertising, analytics, tracking or data collection into WordHop without publishing the change here first and describing it plainly for parents.
12. Contact
Questions, requests or complaints about privacy in WordHop: support@zcode.ltd. We aim to reply within 30 days.