Privacy

The short version

• You can use the bear with no account. Nothing about you is stored on our side.
• A free account keeps your email address and your settings so they follow you between your devices.
• Children never make an account and never type personal details.
• No ads, no tracking across other sites, nothing sold.

Without an account

The app keeps its things on your own device, and they are never sent to us:

• Your place, and your choices such as °F or °C and the temperatures for a jacket.
• The sticker book, and any bear buddy nicknames a grown-up types. These stay on the device they were made on.
• Which messages the bear has already said, and the last weather it saw.

The app never reads your device’s location. You type a city or zip code, and your browser asks Open-Meteo to find that place and then for its weather, sending the text you typed and the place’s coordinates. Open-Meteo can see your device’s IP address when it answers. We do not send it anything else.

Daily counts

We keep our own daily totals of how often parts of the app are used, such as how many times it was opened. Each is only a number for the day. There is no identifier, no IP address, no time of day, no place, and nothing about a child, a buddy or what anyone chose. Nothing is counted if your browser sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control, and we count only on the real site. We can switch counting off at any time.

With a free account

We keep:

• Your email address, to send you a sign-in code. There are no passwords.
• Your settings, and the grown-up PIN as a scrambled value, never the PIN itself.
• The names you give your devices, and when each last signed in.
• A sign-in cookie on each device, so you stay signed in.
• Short-lived records that stop people trying codes over and over. They use scrambled forms of addresses, not the addresses themselves.

We do not store a child’s name, age, photo or place on our side.

Email

Sign-in codes always arrive when you ask for one. When you first make an account we send one welcome email. Every such email has a link to stop emails like it, and you can switch them off in the app too. Sign-in codes are not affected. We use Resend to send mail for us.

Payments

Plus is bought once, by a grown-up, on a payment page run by Stripe. Before you pay, we email a code to your account’s address, to be sure a grown-up is there. We send Stripe your email address and your account’s random id so it can fill in the form and tell us the payment went through. You give your card, name and billing details to Stripe on its page. We never see them, and Stripe uses its own cookies there. Stripe emails you the receipt and has its own privacy policy.

Stripe adds sales tax where it applies, and shows the total before you pay. We keep a small record of the purchase: Stripe’s reference numbers for it, the amount and currency, whether it is paid or refunded, and the dates. We keep no card details. If you change your mind, write to [email protected] within 14 days and we will refund you in full. If you delete your account, we delete our purchase record and Plus stops on it. The payment itself stays in Stripe’s own records.

Who helps us

Cloudflare runs the site, our database and the page-view counts. Stripe takes payments for Plus. Because Cloudflare serves every request, it can see your IP address and browser type, and how it logs that is set by Cloudflare. Resend sends our email. Open-Meteo answers weather and place questions, as above. Each has its own privacy policy. We may share information if the law requires it. These providers may handle data in the United States and elsewhere.

How long we keep it

Sign-in codes last 15 minutes. A device stays signed in until you sign it out, or a year without use. Your account and settings stay until you delete the account. Our record of a purchase stays as long as Plus is on for your account, and for one year after a refund or a dispute ends it; deleting your account removes it at once. Things on your own device stay there until you clear them.

Your choices

• Use the app without an account.
• Sign out any one device, or all of them, in the app.
• Get a copy of what we hold, or delete your account and everything with it, in the app under Settings, Account, Your data. Or ask us at [email protected]. Deleting removes your account, your signed-in devices, your email choices and any pending sign-in records. It does not touch the bear, stickers or buddies on your own device.
• Say no to location and type a place instead, or clear the app’s data in your browser.

Children

The app is made for grown-ups to use with young children. Children do not make accounts and do not type personal details. The only thing a grown-up can type about a child is an optional nickname for a bear buddy, and it stays on the device. If you think a child has given us information, write to us and we will delete it.

Security and changes

Sign-in codes and sessions are stored scrambled, connections are encrypted, and repeated tries are limited. No system is perfectly safe. If this page changes in a way that matters, we will tell account holders by email.

Contact

The Wear Bear, [email protected]