Privacy Policy

Effective November 1, 2026

Who we are

Tale of Mine Studio (taleofmine.studio) is a brand of Nexio, Inc. (“we”, “us”). We make an online picture-book studio where young children help write their own illustrated stories, guided by their parent. Questions about privacy: [email protected], or Nexio, Inc., 4030 Wake Forest Rd, Ste 349, Raleigh, NC 27609.

Who the service is for

Accounts belong to adults. Only a parent or legal guardian aged 18 or over can create an account. We record that confirmation, and your agreement to these terms, when the account is set up.
Children ages 3 to 5 take part on the parent's device, with the parent. Children don't have their own accounts, logins, profiles or email addresses.
During our preview, accounts are made only from an invite we send to a parent's email address.
Because the service is meant for young children, we treat it as directed to children under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and follow the notice and consent rules in Children's privacy below.

What we collect

From the parent (the account holder):

Email address and password. The password is stored by our sign-in provider as a one-way hash, never readable by us.
The 18-or-over and parent-or-guardian confirmation, and when you agreed to the Terms of Service and this Privacy Policy (and which version).
If you joined from an invite: the invite, the email address it was sent to, and whether you're a founding family.
Your book balance: the free books given to your account and the ones you've used.

From the child, entered with the parent:

Story choices from our menus: the hero, color, skin tone, place, what happens, who helps, the kind of story and the art style.
Words the child adds: a hero name, a “tell us more” idea, or a whole story told in their own words (typed by the parent or spoken into the phone's own keyboard microphone).
The production company name (for example “A Blanket Fort Production”), chosen with the parent.
Stickers placed on pages.
Characters you choose to save (“My characters”): their name, a short description used to draw them, and their picture.

Made by the service: the finished story, its pictures, and records of the safety checks and picture checks (which kinds of detail matched, not the words).

Technical information: a sign-in cookie that keeps the parent signed in, Cloudflare's bot check on the sign-in page, and short-lived server logs (time, page requested, errors) used to keep the service running and secure. Logs never contain story words.

What we never collect

No photos, video or voice recordings of children. Voice typing uses the phone's own keyboard; we receive only the typed words.
First names only. We ask for first names only, never last names, and we suggest made-up names (like Pip or Biscuit). If your child uses their own first name for the hero, it goes to the story writer only, never to the picture maker.
No precise location, contacts, or device identifiers for advertising.
No advertising or tracking cookies, and no third-party analytics that profile children.
We don't knowingly collect a child's personal information beyond what's needed to make their book. Our checks turn away phone numbers, street addresses, email addresses and website links in what a child types. If we learn we have something we shouldn't, we delete it.

How we use information

To make, store and show your family's books, and to let you download them as PDFs.
To keep stories and pictures kind and safe: every story and picture is checked before a child sees it.
To run the account: invites, sign-in, sign-in codes, password changes and your book balance.
To keep the service secure and working, and to stop fraud and abuse.
To answer you when you contact us.

We don't sell personal information, show ads, build advertising profiles, or use a child's words or books to market to them. We don't use your family's books to train AI models, and our AI providers' terms for business customers don't allow them to train on what we send.

What our team can see. Our admin screens show that a book exists, when it was made and whether it finished, never its words or pictures. We look at a book only if you ask us to help with it.

Who we share it with

Only service providers who help us run Tale of Mine Studio. Each receives only what its job needs, under contract, and may not use it for its own purposes. We treat each one as integral to the service: the books can't be made, checked, stored or delivered without them. The AI providers may keep what we send for a short time to detect abuse, under their own terms.

Anthropic: Writes the story, checks it for safety, and checks that each picture matches its page (Claude). Receives: The child's story choices and words, the story drafts, and the finished pictures.
OpenAI: Draws the pictures and checks them for safety. Receives: Picture descriptions written from the story (character names are replaced, so a child's name never reaches it) and the pictures.
Supabase: Sign-in, the database and private picture storage. Receives: Account details, books, pictures, saved characters and settings.
Railway: Runs our servers. Receives: Everything passes through it while it's being processed.
Cloudflare: Security, the bot check on sign-in, and website delivery. Receives: Technical request data, such as IP address.
Postmark: Sends account emails: invites, sign-in codes and password emails. Receives: Your email address and the email's contents.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect a child's safety, or as part of a sale or merger of Nexio, Inc. (in which case this policy keeps applying to information collected under it).

Cookies

We use only the cookies needed to keep you signed in and to protect the service (including Cloudflare's bot check). No advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

How we protect it

Every family can see only its own books. This is enforced by the database itself, not just by our app.
Pictures are kept in private storage and shown through links that expire after 10 minutes.
Secret keys never leave our servers, and connections are encrypted (HTTPS).
Our team signs in to the admin console with a two-step code, and every admin action is recorded.
We keep a written information security program and review it monthly.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, we'll tell you as the law requires.

How long we keep it

Books, pictures, production company name, stickers and saved characters: While the account is open, until you delete them.
Accounts with no sign-in: Deleted after 24 months without a sign-in, after an email warning.
Invites: The invite and the email address it was sent to: while the account it made is open. An invite that's never used is deleted within 12 months.
Book balance (books given and used): While the account is open.
Safety-check and picture-check records: 12 months, then deleted.
Server logs: Up to 30 days.
Copies in our database provider's daily backups: Removed automatically within 7 days of deletion.

Deleting, and downloaded copies

Delete one book from the book's page, or delete everything (every book, picture, saved character, studio, record and the account itself) from the Grown-ups page. Deletion is immediate in our app. Copies in our database provider's daily backups are removed automatically within 7 days.
Downloaded copies are yours. A book saved as a PDF to your device is outside our systems, so deleting it in Tale of Mine Studio can't remove copies on your devices or ones you've shared.

Voice typing

If you use the microphone on your phone's keyboard, the phone maker's keyboard turns speech into text under its own privacy terms. Tale of Mine Studio never accesses the microphone and receives only the typed words.

Changes

If we change this policy in a way that affects children's information (for example when we add purchases or printed books), we'll email account holders before the change applies and, where the law requires, ask for consent again.

Children's privacy: notice to parents (COPPA)

This section is our direct notice to parents under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.

Operator: Nexio, Inc. (Tale of Mine Studio), 4030 Wake Forest Rd, Ste 349, Raleigh, NC 27609, [email protected].

What we collect from your child and why: only the story choices and words your child adds with you (listed under “What we collect”), so we can write, illustrate, check, store and show your child's book. Your child can make a book without giving a real name, and we encourage made-up names.

Your consent: before your child's words are used to make a book, we ask for your consent as the parent. During our invitation-only preview, we confirm it directly with each invited parent (for example with a signed consent form or a short video call) before your child's first book. You can consent to our collection and use without agreeing to anything else.

Sharing: we share your child's information only with the service providers listed above, because they are needed to make, check, store and deliver the book. We don't share it with advertisers or data brokers, and we don't use it for targeted advertising. If we ever wanted to share it for any other purpose, we would ask for your separate consent first, and saying no wouldn't affect your use of the service.

Your rights as a parent, at any time:

See the information we hold about your child: everything is on your bookshelf and the Grown-ups page, or ask us at [email protected].
Delete it: one book at a time, or everything from the Grown-ups page.
Stop further collection: stop making books, or delete the account. We won't make your child's participation depend on giving more information than a book needs.

Retention: as in “How long we keep it” above. We keep children's information only as long as needed to provide the books, and never indefinitely.

Security: as in “How we protect it” above, under our written information security program.

Contact: [email protected] or Nexio, Inc., 4030 Wake Forest Rd, Ste 349, Raleigh, NC 27609. We reply within 10 business days.