The short version: no accounts, no ads, no cookies, and children never need to identify themselves. Children never need to give a name, an email or their age.
News Pebbles (the website and the app) has no accounts. Only two things ever reach us, and only if a grown-up chooses:
Everything else stays on your own device: reset it with Reset this device’s reading data in For parents, or delete the app, which deletes its saved papers, recordings and progress.
News Pebbles remembers your chosen age band in this browser on this device. Read & Play also remembers text size, night mode, narration speed, the last story and listening position for up to 80 recent editions, the reading streak, pebbles, badges and garden, game stars, recent answers (for the progress page), the date of the first paper read, your selected city, and a name only if one is typed on a certificate or report. These choices and progress stay on this device; we do not send them to ourselves or anyone else.
To remove this reading data, use Reset this device’s reading data in For parents. This keeps your paper designs and visit-counting choice. You can also clear all News Pebbles data in your browser settings.
To learn whether the papers are useful, the site counts visits with GoatCounter, a small, privacy-first counter. It uses no cookies, and we send it only which page was opened, and these anonymous events:
We never send a name, an age, an answer, a score or any ID. GoatCounter keeps only totals for each day, such as “opened a paper today: 40”, plus broad facts like browser, country and language. To avoid counting the same visit twice it holds the visitor's network address and browser type in memory for up to 8 hours, and never stores them (see its privacy policy).
Nothing is counted when your browser asks sites not to track you (Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control), or after you press this button:
Only a parent or carer needs to give an email address. If you subscribe, we store that address, your chosen newspaper and delivery frequency, confirmation/unsubscribe tokens and delivery records in Cloudflare D1. Resend processes the address and sends confirmation and paper emails. We do not send reading progress, age selections saved on your device, game answers or garden data with a subscription. A hashed email/network-address counter limits repeated requests.
Confirm by email before delivery begins. Every message has an unsubscribe link, which stops future emails for that paper. Delivery history is kept to prevent duplicate sends. For deletion of your subscription information, contact us using the privacy address below. Email links shared through WhatsApp contain the paper’s public links, not your email address. Choosing WhatsApp opens that service; it is optional.
You Make the Call first saves a choice on this device. Only pressing “Add my response” sends that choice, the public question identifier and a random receipt for that question to our Cloudflare Worker. No name, account or email is requested. The receipt prevents ordinary repeat submissions from this browser and lets a changed choice update the same response. It is not a verified count of unique people. The server stores the choice and a hashed receipt for up to 90 days; short-lived, secret-hashed network counters limit abuse and expire after two hours. The hosting provider handles network addresses when serving requests. Aggregate results appear only after five responses and are not a representative survey.
In the kids app a grown-up must unlock sharing before any voting request. Sharing is optional and does not affect completion or rewards. Resetting this device’s reading data clears local choices and receipts; it does not retract a previously shared anonymous response. Server records expire automatically.
The app shows these same pages. When it opens, it downloads the day’s papers and recordings from newspebbles.com and keeps the last 7 days on the device, so they work offline. It counts nothing, has no ads and no account. The morning reminder is a notification the device sets for itself, at the time a grown-up chooses in For parents. Reading data in the app stays on the device; deleting the app deletes it.
The QR code on a printed paper opens that paper's page in Read & Play. It carries nothing about who scanned it.
Email privacy@newspebbles.com. News Pebbles is made by NeRDLabs.