Children's Privacy Notice

1. Our Approach

Aetherwist uses a parent-as-account-holder model. An adult creates the account, manages the plan, and is responsible for anyone in the household who plays. Children play through that adult’s account and never have accounts of their own.

We’ve designed the creative part of Aetherwist so a child can’t give us personal information even by accident. There’s no text box, no photo upload, no microphone or camera, no chat, no messages, no profiles, and no usernames. Pictures are made only from our own set of runes.

2. Who Runs Aetherwist

Aetherwist is a game made and operated by:

Threadworks Labs LLC [[MAILING ADDRESS]] [[PHONE NUMBER]] hello@aetherwist.com

No other company operates Aetherwist or collects information through it for its own purposes. The service providers that help us run it are listed in Section 6.

3. Why Only Adults Have Accounts

Keeping accounts in an adult’s hands means a parent or guardian is always the one who signs up, agrees to our terms, pays, and decides how the family uses Aetherwist. When an adult creates an account, they:

• enter a date of birth so we can confirm they’re 18 or older (we don’t keep the date itself);
• confirm they’re the parent or guardian setting up the account;
• verify their email address with a code we send; and
• agree to our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and this notice.

Someone under 18 who tries to sign up is told to ask a parent, and no account is created. The age question isn’t offered again in that browser until it’s closed.

4. What Kids Can and Can’t Do in Aetherwist

When a child plays on a parent’s account, they can place runes on the board, choose a style and mood, summon pictures, look through the account’s pictures, and change settings like sound.

They can’t type anything, upload anything, talk to or see other users, or create a profile. The creative board never shows prices, plans, or the store. Its Print button opens a new browser tab on our website with print-at-home ready for that picture, and nothing to buy on that screen. Ordering prints, managing the plan, and sharing pictures to Discover all happen on the account pages of our website, in a separate tab from the board. Because the whole household shares one adult sign-in, though, anyone signed in can reach those pages. See Section 7 for what that means for sharing.

5. What Aetherwist Records While a Child Plays

Aetherwist records the same things for every player on an account, whether that’s the adult or a child. We don’t ask who’s playing, and we can’t tell. All of it belongs to the account and is treated as the adult account holder’s information.

• Pictures and recipes. Each picture made, the runes and settings used, the title we generate, the results of our automated safety check, and automatic quality scores.
• Progress. Which rune combinations the account has discovered, which hidden runes it has found, and how many summons it has used each day.
• Cookies. These are the only cookies used while a child plays, and none of them is used for ads or tracking:
  • Our sign-in provider, Clerk, keeps the adult’s account signed in with cookies on the device.
  • Aetherwist sets a cookie on the game page that lets the browser download the game’s files while the account is signed in. It carries the account ID and lasts up to 12 hours.
  • Aetherwist sets a second cookie, for one minute, if the game page has to send the browser to sign in. It stops the browser looping between pages and holds no ID.
• Technical information. Our servers and service providers handle IP addresses as part of delivering the service and stopping abuse. We don’t store IP addresses for normal requests. Each time a picture is summoned, the app sends us a short technical report about how the summon animation ran: the browser’s name and version, the screen size, and performance numbers. It’s tagged with the account ID and kept in our server logs for up to 30 days.
• Settings on the device. Sound settings and the current board are saved in the browser on your device so they’re there next time. These aren’t sent to us.

We don’t collect a child’s name, age, photo, voice, contacts, school, or location. We don’t use analytics, advertising, or tracking tools while children play.

Why we need the cookie and technical information. We use them only to run Aetherwist: to keep the account signed in, deliver and save pictures, keep the service secure, prevent abuse, and figure out what went wrong when something breaks. We never use them to show ads, to build a profile of anyone, or to contact a child.

6. Who Helps Us Run Aetherwist

We share information only with the service providers that help us run Aetherwist, only so they can do that work for us, and never for advertising. The full list is in Section 7 of our Privacy Policy. In short:

• Clerk handles the adult’s sign-in.
• Cloudflare hosts our website, stores pictures, and sends our emails to the adult account holder.
• Our database and hosting providers store account and picture records.
• Graphics computers rented through Vast.ai make the pictures. They receive only the picture recipe and the picture, never a name, email, or account ID, and they delete what they handled within a few minutes.
• Stripe and Printify handle payments and print orders. These involve the adult account holder’s details, never a child’s.

We don’t sell information, and we don’t let any of these companies use it for their own purposes.

7. Can a Child Make Anything Public?

Only a picture, and only on purpose. Discover is our public gallery, and a picture appears there only when someone signed in to the account shares that specific picture from the account pages. Shared pictures show the picture, its title, and the runes used. They never show a name, email, account, or username. Every Aetherwist picture is fantasy art made from our runes, so it never contains a photo or recording of a real person.

Since the household shares one adult sign-in, a child who can reach the account pages could share a picture. If you’d rather your kids didn’t, make sharing something you do together. You can withdraw any shared picture at any time, and it leaves Discover right away.

8. Your Rights as a Parent or Guardian

You’re in control of everything on your account. You can:

• Review what’s there. Your gallery shows every picture the account has made. To see the rest of what we hold about your account, email us and we’ll send it to you.
• Delete pictures. Use “Release” on any picture in your gallery to delete it from our storage and from Discover.
• Withdraw shared pictures from Discover anytime.
• Delete the account and its information from your account settings or by emailing us. There’s a 30-day window in case you change your mind. Our Privacy Policy explains what’s deleted and what we keep.
• Stop any further collection by stopping use of the account and asking us to delete it.

To make a request, email hello@aetherwist.com from the email address on the account, or call us at [[PHONE NUMBER]]. We’ll confirm the request comes from the account holder before we act on it, and we’ll respond within [[RESPONSE TIME, e.g. 30 days]].

9. How Long We Keep Information (Our Retention Policy)

We keep information from play only as long as we need it for the reason we collected it, and never indefinitely:

Information	Why we keep it	How long
Pictures, their recipes and titles, and their safety and quality results	So the family’s gallery keeps everything it has made	Until you release the picture or delete the account [[DECISION: or until the account has gone a set time, e.g. 2 years, without anyone signing in, after an email warning]]. After the account is deleted, the pictures are kept with nothing that ties them to your family, as our Privacy Policy explains.
Progress (combinations discovered, hidden runes found, daily summon counts)	So the account’s discoveries and daily allowance work	Until the account is deleted [[DECISION: or reaches the inactivity limit above]]
Cookies on the device	To keep the account signed in and load the game	The sign-in cookies until sign-out; ours for up to 12 hours and one minute
Technical reports and server logs	To find and fix problems and stop abuse	Up to 30 days, then deleted automatically
Shared Discover pictures	So the shared picture can be shown	Until withdrawn or the account is deleted

The full schedule, including the adult’s own account and billing records, is in Section 9 of our Privacy Policy.

10. If a Child Signs Up or Sends Us Information

Children aren’t allowed to create accounts. If we learn that a child under 13 has created an account, for example by entering an adult’s date of birth, or has sent us personal information in an email, we’ll delete that information and close the account. If you think this has happened, please tell us.

11. Changes to This Notice

If we change how we handle information while children play, we’ll update this notice and email account holders before the change takes effect. We won’t start collecting new kinds of information from children without telling you first [[and getting your permission where the law requires it]].

12. Talk to a Person

Questions about your family’s information go to a real person at hello@aetherwist.com or [[PHONE NUMBER]]. You can also write to us at [[MAILING ADDRESS]].