Little Known: privacy notice for parents
Who we are
Little Known is made by Brave Beginnings. The organisation responsible for your information (the "data controller") is Katia Grobecker. You can contact us at support@littleknown.co.uk.
The short version
- We keep as little as we can: your email, your child's first name and year group, their homework content and how they get on.
- The homework photo is deleted once the activities are built, or within 7 days if a person checks it first.
- The photo is read by an AI service in the United States, which deletes its copy within 30 days. Your child never talks to an AI.
- Nothing is sold, used for advertising, or used to train AI.
- You can see, correct or delete everything at any time.
A notice for your child
Your child has their own short notice, written for them: "What we know about you". They can open it from Settings in the app. In simple words, it says what we keep, who can see it, what we never do, and that they can tell you if they are worried.
If you ask for early access
If you ask for early access before you have an account, we keep your email address and, if you choose to tell us, your child's year group (or two children's) and what is hardest at homework time. We use them only to invite you to Little Known when there is a place, and to tell you if early access changes. We do not use them for anything else, and we do not share them, except with the services listed below that run Little Known.
We keep them until we invite you, or until you ask us to remove you, and never for more than 12 months. Every email we send has a link to remove yourself, or you can write to support@littleknown.co.uk.
Our lawful basis is your consent, which you give when you submit the form. You can withdraw it at any time.
What we collect and why
| Information | Why we need it | How long we keep it |
|---|---|---|
| Your email address | Signing in, the Friday email, support | While your account is open |
| A second grown-up's email address, if you invite one | Their own sign-in | While your account is open, or until you remove them |
| A four-digit PIN, stored so nobody can read it | Locking the grown-up area | While your account is open |
| Your child's first name, year group and chosen character | Showing the right lists and the right picture | While your account is open, or until you remove the child |
| Your child's settings (colours, text size, read-aloud) | Accessibility | As above |
| The content of the homework, with no names | Building the activities | As above |
| Progress: what was finished, what was right first time, where help was used, which wrong answers were picked | Carrying on where they stopped, and your report | As above |
| How your child said they felt (the last 60 answers) | So you can see it, in the app and in the Friday email | As above, unless you switch it off or delete it |
| The photo of the homework | Reading the sheet | Deleted once the week is built. If a person has to check it: until checked, never more than 7 days. Anthropic, which reads it, deletes its copy within 30 days |
| Which devices are signed in | Signing in, and "sign out everywhere" | 30 days after last use |
| Error records, with nothing about your child in them | Fixing faults | 30 days |
| A record of what went wrong for an account (for example a photo that did not upload) | Helping when something goes wrong | 90 days |
| The boxes you ticked when you set up your account, and when | To show what you agreed to, as the law asks | While your account is open, and for two years after it closes, with your email address kept only in a scrambled form |
| Records of how each sheet was read, with no photo and no name | Checking and improving how sheets are read | 90 days, then only the totals |
| Backups of all of the above | Putting things back after a fault | 7 days |
| A log of what our staff do in your account | So every action can be checked | 2 years |
| A log of requests to see, correct or delete your information | To show we answered them | 2 years after each is done |
| Messages you send to support | Helping you | 12 months, or until your account closes if that is sooner |
| Your email address, if you ask for early access | Inviting you when there is a place | Until we invite you or you ask us to remove you, and never more than 12 months |
| Your child's year group and what is hardest at homework time, if you choose to give them | Deciding which families to invite first | As above |
We never ask for a date of birth, surname, address, school, diagnosis or special educational needs information. Your child never types free text. The only things a child types are single spelling words and numbers.
Our lawful basis
For the pilot we rely on your consent, which you give by ticking the boxes when you set up your account (they are listed in the pilot terms). You can withdraw any of them at any time, one at a time, in the grown-up area under Account, or by writing to us. Withdrawing it does not affect what was done before. Withdrawing the first two closes your account, and we ask you to confirm first. After an account closes, we keep the record of what was agreed for two years. We keep it for two years so that we can show what you agreed to. We do this because we have a legitimate interest in being able to show it.
How AI is used
The photo of the homework is read by an AI model (Claude, made by Anthropic) to find the words and numbers on the sheet. Anthropic does this in the United States. It keeps the photo and what it read for up to 30 days and then deletes them, and it does not use them to train its AI. Please keep your child's name out of the photo, or crop it out, before you send it. Your child never talks to the AI or types anything to it: the AI only reads the photo you send. The activities are then built from fixed designs and checked automatically. Where the checks cannot settle something, a person looks at it before your child sees it. No decision with a legal or similarly significant effect is made about you or your child by a computer alone. We do not profile your child for marketing or anything else.
Who we share it with
We use these services to run Little Known. Each acts only on our instructions.
| Service | What it does | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Stores accounts, progress and photos until deleted | London, UK |
| Vercel | Runs the app. Keeps only short-lived technical logs | London, UK |
| Anthropic | Reads the homework photo | United States. Kept up to 30 days, then deleted. Never used to train AI |
| Brevo | Sends all of our emails | France, Germany and Belgium |
One thing goes outside the UK: the homework photo, and the words read from it, which Anthropic handles in the United States. It is protected by the safeguard UK law requires: the standard contractual clauses with the UK's International Data Transfer Addendum, which are part of Anthropic's data processing terms.
We share nothing with schools, advertisers or anyone else, unless the law requires it.
Who inside Little Known can see it
- The person running Little Known can see your email address and your child's first name and year group, and reviews homework photos the automatic checks could not settle. If you tell us an activity looked wrong, they can also see the questions your child was given in it, not their answers. Support staff can see your account (your email, settings and how many children you have, shown as "Child 1, Year 4"). They cannot see your child's name, progress, feelings, homework or photos.
- A content reviewer sees a homework photo only when it has been sent for checking, or picked for a 1 in 10 quality check, with the year group and nothing else. If a name is on the photo, they ignore it and never copy it.
- Everything staff do is logged.
Your rights
You can ask us to:
- show you the information we hold about you and your child
- correct anything that is wrong
- delete it
- stop or limit how we use it
- give it to you in a form you can take elsewhere
You can also withdraw your consent at any time. To do any of these, contact support@littleknown.co.uk, or use the grown-up area, where you can delete a child or your whole account yourself. We will answer within one month. Deleting your account removes everything within 30 days. If you delete your account, it closes at once and the homework photos go straight away. Everything else is deleted 7 days later, so you can change your mind by signing in before then.
Complaints
Please tell us first, so we can put it right: support@littleknown.co.uk. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or 0303 123 1113.
Changes
If we change this notice, we will tell you by email before the change takes effect.
Version 2, 13 November 2026