1. Who we are and what this notice covers
Little Keys is operated by MindSync Technologies Pty Ltd, ABN 39 696 882 318, ACN 696 882 318. In this notice, “we”, “us” and “our” mean that company.
Our business contact address is Suite 19, 220 Carr Place, Leederville WA 6007, Australia. For privacy questions, family-record requests or concerns, email admin@thelittlekeys.com.
Little Keys is a browser-based piano-learning service designed for children with adult support. This notice explains the information used for the free introduction, adult accounts, child profiles, family learning, support and subscriptions. Online free and paid family accounts are intended for families in Australia and the United States. A publicly reachable introductory page does not, by itself, describe every country in which online family accounts are offered.
This notice is for parents and other adults. A child can use a nickname instead of their legal name, but signed-in learning records still identify that profile within the family: for example, saved lesson progress, badges, note-based tunes and practice results. Describing this as children's information does not mean asking children for identity documents, photographs or additional personal details.
This notice explains information handling. It does not replace the customer terms, approve a recurring payment or give us a general right to use children's information for unrelated purposes.
2. Parents, children and invited caregivers
A parent establishes the family account. Children use separate learning profiles rather than their own adult sign-in or payment accounts. Signing in establishes access to the adult account. Choosing and paying for a subscription is separate from giving permission to save a child's information.
The family owner reads the notices, declares adult parent or guardian authority, explicitly approves core cloud saving and accepts the customer terms. These choices take effect when saved. We record the adult and family association, notice and terms versions, acceptance time, choices, and subsequent changes or withdrawal. There is no separate parent-verification email, delayed notice or renewal-payment check. Previously recorded verification evidence remains part of the historical consent record; obsolete verification tokens and contact hashes are removed.
Each child needs the owner's explicit confirmation before their profile is saved or their records are imported. Device-progress import and caregiver sharing require separate optional permission and are not preselected. An invitation also identifies the recipient and requires its own confirmation. Permission does not grant paid-course access, which depends on the purchased plan and confirmed payment.
One family's children may use Little Keys across different homes, including separated parents' or caregivers' homes, with the appropriate parent or guardian permission. Invited caregivers use their own adult sign-ins. Invitation alone does not make a caregiver a legal guardian or allow them to consent for a child without the necessary authority.
The family owner manages invitations and membership. Invited adults can see information about the family's children and progress, and family members' email addresses are visible in the family account. Only invite people who should have that access. Adult account and ownership controls determine which actions a member can take; a child profile is not a public profile. Contact us promptly if access should be withdrawn or you believe an adult has been invited without authority.
3. Trying the introduction and choosing cloud saving
You can try the three introductory starter activities — Make yourself comfy, Find your first C, and Meet C, D & E — and explore the open keyboard without signing in or providing payment details. This free introduction does not automatically become a subscription.
In the normal fresh guest experience, the browser keeps the guest profile and learning progress on that device. The page still requests website assets and can send generic fault diagnostics; hosting and security services process ordinary network information such as the request's IP address. “No sign-in” does not mean no information processing.
Local progress can be lost if browser storage is cleared, the device is lost or private browsing ends. It can also be visible to another person using the same browser. Cloud saving is a separate choice: before covered child learning is collected online, the parent must receive the direct parental notice and complete the required permission process. This applies to creating online profiles and importing earlier local progress, as well as starting new cloud practice. Optional use of the microphone, adult sign-in and purchase approval are separate choices.
Registered Free Starter provides free learning access for up to two children, subject to the applicable parental-permission process. Profiles and progress retained from an earlier paid allowance remain subject to the retention and deletion policy; keeping those records does not provide access above the applicable allowance. The paid monthly offer includes two assigned children at US$14.99, with US$5 per month for each extra child up to eight in total; checkout may offer a local-currency equivalent. The customer terms and the final priced confirmation govern those purchases. Privacy permission and merely creating a profile do not approve an additional charge. Privacy correction of a nickname for the same child does not enrol a different learner or buy a place.
4. Information used by Little Keys
We ask for a child's nickname rather than a legal name. The child profile does not need a birthday, home address, school, photograph or health information. Please avoid adding these to nicknames, tune titles, reflections or support messages. Free-text fields can still contain personal information if someone enters it.
| Information | Examples and purpose |
|---|---|
| Adult account and family membership | Adult email address, sign-in identity/reference, account status, session information, family membership, invitations and ownership actions. Used to sign adults in, protect accounts and manage authorised family access. |
| Child profile and learning records | Nickname, child/family identifiers, device and practice/session identifiers, curriculum versions, local practice date/timezone, lesson choices, notes and timing, attempts, help or retries, checkpoints, progress, demonstrated skills, parent observations, badges and approvals. Used to deliver lessons, save and recover learning, show progress and choose appropriate course activities. These are linked family records, not anonymous statistics. |
| Created music and reflections | Note-based scores, tune titles, beats/dynamics, saved versions, repertoire and learning reflections. Used for playback, practice, review and returning to saved work. A lesson's audience/reflection choice does not publish a child profile or recording to the public. |
| Support information | Adult account email, message/category, relevant technical details, timestamps and correspondence. Used to answer questions, investigate problems and explain outcomes. Please do not send passwords, sign-in links, security codes, full card details or unnecessary information about a child. |
| Subscription and transaction information | Adult payer contact details, family reference, payment-provider customer/subscription/checkout references, chosen plan or child allowance, payment/subscription status, renewal/access dates and relevant transaction events. Used to manage access, reconcile charges, handle cancellation/refunds and respond to payment issues. |
| Service, security and diagnostic information | Request identifiers, route category, status, duration, generic failure information, software version, timestamps, applicable account/family references, access/audit actions and network/security identifiers. Used to keep the service working, limit abuse, protect accounts and investigate faults. Hashing or replacing an identifier does not automatically make a linked record anonymous. |
| Optional usage analytics, when offered and enabled | Limited family-linked events such as lesson start/finish, progress transfer, blocked errors or unavailable voice features. Used to understand the offered feature's use and faults. The reviewed event format does not contain child nicknames, raw audio or transcripts. |
These records can come from the adult or child using the service, an authorised caregiver, the browser or connected instrument, and service providers returning sign-in, security or payment information. Authorised administrators and support personnel may inspect relevant records to operate the service or help your family.
5. Microphone, voice commands, piano input and recordings
The microphone and voice-command features are optional. Piano pitch detection and supported voice-command recognition run on the device. Raw microphone audio and voice-command transcripts are not uploaded to our servers in these features. Voice software and model assets are downloaded from the app's host and may be cached locally.
Accepted notes, timing, input source, confidence estimates and practice results can become learning records. USB/MIDI input can also produce saved note events. Processing the sound locally does not mean the resulting learning record always stays local when cloud features are used.
“Record my tune” in open keyboard play records played notes/timing for synthesised playback, rather than making an acoustic recording of the room. Guided compositions may save note-based scores and titles to the family's cloud records. Fox's spoken guidance is prerecorded teaching content, not a live cloud conversation with the child.
You can use screen input without the microphone and manage microphone/MIDI permission through your browser or device. Browser permission controls hardware access; it is not a substitute for the parent's privacy permission. Supported features vary with browser and equipment.
6. Purposes and limits
We use family information to provide the described learning service, remember and recover progress, support authorised family sharing, manage adult access and subscriptions, answer support requests, protect against misuse and meet applicable legal obligations. We do not obtain a broad permission to use child records for unrelated research, publicity or product training through this notice.
We do not sell or rent children's information, use children's information for targeted advertising or AI-model training, or create public child profiles or public child recordings. Using AI-created teaching assets or local recognition software is separate from sending a child's information to train a model.
At launch, adult emails are used for sign-in, billing, security and essential service notices, including relevant record/deletion notices. A family account does not enrol anyone in a promotional newsletter. Optional analytics is a separate choice and is off by default. Where offered, declining it does not prevent the core service; turning it off clears its pending queue and requests deletion of that family's optional analytics. Necessary account, learning, billing and security processing is separate from that toggle.
7. Who receives or can access information
Family information is available to the authorised adults in that family as explained above. Relevant operator/support personnel may access it when providing support, maintaining the service, investigating misuse or meeting a legal obligation. “Private family records” does not mean records are invisible to those necessary service roles.
The standalone service uses these providers for the following purposes:
| Provider | Relevant role and information |
|---|---|
| Cloudflare | Hosting, family data services and applicable storage, network delivery, service security and anti-bot checks. It processes website requests and relevant network/device information; anti-bot verification during parent access can include the request IP address. Hosting/database services process the family records needed to deliver the service. |
| Google / Firebase Authentication | Adult sign-in and identity, including Google sign-in or passwordless email-link flows, and associated account/security processing. These services do not establish an adult's parental status for Little Keys merely by authenticating them. |
| Resend, when service email is enabled | Delivery of parent sign-in, permission, privacy, billing and essential service messages. It processes the adult email address, necessary message content and delivery information such as message identifiers and delivery/bounce status. We do not send a child's raw audio or detailed lesson history in those messages. It is not used to enrol families in marketing. |
| Stripe / Link | Hosted payment, billing address and transaction handling, payment security, subscriptions and applicable merchant support. Little Keys sends adult payer details and a family reference and receives relevant transaction/subscription identifiers and status. Card details are entered with the hosted payment provider; Little Keys does not receive the full card number through its payment form. The merchant and buyer terms shown at checkout govern the payment service. |
| Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Recovery backup jobs and protected backup storage. These jobs process copies of the family database, adult authentication identities, saved content and deletion records. They encrypt backup contents before storing them in a private recovery bucket. Access is restricted to authorised recovery and operations roles. |
| Better Stack | Service availability checks, failure alerts and application error reporting. Our application sends bounded error codes, random request identifiers, software release identifiers, environment labels and timestamps. It does not send child names, raw audio, transcripts, request bodies, raw exception text or session replay in these error reports. Request identifiers can be linked to restricted application records during a fault investigation. Better Stack also processes the operator contact and incident information needed to send alerts. |
A separate private ChatGPT Sites preview may use OpenAI's hosting and account/access controls. A parent's OpenAI account and use of those preview controls are also subject to OpenAI's own terms and privacy notices. Access to a private preview does not authorise child profiles, imports or caregiver disclosure. The preview does not change our commitment to keep raw lesson audio and voice-command transcripts on the device or permit AI-model training with children's information.
Providers may act for Little Keys for specified functions and may also have their own obligations for their accounts, security, fraud prevention or transactions. Stripe/Link can retain transaction information under its own legal and payment obligations after a Little Keys family is deleted. Payment processing does not require sending a child's detailed lesson history to the payment provider.
We may disclose relevant information where legally required, to respond to a valid legal process, protect a person's safety or investigate fraud/security misuse, subject to the applicable legal limits. This is not permission to disclose all child records for any purpose. Caregiver sharing and any optional disclosure must be explained and authorised at the appropriate point; permission for the core service does not automatically authorise unrelated sharing.
8. Browser storage and international processing
Little Keys uses browser storage for preferences, a random persistent device identifier, selected profiles, guest progress, signed-in family snapshots, pending saves/transfers and authentication/invitation state. Application and voice-model caches help the app load and support local processing. The adult application session uses a cookie. These functions are separate from advertising tracking.
Signing out is not the same as clearing every local file: guest records, preferences, cached teaching/model assets, exports and copies on another authorised adult's device may remain. Use the app's relevant local-data controls or browser storage settings for that device. Clearing local storage can remove unsynchronised practice, so consider any records you wish to keep first. See the separate browser-storage explanation for the relevant controls and consequences.
Little Keys is operated from Australia and uses internationally operating service providers. Information may be stored or accessed outside the country where you or your child live. Choosing an Australian account or viewing a page from Australia does not establish Australia-only storage. The country where you access Little Keys is not a promise that all records stay in that country.
Our AWS recovery jobs and encrypted backup storage use the Sydney region in Australia. The Better Stack error-reporting application uses its US West region in the United States. These locations describe those services. Other Little Keys processing can take place elsewhere, as described in this notice.
For the standalone service's adult sign-in, Firebase Authentication processes authentication data in the United States. Google's published retention information says that logged IP addresses are kept for a few weeks; other authentication information is removed from its live and backup systems within 180 days after Little Keys initiates deletion of that authentication identity. Deleting Little Keys learning records and completing deletion of the adult's authentication identity are separate steps. Other provider locations and independent payment records depend on the relevant service and its applicable terms.
9. Retention, inactivity and deletion
We keep information for its stated purpose, rather than treating an active payment as permission to keep every detailed child event forever. Different information requires different handling:
| Record category | Retention purpose and boundary |
|---|---|
| Saved learning progress, badges, verified evidence and music | Needed for continuing family learning, return visits, saved work and reliable recovery. Subscribed families keep their saved progress; inactivity alone does not cause cancellation, pause, reduction or deletion of that subscribed-family progress. Parent deletion/withdrawal rights remain available. Detailed events are reviewed separately from the progress/evidence needed to preserve earned learning and saved tunes. |
| Free-family child profiles and progress | Automatic inactivity deletion is not yet active; activation depends on verified warning delivery and deletion safeguards. Once activated, the twelve-calendar-month period starts from the latest of the family's last deliberate use, paid-access ending, or initial retention baseline. New families start at creation. An existing family without reliable history receives a fresh rollout baseline, not a backdated deadline. Automatic polling, sign-in refresh and background sync do not count as deliberate use. Deletion is allowed only after at least thirty days following confirmed delivery of a warning to the adult contact, with a chance to return or request an export. Open or unresolved subscriptions and continuing paid access are excluded; the process does not cancel subscriptions. This concerns online family records. A guest who has supplied no contact details cannot be emailed, and an offline local browser copy cannot be remotely erased by this process. |
| Ordinary application operations and optional analytics | The existing maintenance rules target thirty-day retention for these records. They do not establish a thirty-day limit for every family record or for a provider's separate records. |
| Application audit records | Existing maintenance rules target ninety days for ordinary audit events, supporting account/access investigation. This is not a ninety-day expiry for saved progress or all security information. |
| Support, consent/permission and account-recovery records | Needed to resolve the relevant issue, evidence the permission/process and protect account recovery. Use the minimum information needed and apply the adopted schedule; unnecessary child details are not kept merely because a support or consent record exists. |
| Financial, legal and restricted security/deletion records | May need separate retention for accounting, payment disputes, applicable law, security or preventing deleted information from returning. Keep only what that purpose requires; financial record-keeping does not require preserving a child's complete practice history. |
| Better Stack application error reports | The current error-reporting service retains the filtered application error events described above for ninety days. This is separate from our thirty-day application operations schedule. Provider account, incident and service-access records may have separate purposes and retention. |
| Encrypted AWS recovery backups | Recovery copies preserve the records needed to recover the service after data loss. Half-hourly backup indexes are scheduled to expire after two days, daily indexes after thirty days and encrypted data objects after thirty-two days. Storage versioning keeps older copies. Those older versions have separate deletion schedules of two, thirty or thirty-two days respectively after becoming an older version. Current-copy expiry can therefore be followed by another retention period before the underlying copy is deleted. AWS applies these lifecycle deletions asynchronously. Protected backup copies are restricted to recovery, security or applicable legal purposes. |
| AWS backup-job logs | The configured backup-job log group retains operational logs for thirty days. These logs report job status and technical failures rather than a copy of the exported family learning records. |
Cancelling renewal or reducing paid places does not itself delete children's progress. Paid access and privacy retention are different: keeping a record does not grant paid access above the purchased allowance. Genuine permanent replacements are allowed under the customer terms, with each child's progress kept separate; a replacement does not give the new child the previous child’s learning history. The previous profile is archived for read-only viewing, export and deletion under the privacy controls; new practice requires a current profile. If that child returns, explicit re-enrolment into an available paid place or a genuine replacement is needed. Archive status does not itself request data deletion, authorise a charge or block a parent’s privacy rights. The no-rotation rule does not remove a parent's correction, access or deletion rights. A deletion request alone does not approve a replacement or an extra charge.
Deleting a child, a family, an adult account and local device data are different actions. Family deletion stops billing before removing the relevant family records; a provider failure can leave a deletion request pending. Check its status or contact support rather than assuming a pending screen means every step is finished. Adult identity removal may also require resolving ownership of a remaining family.
Active-service deletion and removal from restricted backups can occur at different times. Where backup or recovery copies are used, remaining copies are limited to their recovery, security or legal purpose, with controlled access and removal under the applicable retention schedule. Deletion records prevent deleted family information from being returned to normal use through a restore. We cannot erase a copy already downloaded or exported by a parent/caregiver from that person's device, and deleting Little Keys data does not automatically delete independent payment-provider records.
10. Your family's choices and requests
A parent or legal guardian can ask to review the child's personal information, correct it, have it deleted or stop further covered collection/use. You can also ask about adult account information and applicable access, portability or other rights. You do not need to wait for an inactivity period to make a deletion or permission-withdrawal request.
The account provides family-management, learning-export and relevant child/family/account-deletion tools. The learning export is a backup of family learning records, not a complete export of every identity, support, security or transaction record. Contact admin@thelittlekeys.com for a broader privacy request, a missing control, a permission withdrawal or help with a provider-related request.
Please identify the adult account and what you want changed or reviewed; do not send full card numbers, passwords, sign-in codes or unnecessary child details. We may ask you to sign in again or supply proportionate information to establish identity and authority before releasing records or changing another person's access. We do not request children's legal identity documents merely to enforce assigned learner places. If adults disagree about authority or access, contact us so the request can be assessed without giving records to an unauthorised person.
If you decline information necessary for a particular cloud feature, or withdraw permission for it, that feature may be unavailable and its affected child records may need deletion. We will explain the effect on saving, access and any associated account/subscription action; privacy withdrawal is not silently treated as approval of a purchase or a new charge. The no-sign-in introductory activities remain a separate way to try Little Keys.
You can manage optional analytics separately and use browser controls for local storage and microphone/MIDI permission. A request to stop server collection does not automatically clear all other devices or owner-held exports. Ask us if you need help distinguishing those actions.
11. Security, concerns and changes
Little Keys uses authenticated family access, sessions, checks for sensitive account actions and controls intended to keep each family's records separate. We take proportionate technical and organisational steps to protect information, limit access to service purposes and address security incidents. No internet service or device is perfectly secure. Protect adult sign-ins, supervise shared devices and contact us if an account may be compromised.
Contact admin@thelittlekeys.com if you have a privacy concern or disagree with how a request was handled. The founder monitors the service/support inbox daily; this is not a promise that every issue will be resolved immediately. We will assess the concern, provide an appropriate response and explain any necessary next steps. Applicable regulator, consumer-agency and court/tribunal rights remain available; you do not waive them by using Little Keys. The OAIC can consider matters within its jurisdiction, and applicable US authorities may also have a role. This notice does not claim that every privacy law applies identically to every family.
We will date updates and communicate material changes to child-information handling to the appropriate adult. Where a change requires fresh parental notice or permission, that process must occur before the new covered practice starts. Continued use of the website does not automatically approve a new use of children's information or unrelated disclosure.