Privacy Policy
Text messages: we do not share, sell, or provide your mobile phone number or messaging consent data to third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent are never shared with any third parties. Full details in section 13.
SkyBuds is made for children, so we hold ourselves to a higher bar. This page tells you exactly what we collect, who touches it, how long it lives, and how you stay in control.
Last Updated: September 26, 2026
The short version
- The Skybud listens while your child talks with it and turns speech into a reply. With your separate permission, we keep some of those recordings, de-identified, to make SkyBuds better at understanding kids. Every recording is deleted within 24 months.
- We keep conversation transcripts for 12 months so the Skybud remembers and you can read along in the app.
- A small set of named companies process data only to run SkyBuds, under written agreements that bar them from using it for anything else.
- You can see, download, or delete your child's data at any time, in the app or by email, without closing your account.
- Questions: hello@
getskybuds. or +1 (978) 541-3603.com
Reading with your child? We wrote a version for kids: Privacy, for kids.
1. Who we are
SkyBuds is made by Firefly Jar, Inc., 521 Broadway, 2nd Floor, New York, NY ("we," "us," "our"). This policy covers the SkyBuds toy, the SkyBuds parent app, and this website (together, the "Services"). It covers both the information we collect from you as a parent or legal guardian and the information we collect from your child. SkyBuds is sold in the United States.
2. What we never do
- We never sell personal information, yours or your child's.
- We never show advertising to children, and there are no ad or marketing trackers in the toy or the app.
- We never use your child's conversations to train anyone else's AI. Our processors are barred from it in writing.
- We never keep voice recordings of your child without your separate, explicit permission, and we never keep any recording for more than 24 months.
- We restrict access to recordings and their consent records; only trained members of our own team listen to recordings.
- We never collect your child's location, photos, or video. The Skybud has no camera.
- We never make your child's information public, and the Skybud has no chat, social, or messaging features with other people.
- We never condition the toy working on you handing over more data than it needs.
3. What we collect from parents
When you register an account, make a purchase, subscribe, or contact support, we collect your name, email address, billing and shipping address, payment information, and phone number. We use it to provide the Services, process transactions, support you, send marketing you have opted into, and meet legal obligations.
4. What we collect from your child, and why
- Profile details you enter (first name, age, interests, names of family members): so the Skybud can talk to your child appropriately. Kept while the account is open.
- Your child's voice while talking to the Skybud: streamed live over an encrypted connection to turn speech into text and answer. If you have given us permission (section 7), we keep some of these recordings, de-identified, to improve how SkyBuds understands children. If you have not, the audio is processed in real time and not kept.
- Transcripts of conversations: so the Skybud remembers between sessions, so you can read conversations in the app, and to keep conversations safe. Kept 12 months, then deleted.
- Conversation summaries and learning stats: shown to you in the app. Kept while the account is open.
- Toy technical data (battery, connection, firmware version, error logs): to keep the toy working and track that bugs stay fixed across updates. Kept up to 12 months.
We never ask a child for more information than is needed to use the toy.
5. The data journey: who processes your child's information
To make the toy talk, data passes through a small set of companies. Each one processes it only on our instructions, only to run SkyBuds, under a written agreement that bars keeping it beyond the job or using it for anything of their own, including training their AI models. Here is the full journey:
| Step | Company | What it sees | What our agreement bars |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your child speaks | Our own servers (hosted by Railway) | Live audio over an encrypted connection | Hosting only; logs never contain conversation content |
| Speech becomes text | Deepgram | Live audio | No retention, no training on our audio |
| The reply is written | OpenAI, Cerebras | Conversation text | No training on our data, limited retention |
| The reply is spoken | Fish Audio | The reply text only | No retention, no training |
| Memory and account | Supabase | Profiles, transcripts, summaries | Storage on our instructions only |
| Crash reports | Sentry | Technical errors, personal information stripped | Support for our internal operations only |
| Subscriptions | Apple, Superwall | Parent account and payment events only | Never sees child data |
That is the complete list for the toy. Beyond these service providers, we disclose personal information only if the law requires it, to protect somebody's safety, or if our company is ever sold or merged, and in that case we would tell you first. A current copy of this list is always available by emailing hello@getskybuds.com.
All the above categories exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties. We do not share, sell, or provide your mobile phone number or messaging consent data to third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. See section 13, Text messages and your mobile number.
6. Children's privacy and consent (COPPA)
We follow the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). A parent or legal guardian sets up and approves every Skybud before a child uses it. Wherever this policy says "parent," it includes legal guardians.
For the optional Help Teach Ash page (section 14), first read the current statement and confirm that you are the participating child’s parent or legal guardian. Then enter the code we text you or follow the link we email you. We send a separate confirmation describing your consent and how to withdraw. The page does not accept child information or recordings until verification is complete and that confirmation has been accepted for delivery. Text codes expire after 10 minutes; email links expire after 72 hours. Unconfirmed requests and contact information are deleted within 14 days. Consent to this research does not subscribe you to marketing.
If we ever want to use your child's information in a materially different way than described here, we will tell you and ask for your permission again first.
7. Improving SkyBuds with your child's voice
Kids do not talk like adults, and speech technology built on adult voices often gets them wrong. To make the Skybud better at understanding children, we ask for your permission to keep some of your child's voice recordings and use them, together with their transcripts, to train and test SkyBuds' own speech and AI models.
We ask for this permission separately, during setup, and you can change your answer at any time in the app's settings. The toy works exactly the same either way. We will never make the toy, or any feature of it, depend on your saying yes.
What we keep: short recordings of your child talking to the Skybud, and the transcript of each one. For the Help Teach Ash page (section 14) we also keep the age you select after confirming consent, and, only if you choose to tell us, whether your child has a speech difference such as a speech delay. Both are filed with the same random code as the recordings, never with a name, and are used only to pick age-appropriate games and to check that our models understand every child. We never show you anything derived from them, and SkyBuds is not a medical or therapy product.
How we identify recordings: recordings use random codes rather than names. For Help Teach Ash, a restricted lookup connects the family’s contact information, consent receipt and recordings so we can check permission and carry out access, deletion and withdrawal requests. This is not irreversible anonymization: a voice recording remains your child’s personal information, and the protections in this policy continue to apply.
Who hears them: trained, individually authorized members of our team listen to recordings to check transcripts and label the data. We do not disclose these recordings to third parties as defined by COPPA. Our team may include individual contractors directly engaged by Firefly Jar, but only where their assigned work qualifies as support for our internal operations and is covered by the applicable parental notice and consent. They may use the information only for that assigned work, never for themselves or another client. Access is limited, logged, and covered by written confidentiality and security obligations. They may not subcontract access, retain personal copies, or use outside AI or transcription tools.
How they are used: to train and test SkyBuds' own models, and for nothing else. They are never sold, never shared with any other company, never used for advertising, and never used to train anyone else's models.
How long we keep them: every recording and its transcript is deleted 24 months after it was recorded. We chose 24 months because that is how long a recording stays useful for training and testing. Nothing is kept longer, and nothing is kept indefinitely.
Changing your mind: turn it off any time in the app or by email. Within 30 days we delete the recordings and transcripts we have kept and remove them from our training data, so no future version of our models learns from them. Deleting recordings does not automatically retrain models that were trained on them earlier.
8. How long we keep things
Nothing is kept indefinitely. We keep a written retention policy, as COPPA requires, and this table is it: each type of data has a purpose, a reason it is retained, and a deletion clock.
| Data | Why we keep it | Deleted |
|---|---|---|
| Live voice audio (no permission given) | Not kept; processed in real time | Immediately after the reply |
| Conversation transcripts | Memory between sessions, parent review, safety | 12 months after creation |
| Voice recordings and their transcripts (with your permission, section 7) | Training and testing SkyBuds' own speech models, de-identified | 24 months after recording, or 30 days after you withdraw permission |
| Profile, summaries, learning stats | Running the account and the app | Within 30 days of account deletion |
| Toy error logs and device events | Fixing problems and tracking that bugs stay fixed across updates | Up to 12 months |
| Consent records | Proof that a parent said yes, which the law expects us to keep | While the account is open, then per legal requirements |
| Backups | Disaster recovery | Roll off within 30 days of deletion |
9. Your rights as a parent
At any time, you can:
- See your child's conversations, summaries, and profile in the app, or request a copy by email.
- Delete a single conversation in the app, or ask us to delete some or all of your child's data without closing your account. Deletion reaches our processors, our backups on their roll-off schedule, and the training recordings (models already trained are not rebuilt; see section 7).
- Stop further collection or use of your child's information, or withdraw permission to keep recordings, without deleting anything else. If you stop collection entirely the Skybud won't be able to chat, because it needs to hear your child to answer.
- Close the account, which removes your and your child's information within 30 days.
For requests by email we will verify you are the parent, usually by replying from the email address on the account, and complete deletion requests within 30 days.
10. Human review, safety, and security
Human review: trained members of our team may read conversation transcripts in two cases: when a conversation is flagged by our safety systems, and in limited spot checks to improve how the Skybud responds. If you have given permission under section 7, the same team may listen to de-identified recordings to check transcripts and label data. Access is restricted and logged, and everyone with this access is bound by a confidentiality agreement: nothing they see or hear may ever be shared outside Firefly Jar. The same restrictions on individual contractor access described in section 7 apply to this human review.
Security: data is encrypted in transit and at rest, access is limited to team members and providers who need it, and every provider gives us written security assurances. Two-factor authentication is available for your parent account in the app. SkyBuds is kidSAFE Listed, and our COPPA certification review is underway.
11. If SkyBuds ever shuts down
Toys should not die with their company, and data should not outlive it. If Firefly Jar ever winds down the SkyBuds service, we will give you advance notice by email, delete children's personal information, and publish a plan for the toys themselves before anything goes dark.
12. This website
Our store at getskybuds.com is built for parents. Purchases, order data, and website analytics relate to you as the buyer, and nothing on the store asks a child for personal information. The one thing a child might play with is the voice demo on our product pages. That demo is not the toy and runs on different systems, so it has its own section below (section 14). Our site may link to other websites; their privacy practices are their own.
Ads we measure. On our store pages we use Meta's pixel and Google's ads tag so we can tell which of our ads bring visitors and orders. They set cookies and read the ad click ID in the link you arrived from. Our servers also tell Meta when someone views a product, adds to cart, starts checkout or buys. For a purchase, that includes the order value and items and your email, phone number, name, and shipping city, state and ZIP code. The contact details are hashed, so Meta can match them to an ad click but can't read them. When you arrive from a Google ad and buy, our servers tell Google the order value and that ad click ID, with no contact details. Google's ad personalization is turned off. None of this runs on the Help Teach Ash page, on order confirmation pages, in the toy or in the app, and none of it involves your child's information.
Your choice. "Privacy choices" at the bottom of every store page turns Google's measurement off in that browser, including the purchase report. You control Meta's use of it under "Your activity off Meta technologies" in your Facebook or Instagram settings. Questions: hello@getskybuds.com.
13. Text messages and your mobile number
We send text messages only with your express consent, and there are two separate programs. Account messages come from the SkyBuds app: when you enter your own mobile number while setting up an account and agree to the notice on that screen, we send one-time sign-in codes, the parental-consent code and link, and alerts about your own Skybud. Marketing messages are sent only if you separately tick the SMS box, unchecked by default, on a form at getskybuds.com. Consent to one program never enrolls you in the other, and consent is never a condition of any purchase.
For either program we keep your mobile number and a record of your consent (when, where, and the wording you agreed to) so we can honor it. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. Reply STOP to any message to opt out, or HELP for help; you can also email hello@getskybuds.com.
We do not share, sell, or provide your mobile phone number, your text-messaging opt-in data, or your messaging consent to third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent are excluded from every category of disclosure in this policy and will not be shared with any third parties. The only company that touches these messages is the carrier-connected provider that delivers them on our instructions. The full program terms are in our SMS Terms of Service.
14. The website voice demo
What it is. On our product pages you can press a button and have a short live conversation with Ash, Pearl, or Sprout. It exists so you can hear what a Skybud sounds like before you buy. It is a product demo, not the toy. The toy is described in sections 4 to 10 and runs on the companies listed in section 5. The demo does not: it runs on ElevenLabs, a voice company, and none of what happens in the demo reaches the toy, your account, or the parent app.
Who starts it. We ask a parent to press the button. The microphone turns on only after that press and turns off when the conversation ends. The conversation is open-ended, so you or your child can say anything, and it ends by itself after about 90 seconds. You can end it sooner at any time.
What happens to the audio. While the demo runs, the microphone audio streams to ElevenLabs, which turns it into a reply and speaks it back. That is the only use. We do not receive the audio or a transcript. We do not store anything in your browser, we do not set a cookie, and we do not record that a demo took place or who ran it. The short captions shown on screen live only in the page for that conversation and are cleared when it ends. Under our agreement with ElevenLabs, they do not keep the audio or transcripts after the conversation and do not use them to train anything.
What we ask you not to share. The demo never asks for a name, an age, or anything about your family, and it does not need any of that to work. Because the conversation is open-ended, a child could still say something personal. If that happens, it is treated exactly like everything else in the demo: used for the reply in that moment and not kept.
Help Teach Ash, the optional page for families who want to help. Separately from the demo, we run a page at getskybuds.com/pages/skybuds where, with your consent, your child can talk with Ash, Pearl, or Sprout in the browser, up to an hour of chatting in total per family, in as many sittings as you like, and we keep those chats to train SkyBuds' own models. Some of the chat is little games: the character shows a picture and asks what it is, or says a silly word for your child to repeat. These give us recordings where we already know the word, which is what makes them useful. There is no score and nothing your child needs to get right. This is the only place on the website where a child's voice is kept, and it works exactly like the recordings program in section 7: the audio and transcript are filed under a random code, with the restricted consent lookup described in section 7, along with your child's age and, if you chose to share it, whether they have a speech difference, kept for up to 24 months, heard only by our own trained team, used only to train and test SkyBuds' models, and deleted within 30 days if you withdraw. Consent is by text-message or email confirmation (section 6). The page saves a random access code in your browser so you can return to your family’s consented account on that device; it does not contain your contact details. For Help Teach Ash, Railway hosts our conversation service, Deepgram transcribes live speech, OpenRouter routes reply generation to DeepInfra's hosted Gemma model, OpenAI's moderation service checks text for safety, and Fish Audio turns reply text into speech. Cloudflare hosts our collection service and private recording and consent storage. We use Twilio for verification and confirmation texts to parents. These providers process information for SkyBuds; the recording purposes, retention periods and parental rights described above continue to apply. The page shows your saved chat time and lets you request deletion of saved chats. To withdraw consent or request access or deletion, email hello@getskybuds.com using your signup address or include your signup phone number. We verify the request, stop further collection and use, and delete the recordings within 30 days. Existing withdrawal links in consent messages also remain available.
The demo is a taste, not the product. The demo character has the same voice and personality as the toy but not the toy's full memory, parental controls, quiet hours, or safety review described above. Do not judge how the toy handles a sensitive moment by the demo. If you would like the demo turned off for your visit, simply do not press the button: nothing runs until you do.
15. Changes to this policy
We will post updates here and change the date at the top. For any material change to how we handle children's information, we will notify you and ask for your consent first.
Change history: September 26, 2026: section 12 now describes the Meta and Google ad measurement on our store and how to turn Google's off; nothing about children's data changed. September 20, 2026: replaced the blanket contractor wording in section 7 with the COPPA third-party distinction and specific restrictions on individually authorized contractors. This update does not expand permission for recordings already collected; we will obtain new parental consent before any material change to the practices previously consented to. September 13, 2026: corrected Help Teach Ash verification, pending-request deadlines, restricted recording lookup and withdrawal instructions to match the current consent flow. Existing consent receipts are unchanged. September 3, 2026: added section 13, Text messages and your mobile number, with the exact no-sharing statement carriers require; nothing about children's data changed. August 24, 2026: full rewrite: named every processor, added the data journey and retention tables, the recordings program, expanded parental rights, and the shutdown commitment. Earlier versions described our practices in less detail. August 29, 2026: rewrote section 7 to explain how voice recordings are de-identified, who listens to them, and why they are kept 24 months; added the no re-identification promise, and added section 13 describing the website voice demo and the optional Help Teach Ash page separately from the toy; section 6 now describes the email consent used by that page.
16. Contact us
Firefly Jar, Inc.
521 Broadway, 2nd Floor, New York, NY
Email: hello@getskybuds.com
Phone: +1 (978) 541-3603
17. California privacy rights
California residents have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), including the right to know what personal information is collected, request deletion, and opt out of the sale of personal information. We do not sell personal information. To exercise your rights, contact us using the information above.