Tizmos is made by Buttercloud (buttercloud.com). This policy covers the website at tizmos.com, the teacher app at app.tizmos.com, the classic Tizmos site, and every Tizmo opened from a link, a QR code or a printed card. It describes what we collect from the three kinds of people who use Tizmos — teachers, families, and students — and what we do with it.
The principles first
- No kid accounts. Students never create accounts, usernames or profiles. Families don’t create accounts either. A Tizmo opens from a link — nothing is asked of the person opening it.
- Reports go to the teacher. What a student reports back — done, an optional photo or short video, and one line — is shown only to the teacher who sent that Tizmo. There is no feed, and reports are never public.
- No advertising anywhere a family or a student can see, and no sale of personal information to anyone, ever.
- Families always use Tizmos free.
What we collect from teachers
When you create a teacher account we collect your name, email address, password (stored hashed), and the school and grade details you choose to add. We store what you make: your Tizmos, paths, the sentence prompts you type, recordings you choose to add (your hello, video steps), and your public page. If you buy Pro or Team, payment is handled by Stripe — we never see or store card numbers, only your subscription status.
What we collect when a family opens a Tizmo
Opening a Tizmo requires no account and no app. We record that the Tizmo was opened, when the mission started and ended, and how long the screen was set aside — this is the report the teacher sees. If the student adds a photo, a short video, or a line of text (or a first name, if the teacher asked for one), that goes to the sending teacher and nowhere else. We use a random session identifier, not a name, to let a family resume a Tizmo on the same device.
Website visitors
Like most sites, we collect non-personally-identifying information that browsers make available — browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of requests — to understand how the site is used. IP addresses are used for security (rate limiting, abuse prevention) and are not connected to student reports.
How we use information
To run the product: build the Tizmo a teacher asked for, deliver it to families, return reports to the teacher, and bill subscriptions. To improve it: aggregated, anonymized usage statistics (for example, the total minutes students spent away from screens, which we publish). To communicate: transactional email about your account, and product email you can opt out of. We do not use student report content for anything except showing it to the teacher it was sent to.
Who processes data on our behalf
We share personal information only with services needed to run Tizmos, under their own confidentiality obligations: Cloudflare (hosting, content delivery, video processing), Hetzner and Amazon Web Services (servers, file storage, email delivery), Stripe (payments), OpenAI (drafting a Tizmo from the teacher’s sentence — the sentence is sent, student data never is), PostHog (product analytics, teacher accounts only), and Google Workspace (our own mailboxes). We may also disclose information when required by law or to protect the rights, property or safety of Tizmos, our users, or the public. Beyond that, we share personally-identifying information only with employees and contractors who need it to do their jobs and have agreed to keep it confidential.
Retention
Reports and photos are kept for the period of the sending teacher’s plan (14 days visible on Free, archived up to a year; kept while the subscription lasts on Pro and Team — details on the pricing page). When a teacher deletes a Tizmo, its reports are deleted with it. When retention ends, data is deleted or anonymized. A family can ask for a specific report to be removed at any time by writing to us — include the Tizmo link and we’ll take care of it.
Cookies
We use cookies to keep teachers signed in and to remember preferences. We do not run third-party advertising cookies. The classic Tizmos site sets the same kinds of first-party cookies it always has.
Security
We use encryption in transit, hashed passwords, and access controls, and we retain personal information only as long as needed. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security — but reports live in one place, go to one person, and were designed that way on purpose.
Children’s privacy
Tizmos is built so that children never hand us an account, a profile, or contact details. What a child produces during a mission is directed to their own teacher at that teacher’s request. If you believe a child’s information has reached us in any other way, contact us and we will delete it.
Links to other sites
Tizmos and teacher pages may link to external sites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of other sites and encourage you to read their policies.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time; the effective date above will change when we do, and continued use of Tizmos after a change constitutes acceptance of the updated policy. For significant changes affecting teachers we will say so by email or in the product.
Contact
Questions about privacy, or a request about a specific report, go to support@tizmos.com.