Privacy Policy — Buddlo: Global Friends

Last updated: 4 September 2026

Buddlo: Global Friends ("Buddlo", "the app", "we", "us", "our") is published by Stellarizon Digitals Ltd ("the Company"). We care deeply about the privacy of everyone who uses Buddlo, and especially about children. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and the rights you (and, for children, their parents or guardians) have.

Buddlo is a general-audience, all-ages educational app. Because we know children use Buddlo, we have designed it to comply with children's privacy laws including the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the EU/UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), including protections for children (GDPR-K), and Google Play's Families policy and Apple's App Store guidelines.

1. Our privacy-first design

Buddlo is built to collect as little information as possible:

• No account, email address, phone number, or password is required to use Buddlo.
• We do not ask for your real name, home address, date of birth, or photo.
• We do not knowingly collect precise location, contacts, camera, microphone, or health data.
• We do not sell or rent personal information to anyone, ever.
• We do not use personalized/targeted advertising. Any ads shown are non-personalized and configured for a child-directed, all-ages audience.

2. Information we collect

a) Information you provide

• Nickname (optional): You may choose a nickname/username. We ask you to use a fun nickname and not your real full name or any personal details. This nickname is stored only to personalize your experience.
• Avatar choices: The look you pick for your avatar (style, colour, hair, accessory). These are just in-app preferences, not personal data about you.
• Chat messages: The text you type to your AI companions (see Section 4 on how this is processed).

b) Information collected automatically

• Device identifier: We generate or read a device identifier so the app can remember your progress on your device without requiring you to sign in. This is used purely to save your game state (points, streaks, unlocked companions, achievements, learned facts).
• Gameplay data: Points, daily streak, number of chats, achievements, daily challenges, and fun facts learned — so your progress is saved.

We do not collect analytics profiles, behavioural advertising identifiers for targeting, or cross-app tracking data.

3. How we use information

We use the limited information above only to:

• Save and restore your game progress on your device.
• Personalize your experience (e.g. greet you by your nickname).
• Power conversations with your AI companions.
• Show fun facts, photos, achievements, and daily challenges.
• Show non-personalized ads to support the free app.
• Keep Buddlo safe, working, and free of abuse.

We do not use your information to build advertising profiles or to track you across other apps or websites.

4. AI companions and third-party services

Buddlo's companions are friendly AI characters, not real people. To make them work, and to show real photos of places, we use a small number of trusted third-party service providers:

• Google Gemini (Google LLC): The text of your chat messages is sent to Google's Gemini AI service to generate the companion's reply. Please do not type personal information (like your real name, address, school, or phone number) into chats. Google processes this text to return a response. See Google's privacy terms at Gemini API terms and Google Privacy Policy.
• Photo providers (Openverse, Pexels, Pixabay): When a companion shows photos of a place, we request royalty-free or openly-licensed stock photos from Openverse, Pexels, and Pixabay using a search term (e.g. a city or landmark name). No personal information is sent to these providers. See the Openverse, Pexels, and Pixabay privacy/terms pages for details.
• Google AdMob (Google LLC): We use AdMob to display non-personalized ads that are tagged for a child-directed audience and limited to a "G" (general audiences) content rating. AdMob does not use Buddlo to build advertising profiles of children. See Google's advertising policies and Google's Families ads guidance.

We only share the minimum data needed for each service to function, and only for the purposes described above.

5. Children's privacy (COPPA & GDPR-K)

Buddlo is safe for children and is designed so that no personal information about a child is required or knowingly collected.

• We do not require children to provide any personal information to use the app.
• We ask users not to enter real names or personal details as their nickname.
• Ads are non-personalized and configured as child-directed (COPPA tagForChildDirectedTreatment) and for users under the age of consent (GDPR tagForUnderAgeOfConsent), with a maximum "G" content rating.
• We do not knowingly collect, use, or disclose personal information from children beyond the limited device identifier and gameplay data needed to run the app on the device.

Parents and guardians: If you believe your child has provided personal information (for example, by typing it into a chat or nickname) and you would like it removed, you can delete all data instantly from within the app (Settings → Delete My Data), or contact us at the address in Section 9 and we will delete it promptly.

6. Data retention and deletion

• Your data is stored only so long as you use the app.
• You can permanently delete all of your data at any time from within the app: Settings → Delete My Data. This removes your nickname, avatar choices, progress, achievements, and all associated records.
• Chat messages are processed to generate a reply and are not retained by us as a permanent personal profile.

7. Data security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect the limited information we hold, including encrypted connections (HTTPS) between the app and our servers. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, but we work to protect your information.

8. Your rights

Depending on where you live (e.g. under GDPR in the EU/UK, or CCPA in California), you may have rights to access, correct, or delete your information, and to object to or restrict certain processing. Because Buddlo collects so little, the simplest way to exercise your deletion right is Settings → Delete My Data. You can also contact us using the details below.

9. How to contact us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or your data, please contact:

Stellarizon Digitals Ltd
Email: privacy@stellarizondigitals.com
Website: stellarizondigitals.com

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will change the "Last updated" date at the top. If we make material changes affecting children's data, we will take reasonable steps to notify users appropriately.