Mood Mates Privacy Policy

Effective date: June 13, 2026

Last updated: June 13, 2026

Plain-language summary

The short version, for busy parents:

The full policy below has the details. If anything here conflicts with the detailed sections, the detailed sections govern.

Table of contents

  1. Who we are and what this policy covers
  2. Information we collect
  3. Voice and audio handling
  4. How we use information
  5. COPPA and verifiable parental consent
  6. Your rights as a parent and how to exercise them
  7. Inviting another adult to view your child's entries
  8. How we share information, and who we do NOT share with
  9. Service providers
  10. Data security
  11. Data retention and deletion
  12. Breach notification
  13. Children's privacy (COPPA notice)
  14. State privacy rights
  15. Where your data is processed
  16. Changes to this policy
  17. How to contact us

1. Who we are and what this policy covers

Mood Mates ("Mood Mates," "we," "us," or "our") is operated by fakewaffle, llc. Mood Mates is a cross-platform application (for iOS, Android, and the web) that lets a child, roughly ages 6 to 12, choose an emotion from a grid of feelings and journal (by typing or by using on-device voice-to-text) about what happened.

This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect from and about parents/guardians and children, how we use it, how we share it (and the many ways we don't), and the rights you have. It applies to the Mood Mates app and our website at https://moodmates.org.

The account structure matters for your privacy, so here it is up front:

2. Information we collect

We split this into what we collect from the parent and what we collect about the child, because they are different.

2.1 Information we collect from the parent (account owner)

2.2 Information we collect about the child

A parent sets up the child's profile, so much of this comes from you, the parent, not directly from the child:

We do not index, search, scan, or run analytics on the content of what your child writes. Their words are stored so that you (and anyone you authorize) can read them, not so that we can analyze them.

2.3 What we do NOT collect

3. Voice and audio handling

When a child uses voice to journal, the speech-to-text transcription happens on the device using the device's own capabilities.

We never upload or store the audio recording. Only the resulting text is saved as part of the journal entry. There is no voice file on our servers, and we do not retain a copy of your child's voice.

4. How we use information

We use the information described above only to operate, maintain, secure, and support Mood Mates, specifically to:

Improving the app with anonymous, aggregate usage. To understand how Mood Mates is used and make it better, we count aggregate, de-identified usage, such as how often each feeling is chosen, or how often a feature is used, across all of Mood Mates. These counts are not tied to any child: they never include a child's name or identity, are never per-child, and never include the words a child writes. We do this with our own first-party counts, with no third-party or behavioral analytics SDKs.

We do not use the child's information to advertise, to build advertising or behavioral profiles, to train any advertising model, or for any purpose unrelated to providing and improving the journaling service to your family.

Because Mood Mates is directed to children under 13, the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) applies.

We require verifiable parental consent before we collect personal information from your child. In practice, the parent sets up the account and grants consent first; the child's journaling session and any collection of the child's personal information follow only after that consent.

When you consent, you grant three separate, unbundled scopes. You can grant each one independently, and you are not forced to accept one to get another:

ScopeWhat it covers
journalingCollecting and storing your child's journal entries (emotions, timestamps, and free-text answers). Required for the core journaling feature.
coParentSharingGiving another adult in your family (a co-parent or guardian) read-only access to your child's entries. This is sharing within your family, not a disclosure to an outside party. Off unless you turn it on (see Section 7).
therapistSharingGiving a therapist (someone outside your family) read-only access to your child's entries. This is a third-party disclosure and is consented separately from family sharing. Off unless you turn it on (see Section 7).

There is no separate "analytics" consent because we do not run analytics tied to your child. We do count anonymous, aggregate usage to improve the app (for example, how often each feeling is chosen across everyone); this never includes your child's identity or words, so there is nothing about your child to consent to. See Section 4.

How we verify you are the parent

We use a payment-based method. Mood Mates is a paid subscription, and the parent who sets up the account completes a real payment (a card or store purchase tied to their account) to start it. Because COPPA allows a parent's payment transaction to serve as verifiable parental consent, that subscription payment is how we confirm you are the adult parent or guardian before we collect your child's information. There is no separate consent fee: the regular subscription charge is the same transaction that verifies your consent.

You will receive a receipt of that payment from the payment provider (your Apple or Google account receipt on a phone or tablet, or a Stripe email receipt on the web). That receipt is your record of the transaction. We confirm the payment directly with the payment provider on our servers before your child's journaling is enabled.

We chose a payment-based method (rather than a lower-friction email confirmation) because Mood Mates can share a child's entries with an invited therapist outside your family, and COPPA calls for a higher-assurance method when information may be disclosed to a third party.

You may refuse to consent, and you may revoke your consent at any time (see Section 6). The scopes are independent: refusing or revoking the sharing scopes (coParentSharing, therapistSharing) simply ends that sharing and leaves journaling working as normal. Journaling is the core of the app. If you don't grant the journaling scope, your child can't journal and there's nothing for Mood Mates to do, so without it there's no reason to use the app. If you revoke journaling later, we stop collecting your child's journal information going forward; you can still review, export, or delete what was already saved (see Section 6).

6. Your rights as a parent and how to exercise them

As the parent/guardian account owner, you have the right to:

How to exercise these rights. Use the in-app contact form (or the in-app controls where available) while signed in to your account. We may need to verify that you are the account owner before acting on a request. We will respond within the timeframes required by applicable law.

7. Inviting another adult to view your child's entries

You may choose to invite another trusted adult to have read-only access to all of one child's entries (and only that child's; sharing is granted one child at a time, never across your whole family at once). There are two separate kinds of sharing, and each has its own, separate consent, both off by default, and both distinct from the consent that enables journaling:

For either kind:

Sharing with a therapist is a third-party disclosure. When the adult you invite is a therapist (someone outside your family), you are disclosing your child's entries to a third party:

8. How we share information, and who we do NOT share with

We share your and your child's information only in these limited ways:

We do NOT:

9. Service providers

We use Google / Firebase (Google Cloud) as our infrastructure and processing provider. Specifically, we use Firebase Authentication / Google Cloud Identity Platform, Cloud Firestore, Cloud Functions, and Firebase Hosting to authenticate users, store data, run server-side logic, and host the service.

These providers act as our processors: they handle data on our behalf and under our instructions to operate Mood Mates, and are subject to their own security and contractual commitments. Data is processed and stored on Google Cloud infrastructure in the United States.

We do not use third-party advertising or behavioral-analytics providers.

10. Data security

We protect your and your child's information using a combination of safeguards. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, access is role- and membership-controlled (enforced on our servers, not just hidden in the app), and we maintain audit logging of access and changes.

An honest statement about access. Mood Mates does not offer "end-to-end encryption," "zero-knowledge" storage, or any guarantee that we "can't read your data." To operate, secure, debug, and support the service, authorized Mood Mates personnel can access data, subject to access controls and auditing. We tell you this plainly because we will not make security claims we cannot stand behind.

No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. We work to protect your information but cannot promise it can never be accessed in an unauthorized way.

11. Data retention and deletion

We retain your account information and your child's journal information for as long as your account is active and you have not deleted it, and as needed to provide the service.

12. Breach notification

Mood Mates handles emotion- and wellbeing-related journaling, which can be health-adjacent. We treat it accordingly.

Consistent with the FTC Health Breach Notification Rule (and any other applicable breach-notification law), if we discover a breach of security that results in the unauthorized acquisition of unsecured identifiable health-adjacent information, we will notify affected parents/guardians without unreasonable delay and, where required, the Federal Trade Commission and (for larger breaches) the media, within the timeframes the applicable rule requires. Our notice will describe, to the extent known, what happened, the types of information involved, steps you can take, and what we are doing in response.

13. Children's privacy (COPPA notice)

This section is our COPPA notice. It is written for parents and guardians of children under 13.

What we collect from children

A first name/display name (entered by you), the emotions the child selects, activity timestamps, and the child's typed or on-device-transcribed free-text journal answers. We do not collect the child's age or birthdate, and we do not collect an email, phone number, password, or persistent advertising identifier from the child. Voice audio is not uploaded or stored; only on-device-transcribed text is saved.

How we use it

Only to provide the journaling service to your family: to save and display your child's entries to you (and to any other adult you have authorized, such as a co-parent, guardian, or therapist), to operate and secure the service, and to support you. We do not use it for advertising, profiling, or any third-party marketing.

Who we disclose it to

No one except you (the parent) and an adult you have explicitly authorized (a co-parent, guardian, or therapist), plus our service providers who process data on our behalf, and the limited legal/safety and business-transfer situations in Section 8. We do not sell it and do not condition your child's participation on disclosing more information than is reasonably necessary.

We obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information from your child (see Section 5). We use a payment-based method: the parent completes the paid subscription, and that payment transaction (with the receipt you get from the payment provider) serves as verifiable parental consent under COPPA.

Your parental rights

You may review your child's information, delete it, and refuse to permit further collection or use of it by revoking your consent (see Section 6). To exercise these rights, use the in-app contact form.

14. State privacy rights

Depending on where you live, state privacy laws (such as the California Consumer Privacy Act / California Privacy Rights Act (CCPA/CPRA) and comparable laws in other states, as well as state-specific children's-privacy protections) may give you additional rights, such as the rights to know, access, correct, delete, and to opt out of sale or "sharing."

Two points that apply to all users regardless of state:

Because we do not sell or share for advertising, there is no advertising opt-out to offer; there is nothing to opt out of. To exercise any applicable state rights, use the in-app contact form. We will not discriminate against you for exercising your privacy rights.

15. Where your data is processed

Mood Mates is a United States-based service, and your information is processed and stored on Google Cloud infrastructure in the United States. If you access Mood Mates from outside the United States, understand that your information will be processed in the U.S., where privacy laws may differ from those where you live.

16. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes (and always where the law, including COPPA, requires it), we will take reasonable steps to notify the parent/guardian account owner and, where a change materially affects how we collect or use a child's information, we will obtain renewed parental consent where required before applying the change to existing data. We will update the "Last updated" date at the top, and the new version governs once effective.

17. How to contact us

For questions about this policy, to exercise your rights, or to reach our privacy contact, use the in-app contact form. Mood Mates is operated by fakewaffle, llc.

If you believe we have collected information from a child without the required parental consent, please contact us immediately through the in-app contact form so we can address it.