Built for under-18s — and honest about it.
Bright Spark is a tutor, not a social network. Here's exactly how we protect young learners, what we filter, what we never store, and who to call if something serious is going on.
Age policy
| Product | Solo use from | With a parent or guardian |
|---|---|---|
| Learn to Read | Any age | Recommended for under-10s. No account, no personal data collected. |
| AI Tutor (chat) | 16+ | From age 10 with a parent or guardian alongside |
| Talk to Spark | 16+ | From age 10 with a parent or guardian alongside |
We ask the learner's year of birth once. We don't share that with anyone and we don't use it to advertise to anyone.
What we filter
Every message — typed, voiced, or extracted from an attached file — passes through our server-side filter before it ever reaches the AI tutor. The same filter runs for chat and voice.
- Sexual or explicit content
Hard-blocked in 8 languages (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Mandarin, Polish, Irish).
- Self-harm & suicide
Blocked, with a redirect to professional help lines (below).
- Weapons & violence
Bomb-making, attacks, terrorism: blocked.
- Cheating
"Do my exam for me" prompts are refused — Spark is Socratic by design and teaches the method, not the answer.
The tutor itself is also told, at the prompt level, that it's teaching minors and must decline anything not appropriate for a school setting.
What we don't store
- • No accounts required to try Tutor or Talk to Spark. Learn-to-Read never needs an account.
- • No child profiles. We don't build behavioural profiles of young learners.
- • No third-party advertising and we don't sell data — ever.
- • Chat transcripts stay in your browser unless you copy them out.
- • Talk to Spark transcripts are discarded when the session ends.
- • We rate-limit per device and per IP to stop abuse without identifying anyone.
See our privacy policy for the full data picture.
Frameworks we've designed against
Self-assessed, not independently audited. We've used these as design references — not as certifications we hold.
UK: We've designed with the ICO Age-Appropriate Design Code and the Online Safety Act 2023 in mind — high-privacy defaults, content filtering, no profiling of children, and no targeted advertising.
EU: GDPR Article 8 sets a default digital age of consent of 16. We apply the strictest rule globally: under-16s use Spark with a parent or guardian alongside.
US: COPPA applies to services that collect personal information from under-13s. Because Spark collects no personal information from anonymous learners, COPPA's verifiable-parental-consent requirements aren't triggered. When we add accounts, parents will own them for under-13s.
If something serious comes up
Spark is an AI tutor — it's not a counsellor or a crisis line. If you (or a learner) are thinking about self-harm or are in immediate danger, please reach a human now:
- UK & Ireland
- Samaritans — 116 123 (free, 24/7)
- Childline (UK) — 0800 1111
- Childline (IE) — 1800 66 66 66
- US & Canada
- 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — Call or text 988
- Crisis Text Line — Text HOME to 741741
- EU
- Emergency — 112
- Find a Child Helpline — childhelplineinternational.org
- Tell us
- Email — paul@brightsparktutor.com
- Subject prefix — [SAFETY]
Questions or concerns?
Email paul@brightsparktutor.com with the subject [SAFETY] and we'll respond within one working day.