Privacy Policy
Effective Date: 30 September 2026 Version: 2026-09-30
Who we are
BigPetPal is operated by IdeaHub Pty Ltd (ABN 58 647 220 380, ACN 647 220 380), an Australian company trading as BigPetPal. In this policy, "we", "us" and "our" mean IdeaHub Pty Ltd, and "BigPetPal" means our product.
Registered address: Suite 606, Level 6, 11-15 Deane Street, Burwood NSW 2134, Australia
Privacy Officer: Giridhar Sai Atluri Email: giri@bigpetpal.com General privacy enquiries: privacy@bigpetpal.com
Our Privacy Officer is responsible for how we handle personal information, and is the contact for any question, request or complaint about it.
Where BigPetPal is available
We offer BigPetPal in Australia only.
Our website can be read from anywhere. Accounts can only be created in Australia. If you are somewhere else, you can join our waiting list and we will let you know if we open in your country.
What this policy covers, in one paragraph
BigPetPal is a talking pet that your child speaks to out loud, and that talks back. The pet is a computer program using artificial intelligence. To make it work, we record your child's voice, send the recording to companies outside Australia to turn it into text, send that text to an AI company that writes the pet's reply, and turn the reply back into speech. We keep the recording and a written record of the conversation. After each conversation, another AI reads the whole thing and tells us whether your child said anything we should tell you about. You can see and hear all of it, at any time, in your parent portal. This policy explains all of that in full.
1. The parent is our customer. The child is our user.
This distinction runs through everything below.
- Only an adult aged 18 or over can create an account, buy a subscription, change a setting, or give or withdraw a consent.
- Your child has no account, no password and no way to sign in on their own. You sign in and hand them the device.
- You enter your child's details, you choose to let them use BigPetPal, and you supervise that use.
- You can see every conversation, read every transcript and summary, play back the audio of what your child said, and see every safety flag.
- Every right over your child's information is exercised by you: access, correction and deletion.
We do collect personal information about your child, and some of it comes directly from your child when they speak to the pet. You control that collection. You consent to it, you can see all of it, and you can ask us to delete it. But we want to be plain that it happens, rather than describe this as a service that only collects information from you.
2. What we collect
2.1 About you, the parent
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your full name | To identify your account and to record your consent |
| Your email address | To sign you in and to send you account, safety and service emails |
| Your password, stored as a hash | To authenticate you. We never store your password itself |
| Your Google account identity, if you choose Google sign-in | An alternative way to sign in |
| Your IP address and browser user agent at the moment you consent | As evidence of what you agreed to, and when. Also to prevent fraud and to suggest your country |
| Your country | To confirm we can offer you the service |
| Your subscription and billing status | To service your account |
We never see or store your card details. Payments are handled by Stripe. We hold only the identifiers Stripe gives us.
2.2 About your child
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| First name, last name, and nickname if you give one | So the pet can talk to your child by name |
| Date of birth | So the pet talks in a way that suits your child's age |
| Gender, if you give it | To set the pet's default voice and tone. Optional |
| Language, and any additional languages | To set up speech recognition |
| Interests, personality and preferences | So the pet talks about things your child likes |
| A name for the pet, an avatar emoji and a colour | Personalisation and display |
2.3 What BigPetPal creates when your child uses it
| What | Where we keep it |
|---|---|
| Audio recordings of your child speaking. One for each turn, plus a combined file for each session | Cloudflare R2 private object storage |
| A written transcript of everything your child says | Our database |
| A written transcript of everything the pet says | Our database |
| An AI-written summary of each conversation | Our database |
| Safety scan results, including the exact words that were flagged, a category, a severity and an AI explanation of why | Our database |
| "Memories", being facts about your child that an AI has picked out of the conversation and saved to their profile, such as their friends, their pets and what they like | Our database |
| How much of the service has been used, in turns and credits | Our database |
| Technical measurements for each turn, such as speed, which provider was used and speech recognition confidence | Our database |
The microphone only records when your child presses and holds, or taps, the button. BigPetPal does not listen when your child is not talking to it.
2.4 Device and technical information
Device identifier and device name, registered to your household. Error and crash reports, collected by Sentry. Session identifiers and cookies, including a 30-day cookie on the sign-up flow.
2.5 What we do not do
These are true today and we intend to keep them true.
- No advertising. There are no advertising tools in the app at all.
- No tracking your child across other apps or websites. There are no third-party analytics or attribution tools in the child app.
- We do not sell, rent or licence your child's information. Ever.
- No marketing profiles are built on children.
- Your child cannot talk to another child, or to any stranger. The pet is the only thing they can talk to. There is no chat, no multiplayer, no social feature, and nothing your child makes is shared with anyone except you.
- No purchases in the child app. All payment happens in your browser.
- No camera. BigPetPal does not use the camera and collects no photographs or video.
3. Sensitive information
Some of what BigPetPal produces is more sensitive than ordinary personal information, and we treat it that way.
The safety scan forms a view about how your child is feeling. When it flags a conversation as showing distress, that is information about your child's wellbeing. Information of that kind is sensitive information under Australian privacy law, and we only collect it with your consent. We ask for that consent at sign-up and we explain plainly what it covers, so you can see what you are agreeing to.
The same applies to any memory the pet saves that touches on your child's health, beliefs, background or family circumstances, because a child may mention such things without being asked.
If you no longer want us to run the safety scan, contact us and we will stop. We will also tell you plainly what you lose by turning it off, because the safety scan is how we alert you when something concerning is said.
4. Who else handles this information, and where they are
This is the most important section of this policy and we have set it out in full.
To make the pet work, your child's information is handled by companies outside Australia. We choose them carefully, we have contracts with each of them, and we remain responsible to you for what they do with the information we give them.
| Who | What they receive | What they do with it | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Our whole database: your details, your child's profile, every transcript, safety flag and memory | Database, sign-in and file storage | India (Mumbai) |
| Deepgram | The audio of your child's voice, and the text of the pet's replies | Turns speech into text, and text into speech | United States |
| OpenAI | The conversation text, plus your child's name, age and interests | Writes the pet's replies | United States |
| OpenRouter | The same, when we route through it instead of going directly to OpenAI | Routes requests to AI models | United States |
| Anthropic, through OpenRouter | The full conversation transcript | Reads the conversation and produces the safety scan | United States |
| Cloudflare | The audio recordings of your child's voice | Stores the recordings | Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) |
| Fly.io | Transcripts passing through our safety service | Runs our safety and memory service | Australia (Sydney) |
| Vercel | Parent portal traffic | Runs the parent portal website | Global edge network |
| Stripe | Your name, email and payment details | Processes payments | Global |
| Resend | Your email address and the content of our emails to you | Delivers our emails, including safety alerts | United States |
| Sentry | Error reports, which may incidentally contain identifiers | Tells us when something breaks | United States |
| Your identity, if you choose Google sign-in | Signs you in | Global |
Training AI models
We do not use your child's voice or words to train AI models, and we do not permit the companies above to use them to train theirs.
To be precise about what that means in practice:
- Where a provider offers a setting or a contract term that excludes training on customer data, we use it.
- Some providers keep information for a short period to detect misuse of their service and to keep it working safely. That is not training, and it is not something we can switch off. Where it happens, the information is held by that provider under its own security controls and is deleted at the end of that period.
- We review these arrangements when we take on a provider and when a provider changes its terms.
- If we become aware that a provider has used your child's information to train a model, we will tell you, and we will stop sending children's information to that provider.
Where your child's information is stored
Our database is hosted by Supabase in India, in its Mumbai region. That is where your child's name, date of birth, conversation transcripts and safety flags are held.
We have a contract with Supabase requiring it to protect that information to the standard this policy describes, and we remain accountable to you for how it is handled there. We keep the choice of region under review and we will update this policy if it changes.
Your child's voice recordings are stored separately, by Cloudflare, in its Oceania region covering Australia and New Zealand. They do not leave that region while they are stored, although they do pass through the United States at the moment they are transcribed, as the table above shows.
5. How we use this information
We use it to:
- Run BigPetPal and make the pet work for your child.
- Let you review conversations, manage profiles and see safety alerts.
- Keep your child safe while using the product.
- Sign you in and protect your account.
- Handle subscriptions and prevent fraud.
- Fix problems and improve the product.
- Meet our legal obligations.
We do not use it for anything else. We do not use it to advertise to you or your child, and we do not use your child's conversations to train AI models.
6. Safety: how we watch, and what we do
Because a child is talking, and because children sometimes say things that matter, BigPetPal is built to notice.
While your child is talking. The pet is instructed to respond safely and kindly if your child raises something distressing or unsafe, and basic content checks run as it goes.
After the conversation ends. The whole transcript is read by a safety AI, which gives the conversation an overall rating and flags individual things your child said, with a category such as distress, a severity, the exact words, and an explanation.
If something serious is flagged, we email you. You will see the flag in your parent portal with the reason, you can read the transcript, you can play back the audio, and you can mark it as dealt with.
In severe cases we may automatically pause your child's profile and tell you at the same moment. Our staff can undo this.
Where that automatic pause is used, it is a decision made by a computer program, using your child's conversation transcript and the safety rating produced from it, and it results in your child temporarily losing access to BigPetPal. You can contact us and we will review it.
Who else can see what your child says. Our support and administration staff can reach conversation content when they need to for troubleshooting and quality review. Access is limited by role and is logged. We tell you this because it is the kind of thing you would want to know and would not otherwise expect.
Who we tell. We tell you. We do not routinely tell anyone else. There is no reporting to authorities built into BigPetPal and no third party is notified of what your child says.
The one exception is this: if we reasonably believe it is necessary to prevent a serious threat to someone's life, health or safety, or if the law requires it, we may disclose information. We do not expect to use this, and we would tell you if we did unless we were prevented from doing so.
What we tell your child. The pet tells your child, in words a young child understands, that their grown-up can see what they talk about. We think a child should know that, even a young one, and we would rather they hear it from the pet than discover it later. The pet will never tell your child that a conversation is a secret.
7. How long we keep things
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Unfinished sign-ups, including your email and your child's name and date of birth | Deleted 30 days after the session expires |
| Completed sign-up records | Deleted once your account is created |
| Your account, your child's profile, transcripts, summaries, safety flags and memories | Kept while your account is open. Deleted when your account is deleted |
| Audio recordings of your child's voice | Kept while your account is open, and deleted when your account or your child's profile is deleted. We are introducing an automatic time limit on voice recordings, and will update this policy and tell you when it takes effect |
| Billing records | As long as our tax and accounting obligations require |
Our full retention schedule is published at www.bigpetpal.com/retention.
8. Deleting your data
You can ask us to delete your account, or any child profile, at any time. Use the request form at www.bigpetpal.com/delete, or email privacy@bigpetpal.com.
When we action a deletion, we remove your child's profile, every transcript, summary, safety flag and memory, and every audio recording of your child's voice. We will confirm when it is done.
Some records are kept after deletion where we must: billing records for tax purposes, and a minimal record that a deletion occurred.
You do not need to give a reason and we will not try to talk you out of it.
9. Your other rights
See what we hold. Sign in to your parent portal at any time to see your child's profile and every conversation. If you want anything we hold that is not shown there, ask us.
Correct it. You can edit your child's profile yourself. If anything else is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.
Withdraw a consent. You can withdraw a consent you gave at sign-up. Some consents are necessary for BigPetPal to work at all, and we will tell you clearly what happens if you withdraw them.
Complain. Contact our Privacy Officer first, at giri@bigpetpal.com. We will acknowledge within 5 business days and respond within 30 days.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at www.oaic.gov.au.
10. Security
Information is encrypted in transit and at rest. Access to our systems is limited by role and logged. We review access regularly.
We will not tell you that your information can never be compromised, because no one can honestly say that. What we will tell you is what we do if it happens: we assess it, and if there is a real risk of serious harm we will tell you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
11. Marketing
We will send you emails you need: confirmations, safety alerts, service notices and billing. Those are not marketing and you cannot turn them off while you have an account.
We will only send you marketing if you have separately agreed to it. Every marketing message identifies us and carries an unsubscribe link, and you can withdraw your agreement at any time, free of charge, by using that link or by emailing us.
We will never send marketing to your child, and we will never use anything your child has said to decide what to market to you.
12. Automated decision-making
We use AI to generate the pet's replies, to summarise conversations, to run the safety scan, and to extract memories. These are described in sections 2, 4 and 6.
Where an automated safety decision pauses your child's profile, the information used is your child's conversation transcript and the safety rating produced from it, and the decision is whether to pause access pending your review. You can always ask us to look at it again.
13. Changes to this policy
We version this policy by date.
Every new version of this policy, including a correction, requires you to read and accept it before you can keep using BigPetPal. We will not change this document without asking you.
We keep a record of exactly which version you accepted, and when. You can see that record in your parent portal.
14. Children in other countries
BigPetPal is offered in Australia only. We do not offer it anywhere else, and we do not accept sign-ups from outside Australia.
If we discover an account has been created from outside Australia, we may close it, and we will delete the associated information.
Contact
IdeaHub Pty Ltd trading as BigPetPal ABN 58 647 220 380 | ACN 647 220 380 Suite 606, Level 6, 11-15 Deane Street, Burwood NSW 2134, Australia
Privacy Officer: Giridhar Sai Atluri, giri@bigpetpal.com General privacy enquiries: privacy@bigpetpal.com General enquiries: info@bigpetpal.com