Children’s Privacy Notice

Forum Tutoring takes children’s privacy seriously. This notice explains how the U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) shapes our practices and what parents and guardians should expect when their child uses the Platform. It supplements — and, for children under 13, controls over — our general Privacy Policy.

Who This Applies To

This notice applies to children under the age of 13 located in the United States. We do not allow accounts for under-13 users without verified parental consent. A child under 13 may use the Platform only through a parent- or guardian-managed profile, and only after we have received verifiable parental consent as described below.

If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13 without the required parental consent, we will promptly delete that information from our active systems.

What Data We Collect From Children

The categories of data we collect from a child profile are the same as those we collect from adult accounts — name, grade, session bookings, materials uploaded to a session, video classroom recordings (where recording is enabled), and chat messages — but with additional constraints designed for under-13 use:

• No targeted advertising of any kind, on or off the Platform.
• No social features outside parent-managed messaging. Children cannot discover, search for, or message other users; the only messaging available is supervised communication with the booked tutor through the parent-visible inbox.
• No sharing of child data with any third party for marketing purposes.

Verifiable Parental Consent Process

Before we collect personal information from a child under 13, we confirm that consent is being given by the child’s parent or legal guardian.

Current bar. Because the personal information we collect from a child is used only for internal purposes — operating the Platform and delivering the service the parent has requested — and is not disclosed to third parties for their own use, we currently rely on the FTC’s “email-plus” method: the parent completes an account form, confirms via a verification link sent to their email, and checks a clear attestation that they are the parent or legal guardian and consent to our collection of the information described in this notice. This is sufficient under FTC guidance for “internal use only” scenarios.

Future enhancements. For features that go beyond internal use — for example, child-visible tutor reviews or third-party tooling — we will upgrade our consent method to a stricter mechanism, such as a small refundable micro-charge card-verification or upload of a signed parental-consent form. Parents will be re-prompted before any such feature can be enabled on their child’s profile.

Parental Rights

As the parent or legal guardian of a child whose information we have collected, you have the right to:

• Review the personal information we have collected from your child. Request a copy via privacy@forumtutoring.com.
• Request deletion of your child’s personal information.
• Refuse to permit further collection or use of your child’s information. Doing so will deactivate the child’s profile, because we cannot continue to operate it without the underlying data.

We verify each request using the email address on the parent account before acting.

Direct Contact With Tutors

All communication between an adult tutor and a child must be visible to the parent. Direct messages between an adult tutor and a child account are structurally blocked at the platform level: a tutor cannot initiate or receive a private message that the parent cannot see. Session video and any uploaded materials are likewise accessible to the parent through the parent inbox.

Tutors are independently required, under our Acceptable Use Policy, not to exchange personal contact information with students or to move communication off the Platform.

Data Minimization Principle

We collect only what is necessary for the tutoring service. There are no optional fields on a child profile, and we do not collect analytics about child behavior for any purpose beyond operational quality assurance of the service we deliver.

No Targeted Advertising

Forum Tutoring does NOT run targeted advertising to under-13 users. We do not embed third-party ad networks, and we do not engage in behavioral profiling of children for marketing or product development.

How To Contact Us

For any COPPA-related question or request, email privacy@forumtutoring.com using the subject line “Re: COPPA — [child first name]”. Send the request from the email address on the parent account so we can verify your identity. You may also write to us at 2361 MN-36 W, Suite 130, Roseville, MN 55113.