Privacy Policy

Maple is an adult-managed team service for organizing children's physical pen-pal exchanges. Parents and guardians create accounts and provide the limited child information needed for matching. Children do not create Maple accounts, submit information directly, or send digital messages through Maple.

• Account information: a parent's name, email address, authentication information, and account status.
• Family information: the family's mailing address and team memberships.
• Child information: first name, birth year, participating teams, matches, round history, and earned achievements.
• Team activity: invitations, roles, proposed pairings, manual match changes, and sent or received confirmations.
• Service records: transactional-email delivery records and basic technical or security logs produced when the service is used.

Please do not add a child's last name, exact birth date, school, health information, photograph, or other information Maple does not request.

• create and secure parent accounts;
• operate private teams and deliver invitations;
• calculate approximate ages and suggest age-aware matches;
• coordinate mailing rounds and show the correct mailing address;
• send account, invitation, and letter-status notifications;
• maintain round history and achievements;
• prevent misuse, troubleshoot problems, and protect the service; and
• comply with legal obligations and enforce our Terms of Use.

Maple limits sharing to what is needed to run a private pen-pal team:

• Team administrators can manage members, children, invitations, and matches for their team.
• A matched family can see the child's first name, approximate age, and mailing address needed for the current exchange.
• Service providers may process information for hosting, authentication, database storage, security, and transactional email. They may use it only to provide those services to Maple.
• Legal or safety disclosures may occur when reasonably necessary to comply with law or protect a child, family, Maple, or another person.

A team cannot access another team's private data. Maple does not sell personal information and does not share it for behavioural or targeted advertising.

The parent or guardian adding a child is responsible for deciding whether participation is appropriate and for having authority to provide the child's information. Parents can review and edit family information, remove a child from a team, withdraw the child from future matching, or request deletion.

If Maple learns that a child submitted information directly or created an account, we will take reasonable steps to close the account and delete the information. Maple's parent-managed design does not replace any consent or privacy obligation that applies in a family's jurisdiction.

We keep information only while it is reasonably needed to provide Maple, maintain security and round records, resolve disputes, or meet legal obligations. Invitation links expire after seven days. When information is deleted, limited copies may remain temporarily in protected backups or records that must be retained by law.

Maple uses access controls, private-team permissions, secure authentication, and database rules designed to limit information to authorized adults. No online system is perfectly secure, so parents should use a unique password, keep invitation links private, and report suspected unauthorized access promptly.

Maple's hosting, authentication, database, and email providers may process information in countries other than the one where a family lives. Information may therefore be subject to the laws of those locations. Before public launch, Maple will identify its production providers and processing locations in this policy.

Parents may request access to, correction of, or deletion of their personal information and information they provided about their children. They may also withdraw consent, subject to legal or operational limits. Withdrawing information needed for matching or mailing may prevent continued participation in a team.

We will update this policy when Maple's information practices change and provide notice when a change is material. Privacy questions and requests can be sent through Maple's privacy support channel when it becomes available. Production contact details will be published before public launch.