Privacy
policy

Girafoufou is a calm learning game for children aged three to six: numbers, shapes, picture books, stories and nature walks, with a little giraffe called Girafoufou. Parents trust us with their children’s time, and that trust is everything we have. This page explains, without jargon, what we know about you and your child, where it is kept, for how long, and what you can do about it.

The short version

• Your child’s game stays on your device unless you link their profile to a parent account. Linked profiles and saved progress are synchronised to our server so you can continue on another device.
• There is no advertising, no tracker, no analytics tool and no advertising ID. Website sign-in uses a session cookie. The game never asks for the microphone, the camera or your location.
• Our hosting provider, like every website’s, sees the technical details of each connection (such as your IP address) and keeps them in its logs to run and protect the service. We never use them to follow what your child does.
• The English website counts nothing: not even how many times a page is opened.
• You can erase everything the device keeps, at any time, from the parents’ corner.
• If you choose to create a parent account, we keep your e-mail address and your child’s game, encrypted, to find it on your other devices. If you buy family access, Link, Stripe’s payments service, sells it to you: we never see your card.

Who we are

Girafoufou is made and run by Marcel Venturino, a sole trader (entrepreneur individuel, micro-entreprise) registered in France: 4 rue Papassaudi, 13100 Aix-en-Provence, France; SIREN 999 463 847, registered with the Aix-en-Provence trade and companies register. He is the controller of the personal data described on this page.

• Contact for anything about your data: marcel@girafoufou.fr (we read and answer in English).
• Our representative in the United Kingdom (Article 27 UK GDPR): DataRep (see UK representative below).
• Registered with the Information Commission as a data controller, under registration reference ZC267569 (since 6 October 2026).
• We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer: the law does not require one for a project of this size. The address above receives every request.

Because we are based in France, we follow both the EU GDPR and, for families in the United Kingdom, the UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) and the Age Appropriate Design Code (the “Children’s Code”).

UK representative

We have appointed DataRep as our data protection representative in the United Kingdom, under Article 27 of the UK GDPR (Data Protection Representative (UK) Limited, trading as DataRep UK). If you are in the UK, you can contact DataRep instead of us about your personal data or your rights: by e-mail at datarequest@datarep.com, quoting “Girafoufou” in the subject line; through DataRep’s online form at www.datarep.com/data-request; or by post at: DataRep, 107-111 Fleet Street, London, EC4A 2AB, United Kingdom. Please address your letter to “DataRep”, not to Girafoufou, and mention Girafoufou in it. For any other question about Girafoufou, write to marcel@girafoufou.fr.

What happens when your child plays

Without a parent account, progress stays on the device. While your child plays, the game keeps the following locally. Linking their profile to your account also synchronises their saved game:

• the stars, the garden and its furniture, the drawings, today’s diary (“Today” in the parents’ corner), the off-screen challenges marked “done”, and today’s play time (for quiet time);
• what your child already knows, skill by skill (numbers, sounds, letters: “learning”, “secure”, “to review”), to choose the right questions and tell you about it; how fast they answer is kept only for the current session, on the device, to notice random tapping;
• if you give them on the first-name card: a first name or nickname, and “a girl” or “a boy”;
• the settings you choose in the parents’ corner, such as your child’s age (3, 4 or 5) and the seasonal scenery;
• copies of the game’s own files (pictures, voices) once they have been played, so that they open faster and keep working without a connection, the same files for every family.

A parent account is optional. French and British English share the same account and family access. Each child has separate learning progress in each language; their garden, earned stars and quiet time stay shared. A linked profile includes the name or nickname and settings you give, and its saved game. These are encrypted in our database. Our server can decrypt them to return them to you; this is not end-to-end encryption. The English game does not send your child’s name to a voice service.

How to erase it: in the parents’ corner, “Reset everything” erases the stars, the garden, the first name, the drawings and the play time from this device. Clearing your browser’s data for our website does the same.

What the game never does: it never asks for the microphone, the camera, your location or notifications; it has no chat and no way for your child to contact other people. Purchases and prices are for adults, behind the parental gate. Changing the learning language does not require another purchase.

What happens when anyone visits the website

Like every website, ours needs a few technical details to answer your device.

• Our hosting provider’s logs. When your device connects, our hosting provider, Railway, receives and records technical information about the connection, including your IP address, your browser, the page requested, the status and the duration of the answer. Railway uses these logs to run the service and keep it secure, partly for its own purposes as described in its data processing agreement. These logs are therefore not anonymous. We use them only to diagnose problems, never to follow your child’s games or progress. Railway stores these logs in its US West region, in the United States, whichever region the website runs in, and deletes them permanently after 90 days; they cannot be deleted earlier, nor entry by entry.
• Our own application. The parent account and purchase checks contact our server. Technical application logs record the time, route, status and duration of a request, and the kind of error if one occurs; they do not include your email, session token or saved game. The English website does not count page views.
• Faster files. To load quickly, copies of the public files of the website (pictures, voices, films), identical for everyone, are kept for up to one day on Railway’s servers closest to you, anywhere in the world. Never a page, never anything about you or your child.

Lawful basis: our legitimate interest in running a secure and reliable website (Article 6(1)(f) UK GDPR). You can object by writing to us; we will explain what we can do, knowing that a website cannot answer a device without its address.

If you create a parent account

The parent account is optional: the whole discovery offer is playable without it. It lets you find your child’s game on your other devices, and it is needed to buy family access on this website. It is created in the parents’ corner, behind a question for the grown-ups, with your e-mail address and a six-digit code: no password.

• What we keep: your e-mail address; the devices you sign in on (the name you give them, the last visit) and an opaque, revocable session for each; for each child, a nickname (a pseudonym is fine), encrypted, and an avatar; and a common saved game with distinct French and English learning progress, encrypted. The garden, earned stars and quiet time are shared; switching language does not create another account or subscription.
• Invitations: if you invite a friend’s family, we keep your invitation link and how many families joined through it; if a friend’s family invited you, the date you arrived. Neither family is ever shown the other.
• Why: to give you the service you asked for (the contract, Article 6(1)(b) UK GDPR).
• The sign-in code is sent by Brevo (France), our e-mail provider: your address and the six digits, nothing about your child.
• If you sign in with Google or Apple (on the website only): you choose that button, and the e-mail code always remains available. We show no Google or Apple button or script on our pages: your browser goes to them, then comes back to us. They only learn that you are signing in to Girafoufou; Google LLC and Apple Inc. are US companies (the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework). We receive your verified e-mail address and the identifier they give you, of which we keep only a fingerprint, with the provider’s name and the date. If Apple hides your address, we keep Apple’s relay address. If Google or Apple does not vouch for an address that already has an account with us, we send a code there before linking them. If you had two accounts, we merge them as soon as you prove both (by adding Google or Apple to your account, or with a code): your children, your addresses, your devices and family access end up in one account, the one that paid if there is one; if both have children, we ask you first. This is recorded with its date. Why: the contract (Article 6(1)(b) UK GDPR).
• If your code could not be sent because our e-mail service is down, we keep your request (your e-mail address, the language of the page, its date), never an account. As soon as e-mail works again, we write to you once to come back and ask for a new code, then delete the request. It is also deleted as soon as a code reaches you or you sign in, and after seven days at most, without an e-mail.
• A session cookie, strictly necessary, keeps you signed in: it is HttpOnly and only sent to our account’s server routes. No other cookie.
• Export and deletion are one gesture each in the parents’ corner. Deleting a child’s profile is separate from deleting the account.

If you buy family access

The trial is free; the full game is paid. Family access costs £5.99 a month, £49.99 a year, or £69 once for “Nursery to Year 1” (five years), VAT included. On this website it is sold by Link, Stripe’s payments service, as the seller of record (Stripe Managed Payments): you pay on Link’s checkout page, Link collects the VAT, sends your receipt, invoice and any refund notice, and answers payment questions. For the payment, Link and Stripe are independent controllers of the details you give them (your payment method, name and billing address, and a Link account if you want one), under Link’s privacy policy. We never see your card.

• What we send to Stripe: the e-mail address of your parent account, the plan, a family number that means nothing outside our database, and the language of the edition. Never anything about your child.
• What we keep: the plan, two Stripe references (your customer, and your subscription or payment), the dates, and the day we confirmed the purchase.
• The confirmation of your purchase, with our terms of sale in full, is sent to you by Brevo, as are the e-mails when a subscription ends or a payment is refunded.
• How long: as long as your account; deleting the account also deletes your customer record at Stripe and stops the subscription. Link and Stripe keep their transaction records under their own rules. If you ask Link to erase your data, Link cancels the subscription it sold you.

Children

Girafoufou is designed for children aged three to six, so we treat every visitor as a young child and apply the Children’s Code by design.

• High privacy by default. The game can be played without a parent account. A parent chooses whether to link a profile and synchronise its saved game.
• Nothing is asked of the child. No account, no email, no consent is ever asked of a child. Everything that concerns data or settings lives in the parents’ corner, behind “a question for the grown-ups”, and is decided by a parent.
• No advertising or marketing profile. The game adapts on the device: for example, a puzzle grows slightly after several successes, and “Do you remember?” picks older levels to review. If you link a profile to your account, the saved progress used by these activities is synchronised too.
• No nudging. No streaks, no countdowns, no surprise rewards to bring your child back, no notifications. After about 25 minutes of play in a day, Girafoufou goes off for a nap: this “quiet time” ends the session gently, and “just a bit more” is for parents only.
• No geolocation or advertising network. The service providers involved in accounts, payments and support are described below. No analytics provider or social network is added to the game.
• What parents can see. The parents’ corner shows what your child did today (the “Today” page). This diary is also part of the saved game if you link their profile to your account. At the end of the day, Girafoufou invites your child to tell you about their day.
• A first name can be a nickname. You never have to give your child’s real name.

Cookies and similar technologies

Website sign-in uses a necessary session cookie. It is restricted to account requests and expires up to 90 days after your last authenticated visit. Each website keeps its own cookie, so moving between girafoufou.fr and girafoufou.com can require signing in again. The apps use a session token instead. Local storage, IndexedDB and the offline cache keep progress and game files on your device; the apps also keep a local backup file. Linked profiles synchronise their saved game. There are no advertising or measurement cookies.

How long things are kept

Who else is involved, and where your data goes

For Apple sign-ins, we also keep an encrypted revocation token. When you delete your account, we use it to withdraw the Apple authorisation, then erase it with your account. It is never included in your data export.

Railway Corporation (San Francisco, United States; representative in the European Union in Hamburg, Germany) hosts the website in its EU West region, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on Google Cloud infrastructure. Railway acts as our processor under a signed data processing agreement, which includes the standard contractual clauses and the UK Addendum for UK data. Because Railway is an American company, American law may apply to it even for data kept in Amsterdam; Railway takes part in the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and its UK Extension. Its logs (with your IP address and browser) are stored in its US West region, in the United States. Its servers around the world also keep copies of the public files of the website (pictures, voices, films), never data about you.

Transfers from the United Kingdom. The website and its database run in the European Economic Area, which the United Kingdom recognises as offering adequate protection. Railway’s logs, with your IP address and browser, are stored in the United States: that transfer relies on Railway’s certification to the UK Extension of the Data Privacy Framework, and on the standard contractual clauses with the UK Addendum in its data processing agreement.

Brevo sends sign-in codes to your parent email address and purchase confirmations. These messages use plain text, without a tracking pixel, and contain no child profile or progress.

Link and Stripe handle payments on the English website through Managed Payments, with Link as seller of record. We send your parent email address, a family identifier and your chosen plan; no child name or progress. You enter your payment details on Stripe’s page. Our server keeps the purchase reference and access dates. Stripe’s handling of payment data is described in its privacy policy.

OVHcloud hosts our support mailbox: it receives the messages you choose to send us. We never sell data or share it for advertising.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you can ask us to tell you what we hold about you and give you a copy (access); correct it (rectification); delete it (erasure); limit how we use it (restriction), or object to a use based on our legitimate interests; give it to you in a reusable format (portability); and you can withdraw any consent at any time.

In the parents’ corner you can export account data, delete a child profile, disconnect a device or delete the whole account. Resetting a device and deleting account data are separate actions. Deleting your account does not cancel your Apple or Google subscription: manage its renewal in the store. For any other request, write to marcel@girafoufou.fr or DataRep (see UK representative above). We may ask you a question to make sure the request is yours. We reply within one month.

We make no decision about anyone by automated means that has legal or similarly significant effects. Nothing on this page is a statutory or contractual requirement: you can play without giving any information at all.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we use personal data, please tell us: write to marcel@girafoufou.fr, with « Complaint » in the subject if you can. We acknowledge every complaint within 30 days, look into it, and tell you what we found and what we will do about it.

You can also complain to the UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commission (formerly the Information Commissioner’s Office, ICO): ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, telephone 0303 123 1113. Because we are established in France, you can also contact the French regulator, the CNIL (cnil.fr).

Keeping things safe

No analytics or tracking code is allowed in the game, and automated tests check this before every update. Pages and server answers are never kept by a shared cache. The parents’ corner is behind a question for the grown-ups.

If this page changes

If we change what we do with data, we will update this page and its date before the change happens, and ask for a new agreement wherever one is needed. Who publishes Girafoufou and who hosts it is on our legal notice.

Last updated: 27 October 2026.