Sphero BOLT Coding Robot

You can probably feel pretty safe playing with your kids playing with the BOLT coding robot at home. However, if your youngster uses Sphero Edu in school, your child's data is shared with teachers and with parents. This data may include recorded video or audio content, and text content.. That's likely not that big of a deal. However, it is something to consider, as we're seeing school and educational settings become an area of growing concern for how they protect—or don't—children's data.

While Sphero says they don’t share your “often”, they do have a “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” form on their website. We could find no mention of them saying they don’t sell your data, so this could mean they might, unless you opt out. And they say they do share data with third parties for “online behavioral advertising” using data collected from places like social media. One other concern we found was the link they put on their privacy policy to learn more about parental controls doesn’t seem to work. Links break, so we’ll cut them some slack. Hopefully they’ll fix this soon after seeing our review.

Sphero does have some questionable data sharing practices that seem a bit concerning to us. There are other coding toys out there that seem to do better on that front. But, the benefits of you kid having tons of fun coding a little disco ball are something to consider. What’s the worst that could go wrong? Your kid could learn how to code while the teachers in your school learn a fair amount about your kid. Not the worst thing ever, but something to consider.