Warning: *privacy not included with this product
Breathe, Think, Do with Sesame
"Help a monster friend with big feelings learn to calm down and solve everyday challenges." Yes please! Elmo and the gang at Sesame Street's app -- aimed at parents and caregivers of kids aged 2-5 -- is designed to help the young ones learn how to calm down, learn self-control, and expand their emotional vocabulary. The app is bilingual in English and Spanish, research-based, and free to download and use. Sesame Workshop's privacy policy says most of the things kids can do on the app don't require users to submit any personal information. Yay! Now, if they only made an adult version too! Unfortunately, we do have some small security concerns about the app.
What could happen if something goes wrong?
We're not too worried about the privacy of Sesame Workshop's mental development app for young children. TThe privacy policy does say that sometimes personal information like name and email might be collected but only with parental consent. And with no behavioral advertising (read, targeted ads) on the platform, parents should be able to breathe a small sigh of relief. Sesame Workshop is an educational non-profit, so they aren't trying to make money off you or your child's data, which is a breath of fresh air.
Our biggest privacy flag for this app is the privacy policy hasn't been updated since 2013, which is a very long time in privacy policy years. All in all though, if parents follow the basic guidelines for protecting young children online (please always do this parents and caregivers!), your child's privacy will likely be pretty safe.
We do have some questions we couldn't get answered about the security of this app. We couldn't confirm if Sesame Workshop has a program to manage security vulnerabilities. We did reach out to ask these questions to the email provided in their privacy policy, however we received no response. Which is concerning as this is also the email address provided for parents to contact Sesame Workshop to have any potential child's personal information reviewed and/or removed. With an app that collects so little personal information, this is probably not too big a concern. However, the app does request permission for access to a device's microphone, so an insecure app could be a problem.
What's the worst that could happen? Hopefully nothing more than your child learns how to be a little bit calmer. Calm is good. However, if the app were to have an unmanaged security vulnerability that gave a bad person access to your phone's microphone without you knowing, well, that wouldn't be good at all. This is probably not likely to happen. But we should remind parents that anything that connects to the internet your child plays with has potential vulnerabilities so it's always good to supervise them when they use your devices.
Tips to protect yourself
- Parents should read up and implement the guidelines on how to protect children online.
- Never share your child's personal information online
- Use the app with your child
A.I.
Can it snoop on me?
Camera
Device: N/A
App: No
Microphone
Device: N/A
App: Yes
Tracks location
Device: N/A
App: No
What can be used to sign up?
Yes
Phone
No
Third-party account
No
What data does the company collect?
Personal
Optional: name, email, phone number. Most of the activities on the Platforms do not require you to submit any personal information.
Body related
Social
How does the company use this data?
How can you control your data?
What is the company’s known track record of protecting users’ data?
No known privacy or security incidents discovered in the last 3 years.
Child Privacy Information
Can this product be used offline?
User-friendly privacy information?
Links to privacy information
Does this product meet our Minimum Security Standards?
Encryption
The app collects no personal data
Strong password
No password needed, as there is no sign-up process in the app
Comments
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