ReadBeam — Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

ReadBeam ("we," "our," or "us") is an iOS application that lets parents and teachers photograph printed book pages and have them read aloud to children with synchronized word highlighting. This Privacy Policy explains what information ReadBeam handles and how it is protected.

2. Camera and Photo Data

When you scan a book page, the captured image is processed entirely on your device. ReadBeam does not upload, transmit, or store your photographs on any server. Page images are saved to the app's local sandbox on your device so you can re-read a book later, and they remain there until you delete the book or uninstall the app.

3. OCR (Text Recognition)

Optical character recognition runs locally on your device using Apple's Vision framework (VNRecognizeTextRequest). The text extracted from the page is stored locally with the book and is never sent to ReadBeam servers or any third party.

4. Text-to-Speech (TTS) Audio

ReadBeam offers three voices in the picker — Sunny, Luna, and Atlas. All three are generated using Google Cloud Text-to-Speech:

• Sunny (free) — Google Cloud TTS voice en-US-Standard-A.
• Luna and Atlas (premium) — Google Cloud TTS voices en-US-Standard-F and en-US-Standard-D.

For any of the three voices, the recognized page text (not the page image) is sent to Google's TTS endpoint to synthesize audio. Generated audio is cached locally on your device per-book so the same page is never synthesized twice. Apple's on-device AVSpeechSynthesizer is retained as a silent fallback if the Google TTS request fails.

5. Account Data

ReadBeam uses Firebase Authentication to manage accounts. The following fields are stored:

• Email address (Sign in with Apple may provide a private relay address)
• Display name
• Role (teacher or reader)

Account data is required to make class-code sharing work. You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Account → Delete Account, which permanently removes all account data and any classes you own.

6. Class Codes & Shared Books

When a teacher creates a class, ReadBeam stores the class code (e.g. KR-XXXXXX) and per-book metadata in Cloud Firestore — title, page count, voice, and the teacher's user ID.

When a teacher chooses to share a scanned book with a class, the book's page images and recognized text are uploaded to ReadBeam-hosted secure storage so students in the class can read along. Each upload is served to students through short-lived signed URLs (HMAC-protected, seven-day expiry) that cannot be guessed or shared outside the class.

Books that a teacher scans for personal use (without sharing to a class) are not uploaded — they remain only on the teacher's device. Deleting a class code, removing a book from a class, or deleting your account permanently removes the associated server-side images and text.

7. No Analytics, No Ads

ReadBeam does not integrate any third-party analytics, advertising, or behavioral tracking SDKs. We do not profile users, build advertising audiences, or sell data.

8. Children's Privacy (COPPA)

ReadBeam is designed for use by children under adult supervision and complies with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA):

• We do not collect personal information from children — accounts belong to a parent or teacher
• We do not show advertising to anyone, ever
• We do not perform behavioral profiling on readers
• Classroom data is isolated to the teacher who owns the class — readers in one class cannot see data from any other class
• Books that a teacher does not share to a class stay on the teacher's device. Books that a teacher does share are stored on ReadBeam-hosted secure storage and served only to students in that class via signed URLs (see Section 6)

9. Third-Party Services

• Apple App Store / StoreKit — distribution and subscription processing
• Apple Vision framework — on-device OCR
• Apple AVSpeechSynthesizer — on-device fallback only (used if Google TTS is unavailable)
• Firebase (Authentication, Firestore) — accounts and class-code metadata
• ReadBeam-hosted secure storage — book pages and audio for class-shared books only
• Google Cloud Text-to-Speech — all three picker voices (Sunny, Luna, Atlas)

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page reflects when changes were last made. Continued use of ReadBeam after changes constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

11. Contact & Support

For privacy-related questions or requests, contact us at [email protected]. For general help, visit our Support page.