Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Savella (“Savella”, “we”, “us”) is operated by Atlas Forge (Pty) Ltd (registration number 2026/129381/07), of Harbouredge Suites, 10 Hospital Street, De Waterkant, Cape Town, 8001, Western Cape, South Africa. For the purposes of the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (“POPIA”) we are the responsible party for the personal information described here. Our Information Officer is Hercules Strydom, contactable at [email protected].

2. What we collect

We only collect what the app needs to work. That falls into a few groups:

Parent / guardian account

• Your email address and a password (stored only as a secure one-way hash).
• Your display name.
• If you invite a co-parent, the email address you enter for them (used solely to send that invitation).

Children’s information (added by you)

You create a profile for each child. We deliberately keep this minimal. We collect:

• The child’s first name (or a nickname you choose).
• Their age as a whole number (not a date of birth), used to show age-appropriate lessons.
• An avatar they pick, and a 4-digit PIN (stored only as a secure hash).
• Their in-app activity: chores, savings goals, lesson progress, experience points, the pocket-money tally, streaks and badges.

Children do not have their own accounts and cannot sign in independently. The PIN is a gate inside your account, which you control. We do not collect a child’s email address, phone number, photo, precise location, or any contact details.

Family money settings

The allowance amounts and payday you set, and the in-app record of rand-denominated pocket money owed. See “A note on money” . Savella never processes, holds or moves real money, so we collect no bank, card or payment-account details.

Usage and technical data

• In the mobile app, product-analytics events (for example: onboarding started, a child added, an allowance set) so we can understand and improve the experience. These events are linked to the parent account only and never carry a child’s name, age or any identifying detail.
• Basic device and app information the analytics tools collect automatically (app version, device type, operating system, coarse region).
• On our website, standard analytics (such as pages viewed) and, if you submit the beta waitlist form, the email address you provide.

3. Cookies and analytics consent

Our website uses a small number of cookies and similar technologies, in two groups:

• Essential: strictly necessary for the site to work (for example, remembering your light/dark theme choice and your cookie decision). These don’t track you and can’t be switched off.
• Analytics: Google Analytics, which we load only if you accept it in the cookie banner. It helps us understand how the site is used. If you decline, it is never loaded.

You can change your mind at any time by clearing this site’s cookies in your browser. The banner will ask again on your next visit. We honour your choice on every page.

4. How we use it, and our legal basis

Under POPIA we process your information to:

• Provide the service: create and run your family’s account, lessons, chores, goals and reminders (performance of our agreement with you).
• Send necessary emails: sign-up confirmation, password resets and co-parent invitations (performance and your consent).
• Improve the app: understand which features help families, using the parent-only analytics above (our legitimate interest, balanced against your privacy).
• Keep everyone safe and comply with law: protect against abuse and meet our legal obligations.

We do not sell your or your children’s personal information, and we do not use it for third-party advertising or ad profiling.

5. Children’s privacy (POPIA section 35)

Savella is designed for parents and guardians to use with their children. A child’s personal information is processed with the consent and under the authority of you, the competent person (parent or guardian) who sets up and manages their profile. By adding a child you confirm you are their parent or legal guardian and consent to this processing on their behalf.

We apply data minimisation for children (name and age only), never target children with advertising, never build advertising profiles, and identify only the parent account in our analytics. You can view and correct a child’s information at any time from within the app, delete the entire family yourself in Settings, or ask us to delete a single child’s information (see your rights below).

6. Children’s privacy for United States families (COPPA)

For families in the United States, we comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) and its Rule. This section is our direct notice of how children’s information is handled. The operator is Atlas Forge (Pty) Ltd, contactable at [email protected] or at Harbouredge Suites, 10 Hospital Street, De Waterkant, Cape Town, 8001, Western Cape, South Africa.

Consent comes from you, the parent. Children cannot create Savella accounts. You create the account, you create each child’s profile, and every piece of information we hold about a child (listed in section 2 above: a first name or nickname, a whole-number age, an avatar, a hashed PIN, and in-app activity such as chores, goals, lesson progress and the pocket-money tally) is provided by you or generated by play inside the family account you control. We collect no more information from a child than is reasonably necessary to run the app, and a child is never required to hand over information to participate.

A child’s own device is anonymous. If you pair a device for your child, it signs in under a random identifier tied only to your family. It carries no email address, phone number, real name, photo or location, and that identifier is used solely to run the service for your family (saving progress and syncing the app), never for advertising or profiling. Our product analytics identify the parent account only; no child identity is ever sent to an analytics provider.

No advertising, ever. Savella contains no third-party advertising, no ad networks, and no behavioural advertising or ad profiling of any kind, for children or adults. We do not sell children’s personal information. We share children’s information only with the service providers in section 7 (our database and hosting), who process it solely on our instructions to run the app.

Your COPPA rights. At any time you can: review your child’s information (it is all visible in the app), correct it in the app, delete your whole account yourself in Settings, have a single child’s information deleted by emailing us, and refuse to permit further collection by unpairing a child’s device. Deletion works as described in section 11. To exercise any of these, or to ask questions, email [email protected].

7. Marketing and communications

If you join our beta waitlist, we use the email address you give us to tell you about Savella’s launch, your invite and, occasionally, product news. This is direct marketing by electronic means under POPIA section 69, sent only with your consent. Every such email includes an unsubscribe link, and you can opt out at any time (or email us) with immediate effect. Service emails (sign-up confirmations, password resets, co-parent invitations) are not marketing and are sent as part of running your account. We never send marketing to children and never share your email address with third parties for their marketing.

8. Who we share it with (our sub-processors)

We don’t sell your data. We use a small set of trusted service providers to run the app, each processing data only on our instructions:

We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect the rights, safety and property of Savella, our users or the public.

9. Where your data lives, and cross-border transfers

Your family’s core data (accounts, children’s profiles and activity) is stored in the European Union, which offers a level of data protection recognised as adequate. Some providers above operate elsewhere. Where personal information is transferred outside South Africa, we do so on the bases permitted by POPIA section 72, including that the recipient is subject to laws or agreements providing comparable protection.

10. How we protect it

• All data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS) and at rest.
• Access to family data is enforced at the database level, so one family can never see another’s, and co-parents can never see each other’s personal profile details.
• Passwords and children’s PINs are stored only as secure one-way hashes.
• On your phone, your login session is stored in the device’s secure keystore.

No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable, appropriate technical and organisational measures as POPIA requires, and we will notify you and the Information Regulator of a compromise where the law requires it.

11. How long we keep it

We keep your family’s information for as long as your account is active. When you delete your account, the associated data is deleted (a co-parented family may pass to the remaining parent; see the Terms). Deleted data may persist for a short period in encrypted backups kept for disaster recovery, after which it is overwritten in the normal backup cycle; backups are never used to restore data you have deleted. Waitlist emails are kept until we launch or you ask us to remove them. We may retain limited information longer where the law requires us to (for example, records needed for tax, fraud prevention or an ongoing legal matter).

12. Your rights

Under POPIA (and, for US families, alongside your COPPA rights in section 6) you have the right to:

• Ask what personal information we hold about you and your family, and get a copy.
• Correct or update information that is wrong or out of date.
• Delete your account and its data. You can do this yourself in the app under Settings, or ask us.
• Object to certain processing, and withdraw consent where we rely on it.
• Complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa) if you believe we have not handled your information lawfully.

To exercise any of these, email [email protected]. You can reach the regulator at https://inforegulator.org.za or [email protected]. Our manual under the Promotion of Access to Information Act, 2000 (PAIA) is available on request from the same address.

We do not make decisions about you or your children by automated means that have legal or similarly significant effects (POPIA section 71), and we do not profile children for any purpose.

13. A note on money

Savella is not a bank or a financial service, and it never touches real money. The balance shown in the app is a pocket-money tally kept in rand, a private record between you and your child that you settle directly (for example, in cash), outside the app. Because of this we collect no payment or bank-account information.

14. App stores and third-party links

You download the Savella app from the Apple App Store or Google Play. Those platforms may collect their own diagnostics (such as crash reports and install statistics) under their own privacy policies, which we don’t control. Likewise, our website and guides may link to external sites; this policy covers only Savella, so check the privacy policy of any site you visit from ours.

15. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app evolves. We’ll change the date at the top and, for material changes, tell you in the app or by email. Continuing to use Savella after an update means you accept the revised policy.

16. Contact us

Questions about this policy or your information? Email [email protected], or write to Atlas Forge (Pty) Ltd, Harbouredge Suites, 10 Hospital Street, De Waterkant, Cape Town, 8001, Western Cape, South Africa. See also our Terms of Service.