In short (for children)
- Smartypes never asks for your name, your age, or any other detail about you.
- Nobody can talk to you on Smartypes, and you cannot see or talk to anyone else.
- If something on Smartypes worries you or looks wrong, tell a parent or a teacher, and ask them to send us a message.
- If you are in danger, or someone you know is, tell a trusted adult now and call your local emergency number.
Our commitment
Every learner, of any age, deserves to be safe on Smartypes. We take care that nothing here puts a child at risk, and we take any concern about a child's safety seriously. If we find something wrong, we fix it. If a message tells us a child may be at risk, we pass the concern to the people whose job it is to protect children.
How Smartypes is designed to keep children safe
Most of the protection is in what Smartypes leaves out.
- There are no accounts, so there is no profile, no username and no password.
- There is no chat, no messages between users, and no way to see or contact another learner.
- There are no ads and no tracking, and Smartypes sets no cookies.
- Nothing a learner types is sent anywhere. Practice progress stays in your own browser, and Smartypes keeps nothing on a server.
- There are no uploads and no content from other people. Everything on Smartypes is written for it and comes from the owner.
Practice text. Practice sentences, passages, word lists and example sentences are written for Smartypes, not copied from other places, and they are approved for use through a review process that includes human review. They follow a written content standard that keeps out crude or frightening words and imagery and other material that does not belong in practice for learners of any age. Word lists, sentences and example sentences are checked against a content filter before each release, and words chosen at random for drills pass the same filter as they are chosen. No filter is perfect. If you ever see something that does not belong, please tell us (see "How to raise a concern").
Your privacy. Smartypes does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. The one place a message can leave your device is the feedback page, and only if you press Send in your own email app. If you are under 13, please ask a parent or teacher to send feedback for you. The Privacy page has the details.
Who is responsible
Smartypes is run by one person, Steven Quinn Singleton, an individual in California, United States. He is responsible for safeguarding on Smartypes and is the only person who reads messages sent through the feedback page. Smartypes has no staff, volunteers or partners who have contact with children, and no one else has access to learners or to their practice records.
If a child is in danger
Smartypes cannot see who anyone is or where they are, and it cannot send help. Please do not use the feedback page for an emergency.
- If a child is in immediate danger, call your local emergency number first.
- In the United States, the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline, for a child who needs help or an adult who is worried about a child, is open at any hour: 1-800-422-4453, and online at childhelphotline.org.
- Online exploitation of a child can be reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at report.cybertip.org.
- Elsewhere, Child Helpline International lists child helplines country by country: childhelplineinternational.org/helplines/
- If the concern is about a child you know, you can also contact your local child protection services or the police.
How to raise a concern
Use the feedback page. Choose "A safety concern" for a worry about a child, or "A concern about practice text or wording" for something a learner can see or type. Say what you saw and where. You do not need to give a child's name or any detail about a child, and please do not.
Feedback goes by your own email app to the owner, who sees the address it comes from. If the feedback page does not open your email app, you can write to hello@smartypes.com.
If your concern is about the owner, please do not use the feedback page. Contact child protection services or the police in your area directly.
What happens next
- The owner reads your message and replies, if you gave a way to reach you, to say it has arrived.
- If your message is about practice text, the owner removes or fixes what does not belong there, and adds it to the content filter where that makes sense.
- If a message suggests that a child may be at risk, the owner refers the concern to the appropriate authority, for example child protection services, the police, or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Only the information the authority needs is shared.
- Apart from a referral under step 3, messages are never sold, shared with anyone else, or used for any other purpose. A message that comes from a child, or that names a child, is deleted once the concern is resolved.
When to expect a reply
Smartypes is run by one person, so a reply is not instant. We aim to reply to every message, and to deal with a concern about practice text, within 7 days. If a child may be in danger, do not wait for a reply: contact your local emergency number or child protection services.
Reviewing this page
The owner reviews this page at least once a year, and again after any safeguarding concern, to see whether it still matches how Smartypes works and whether anything needs to change. If Smartypes ever adds anything that connects learners to other people, such as accounts, chat, comments, uploads, ads or tracking, this page will be updated, and the new feature will be reviewed for child safety, before it is released.
Effective October 17, 2026. Next review due October 17, 2027.