This YouTube Kids Privacy Notice is intended to help parents understand what data is collected by the app, why we collect it, what we do with it and our privacy controls. This Notice provides information about our privacy practices that are specific to YouTube Kids, and summarises the most relevant portions of the Google Privacy Policy, which generally describes how we treat user information in Google’s products and services.
Information we collect
Information about the device and app used to access the service. This information includes:
YouTube Kids collects information based on your child’s use of the app, like when they watch a video; This information includes:
- device type and settings, such as hardware model and operating system version;
- log information, including details of how our service is used, device event information and the device’s Internet protocol (IP) address;
- unique application numbers, such as application version number; and
- unique identifiers, which are used to collect and store information about an app or device, such as preferred language, app activity and other settings.
YouTube Kids doesn’t collect personal information like name, address or contact information from your child.
App activity. This information includes the videos your child watches, their search terms and other interactions with content and adverts in the app. If a child uses audio features in the app such as voice search, the app briefly collects voice information. This information is processed to allow for use of the audio feature and is then immediately deleted.
How we use the information we collect
We use the information we collect for internal operational purposes such as for spam and abuse prevention and enforcing our content licence restrictions, determining preferred language and providing and improving the service.
We also use this information to offer users personalised content. We associate an identifier that’s unique to the app with the videos your child has watched and terms they’ve searched for to recommend content likely to be of interest to them, subject to the controls described below.
We use unique identifiers to provide contextual advertising, including ad frequency capping. The app does not allow interest-based advertising or remarketing.
YouTube Kids does not allow your child to share personal information with third parties or make it publicly available.
Signing in to YouTube Kids with your Google Account: Additional information we collect and how we use it
In some countries we prompt parents to sign in to YouTube Kids with their Google Account to create a profile for their child, enable additional parental controls and customisation preferences for their child, and use their YouTube Premium membership in the app. If a parent chooses not to sign in with their Google Account, the app can be used in a signed-out state, as described above.
If you sign in to YouTube Kids with your Google Account, the app will collect your Google Account information, such as email address and password, and, as applicable, will collect profile information for any profiles you create for your child as well as your parental controls and customisation preferences. The profile information will include your child’s name or nickname, their age and their month of birth if you choose to provide it. The app will collect customisation preferences such as videos blocked from the app, videos you may allow in the app and channels to which they may subscribe. The app also collects the child’s app activity data including watch and search history specific to each child, as described above.
We will use this information to provide the following features:
- If applicable, enabling YouTube Premium benefits, such as offline access to content, background play and no paid adverts, in the YouTube Kids app on all your devices.
- Enable you to create limited profiles for your child, and
- Enable additional parental controls and customisation preferences associated with each of the profiles in the app on all your devices. These may include allowing or blocking certain videos from the app and allowing each profile to subscribe to channels in the app.
When you sign in with your Google Account, we use the watch and search history tied to each specific installation of the app to recommend content on YouTube Kids, as described above, and we will continue to use that watch and search history for recommendations even if you sign out of the app, unless they are cleared and paused in the Settings section, as described below.
When you create a profile for your child associated with your Google Account, we will use the information tied to each profile to offer the child personalised content likely to be of interest to them, subject to the controls described below.
Information we share
We will not disclose individual user information outside of Google unless one of the following circumstances applies:
- With consent
- We may share individual user information with companies, organisations or individuals outside of Google when we have parental consent.
- For legal reasons
- We will share individual user information with companies, organisations or individuals outside of Google if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to:
- meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request.
- enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations.
- detect, prevent or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues.
- protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, our users or the public as required or permitted by law.
- For external processing
- We may provide individual user information to our affiliates or other trusted businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures.
We may share aggregate information about the use of the app with third parties to, for example, show trends about the use of the app or meet our reporting obligations with partners.
Parental Access and Controls
You can access the videos your child has recently watched in the Watch it again section of the app. You can pause the collection of watch and search history or clear the watch and search history in the parental settings section of the app. When you create a profile for your child, you can pause and clear watch and search history for each child profile. While history is paused, the app will not use new video views or search terms to recommend content. When watch and search history are cleared, the app resets Recommended and Watch it again videos. Finally, you can always uninstall and reinstall the app on a device to reset the app-specific identifiers used to collect watch and search history, but if you have enabled profiles, watch and search history will remain linked to each profile until you specifically delete the history.
You can unlink your Google Account from a specific installation of the YouTube Kids app by following the prompts in the parental settings section of the app. You can also change or delete the parental controls and customisation preferences that are associated with your Google Account at any time by using the in-product tools we provide.
Interpretation of conflicting terms.
This Privacy Notice is generally consistent with the Google Privacy Policy. Where there are terms that differ, this Privacy Notice overrules the Google Privacy Policy.
Service Provider
The YouTube Kids service is provided by:
Google LLC
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 USA
Phone: 1 650-253-0000
In the EEA and Switzerland:
Google Ireland Limited
Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4
Republic of Ireland
Contact Us
Parents may contact us directly with any questions or concerns at:
Signing in to YouTube Kids with your child’s Google Account
In some countries, we offer Google Accounts for children under the age of 13 and allow these children to sign in to YouTube Kids with their Google Account. The Privacy Notice for Google Accounts Created with Family Link describes our privacy practices when your child uses YouTube Kids with their Google Account. When your child uses YouTube Kids without signing in to their Google Account, the YouTube Kids Privacy Notice applies. Remember that when your child is signed in to YouTube Kids with their Google Account, the information we collect, including your child’s search and watch history and recordings of their voice searches, may be stored with their Google Account and used to improve your child’s Google experience. To learn more about our privacy practices for your child’s Google Account, please see the Privacy Notice for Google Accounts Created with Family Link and the Google Privacy Policy.
Dated: 7 August 2019