Privacy Policy
This Notice was last updated 10/10/2022.
We may update this Notice from time to time and will post any changes on this page.
Welcome to Unforged! Our legal name is 'Kidz About Network Ltd'. We are called "we", "us", "our", or "Unforged" in this Privacy Policy.
We talk about our website (https://unforged.net) (the "Site") and our mobile application (the "App") (and anything we might provide in the future) together as Unforged or as our "Platform".
We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it through our compliance with this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and protect certain information that we receive from you, including the information that would be considered “personal data” within the meaning of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and similar laws worldwide (collectively, the “Data Protection Laws”). As used in this Privacy Policy, “personal data” means information that (either in isolation or in combination with other information held by us) enables you to be identified or recognized.
Unforged provides digital life and mental wellness coaching support in the form of automated evidence-based support, advice and tools, and other curated content to assist people (“Customers” or “you”) with developing life-coping and stress-management skills, build positive mental habits, i.e. resilience, self-confidence and self-esteem, provide support in the moment of concern or worry, relieve symptoms of stress, and improve mental health.
This Policy describes the types of information we may collect from you, or you may provide when you access or use our Platform and our practices for collecting, using, maintaining, protecting and/or disclosing that information.
Please read this Policy carefully to understand our practices regarding your information and how we will treat it. If you do not agree with our practices, your only choice is not to use the Platform. By accessing or using the Platform, you agree with this Privacy Policy. This Policy may change from time to time, so please check it periodically for updates.
Please Note:
If in a crisis or emergency, please call the relevant emergency number in your country.
The App is not to be used by individuals under 13 years of.
Limit sharing your personal and sensitive data when using the Platform. It is against our Terms of Use to share personally identifying information (e.g., phone number, external social media accounts, physical location) on the Platform. We only require the minimal data required to provide our services. Read this Privacy Policy to understand how we process your data.
Your interaction with the Unforged Journal is with an Artificial Intelligence system and not a human. Hence, Unforged Journal is restricted in the means of response.
Unforged Journal is a text-based or audio based (not yet available) support service. It leverages motivational support and life coaching principles to provide in-the moment coaching and assist with stress management. The service focuses on building mental wellness, via developing self-confidence, self-esteem and emotional resilience. The underlying principle of the service is that you have the inner capacity to make desired changes in your life. The service will support your personal development, promote a positive mindset, help you identify and use your own personal strengths, manage your thoughts, and build emotional resilience. The Platform relies on self-empowerment and uses various evidence-based psychological and lifestyle coaching techniques to provide empathetic and non-judgmental support to help users strengthen their self-esteem and ace through emotional hurdles and concerns to reach their goals in a self-help format.
The Platform does not replace clinical psychotherapy or other licensed medical services. The Platform is not intended to provide a diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, or cure for any health condition. It is, however, meant to empower and support you. Platform and its services are primarily in the English language and are designed for English-speaking individuals. We cannot guarantee the efficacy of the Platform or its services if presented through any third-party translation.
How the Artificial Intelligence coaching works and whether it is safe to use:
The Platform uses proprietary Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing/Understanding algorithms (“AI”) to understand your messages. Our values require that our AI used within the App is transparent, trusted, fair, safe, and privacy protecting. All the AI used in our Apps are “FIXED” or “CLOSED”. There are no generative (those that 'create' the response to the user on the fly) or adaptive models (those that continually adapt or learn every time on their own) in use.
The primary purpose of the AI-based processing is:
- to provide an interactive safe-by-design approach to journal via text-based support
- to detect and retain limited context from your messages to personalize and provide self-empowering holistic support.
- to detect at-risk situations, such as any SOS, self-harm and abuse triggers, so as to signpost users to clinically validated supportive resources and helplines.
Our policies concerning children:
We are committed to complying with GDPR and the United States' Children Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
Unforged is built for people under 25. We ask everyone to provide their age when signing up for the Platform. This is done to protect our user’s privacy and limit unwanted contact from those outside the designated age range. We are currently using Yoti facial age estimation to verify age. Yoti’s technology has been trained to estimate age by looking at facial features in an image. It was built to give everyone a secure and private way of providing how old they are. It doesn’t link a name or an identity to an image.
Yoti’s facial scan is built in accordance with the “privacy by design” principle in the UK GDPR. No individual can be identified by the model and it encourages data minimisation because it only needs a facial image. The image is only used for the purpose of estimating age. Once the result is given, the image is instantly deleted.
We are using the same technology to obtain parental consent for children under 16 years of age in line with the ICO regulations.
Please read more information about Yoti facial age estimation here.
The Platform is not intended for individuals under 13 years of age. No one under age 13 may provide any information on or through the Platform. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 13. If you are under 13, do not use or provide any information on or through the Platform, or any of its features or register on the Platform, or provide any information about yourself to us, including your name, telephone number, e-mail address or any screen name, username you may use or any pictures of you. If we learn we have collected or received personal data from a child under 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe that we might have any information from or about a child under 13, please contact us at yourfriends@unforged.net.
Young people under 16 years of age may require parental consent to use the Platform. If you are between 16 and 18 years, read the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service with your parents or legal guardian and ask them to provide their consent to use the app at yourfriends@unforged.net
What information we collect & how we use it:
When you visit or use the Platform, we may collect and process information that you enter on our Site, and our mobile app Unforged.
This Privacy Policy will apply to the information we collect or may collect:
- When you register, open an account, access and use the Platform;
- When you send or receive e-mails, texts and other electronic messages or engage with us through the use of the Platform;
- When you download and share data via the Platform;
- When you post any type of content on or through the Platform;
- When you make in-app purchases (in the future);
- When you sign up for marketing from us;
- When you respond to a survey or marketing communication;
- Through services provided to us or to you by any third-party companies, agents or contractors;
- When you report a problem with one of our services.
It does not apply to the information collected by:
- Us offline or through any other means, including on any other website operated by us or any third party; or
- Any third party, including through any link that may be accessible from or on the Platform.
We must have a relevant legal reason, called a 'lawful basis' for each way that we use your personal information. We say what our legal reasons are below.
We collect:
Whether you're just browsing or have an account with us, you may provide us and we will collect information each time you use our Platform. This includes:
- Information by which you might be personally identified, including name, year and month of birth, e-mail address, phone number and username;
- Usage details and information, including how you communicate with other users of the Platform, such as the time, date, sender and your interactions with messages (such as when you open a message);
- Content you provide by creating an account on or through the Platform;
- Information that you provide in maintaining a journal, which may include personal health information;
- General, aggregated, demographic, and non-personal data (such as aggregated anonymous information about website usage and other forms of analytical data). It will not be linked to any of your personal data, through cookies or other means, without your consent;
- When you report a problem with the Platform and/ or If you contact us, we may keep a record of that communication;
- Information which you provide to us by completing surveys or polls, which we use for research purposes. These surveys are not compulsory;
- Details of downloads, orders or purchases you carry out through our site and any in-app purchases; and
- Details of your visits to our site including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data, and the resources that you access.
Unforged Journal:
We will record your entries into the Unforged Journal. This can include information about your emotional concerns, and mental health, for example, if you feel stressed or worried, or other information about your thoughts, feelings, habits and goals. This can also include metadata associated with your interaction with the journal; for example, the time of your interaction, the sequence of in-App actions used when creating a journal entry, or the personalized recommendations made by Unforged’s AI based on the journal entry.
Your entries are stored on a secure, private network using a symmetric encryption protocol. Other users of the Platform will not be able to access entries of your journal. Your entries in the journal are available to you at any time.
Platform content:
You may now or in the future provide photos, videos and other content to be posted, and/or submitted to be published or displayed (hereinafter, “posted”) on or through the Platform, (collectively, “User Content”). Your User Content is posted on and transmitted to others at your own risk. We cannot control the actions of other users with whom your User Content is shared. Therefore, we cannot and do not guarantee that your User Content will not be viewed, downloaded or shared by unauthorized persons.
Consequences of not providing personal data:
You are not required to provide all personal data identified in this Policy to use our Site or to interact with us, but certain functionality will not be available if you do not provide personal data. In addition, if you do not provide the personal data, we may not be able to respond to your requests, provide the services or access to the Platform, or provide you with marketing that we believe you would find valuable.
Data Minimisation:
We collect only the minimum information needed to provide a useful and personalised service. We take every reasonable step to limit the volume of your personal data that we process to what is reasonably necessary.
Automated decision-making, including profiling:
We do not use any automated decision-making without human intervention, including profiling, in a manner that produces legal effects concerning you or may otherwise significantly affect you. We do use automated decision-making to personalize your experience within the Platform, for example, to provide in-App activity recommendations or display tailored, support-oriented content. Automated decisions and their outcomes are periodically reviewed by Unforged’s technical team to ensure any systemic or algorithmic biases are mitigated.
User profiling does not apply to the Platform service in its current service design.
How we use the information we collect:
The information we collect from you may be used to provide our Services to you, including:
- Platform functionality;
- Providing personalised information and recommendations (e.g. articles, videos, activity challenges) for you across sleep, nutrition, exercise and mental health;
- Understanding user experience, so that we can improve future design;
- Understand how you use our Platform, and how we can improve it;
- To personalise your experience and allow us to deliver the type of content and advice in which you are most interested;
- Ensure content is presented in the most effective manner;
- Provide you with the information and services that you request from us or we think you may be interested in;
- To improve our services to make it better for you;
- To follow up with you when necessary (live chat, email or phone inquiries);
- For the purpose of conducting fully anonymised academic research;
What is the legal basis for processing the data:
We are only allowed to use your personal information when certain conditions apply. We typically rely on the following conditions:
- You have entered into a contract with us. We use your personal information if it is necessary to perform a contract you have with us and we need your data to comply with our contract with you (e.g. our Terms of Service) or if you have asked us to take specific steps before entering that contract.
- We have a Legitimate Interest. We might use your information because we (or a company that we work with) have a legitimate interest in doing so. For example, we need to get your feedback and reviews about the Platform, ensuring technical bugs are identified and resolved, gathering information and developing insights about how you use the Platform, improving and customising the Platform, improving security measures, growing our business, etc. We need to use information about how you use the app to improve it. We also use some information about you to understand how effective Unforged is, for example, at helping young people cope with anxiety. We take your right to privacy very seriously, so we only rely on legitimate interest when we think the way we are using your data. doesn’t significantly impact your privacy or would be expected by you, or there is a compelling reason to do so.
- You have given your Consent. When registering for the app you will be asked for your consent to use the posts that you create as part of our terms of use. Occasionally, we will ask for consent to use your information for specific purposes, for example to complete a user survey If we do, we’ll make sure you can revoke your consent in our services or through your device permissions.
- Fulfilling agreements with other organisation, i.e. Complying with any agreement we may have with an organisation you work for or provide services to; applying our terms or other agreements with you or with an organisation you work for or provide services to.
- Legal obligation. We may be required to use your personal information to comply with the law. We may need to process your personal information to comply with our legal obligations, including under applicable UK law, and/or any court orders. This may include compliance with know-your-client and anti-money laundering rules.
In each case, these legitimate interests are only valid if they are not outweighed by your rights and interests. If you would like further information about how we assess our legitimate interests, please contact us at yourfriends@unforged.net, if there are material changes to how we collect user data, user consent will be re-obtained.
Anonymised data:
We may anonymise your personal data to create anonymised data (like aggregated statistics). Anonymisation is a technique which prevents individuals from being identified from a data set whilst still being useful for research and analysis. Since the data is no longer personal data it is not governed by data protection law nor held in confidence so it can be used without legal restrictions though we ensure that all use of such data is for important and ethically acceptable purposes.
You cannot be identified from anonymised data, and it cannot be reverse engineered to re-identify individuals. This kind of data is no longer personal data.
We may keep and use this anonymised data to help us provide, develop and improve our Platform and services, including to:
- better understand how you use Unforged;
- develop useful insights and improvements to Unforged
- to provide partners or academic organisation with insight into service usage and aggregated outcomes information.
How we handle Do Not Track Signals:
Your web browser may offer you a “Do Not Track” option, which allows you to signal to operators of websites and web applications and services (including behavioural advertising services) that you do not wish such operators to track certain of your online activities over time and across different websites. We currently do not respond to browser “Do Not Track” signals or other mechanisms that provide you with the ability to exercise choice regarding the collection of personally identifiable information about your online activities, sent from web browsers on our app or our site. At present, no universally accepted standards exist on how companies should respond to do-not-track signals. In the event a final universally accepted standard is established, we will assess and provide an appropriate response to these signals
How long we will hold your data:
If you freeze your account, we will retain your personal information while it is frozen.
We will usually keep personal information:
- for as long as necessary for the original reasons we collected it (for example, for as long as you have an account with us), and
- for up to six years after that to identify any issues and resolve any legal proceedings.
We may keep your personal information for a longer period:
- in the event of a complaint,
- if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of legal proceedings,
- if we are aware of pending or ongoing legal proceedings, or
- in some circumstances, if applicable law says we must.
If you have opted into receiving marketing from us but later decide to opt out (or object to any other use of your personal information), we may keep a record of your opt-out or objection so we can respect your preferences.
Data collected via the App is stored until you ask us to delete it or it becomes clear that you will not be accessing the App again. Personal data collected via other means such as the website or social media will be stored only for as long it is still needed. We do create anonymised data sets and will keep these indefinitely for research and service evaluation purposes.
Your right to object:
You have the right to object to our use of your identifiable information. With many types of data, we’ve provided you with the ability to remove it from public view or simply delete it if you don’t want us processing it anymore. If there are other types of information you don’t agree with us processing, please contact us on yourfriends@unforged.net
How we store your information:
Unforged is based in the United Kingdom. We may transfer your personal information outside the UK (or, if you are in the EEA, outside of the EEA):
- to store it.
- so we can provide our Platform and Services to you.
- to support the operation of our business, where this is in our legitimate interests, and we have concluded these are not overridden by your rights.
- where we are legally required to do so.
We will put legal protections in place to safeguard personal data transfers in compliance with data protection laws.
How we protect your information:
All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers. Data that can be used to identify you such as your email address or phone number, including journal entries, is encrypted both in storage and in transit. Personal data is never shared with other users or 3rd parties without your consent. Only members of our safeguarding team can access your personal data. Any request to access this data is logged by the system. Our website uses secure end-to-end encryption to protect your information. All connections into our Platform are secured using industry standard security and encryption.
All data we capture is stored in secured databases and data storage systems with strict access limitations. All data access requests are logged and monitored in accordance with any threat detection policies.
We may use other companies, such as Amazon, to store your data. Your data will be stored in locations within the European Economic Area (“EEA”).
Any payment transactions will be encrypted using SSL (secure socket layers) or other appropriate technology. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password/ pin code which enables you to access certain parts of our Platform, you are responsible for keeping this password/ pin code confidential. We advise you not to share it with anyone.
Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure although it is very rare for transmissions to be compromised. We will do our best to protect your personal data but we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access.
Use of cookies and other tracking technologies:
The technologies we use for automatic data collection may include:
- Cookies (including browser cookies and other technologies like pixels). A cookie is a small file placed on the hard drive of your computer. You may refuse to accept browser cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of the Site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you direct your browser to the Site.
- Tracking APIs.
The Unforged app does not use cookies, however we may use cookies on the Unforged website.
Third-party responsibilities and services:
We may use or partner with other third-party companies, agents or contractors for various purposes in connection with our business and operations (“Service Providers”), including payment processing, support, cloud computing and data storage, the marketing and growth of our business and the performance of services on our behalf, such as gathering and analysing information and the provision of services to you. In the course of performing these responsibilities and providing such services, these other companies may have access to your information. We may also share information, including your information, with these Services Providers in order to enable them to perform these responsibilities and to provide these services. These Services Providers may have adopted their own privacy policies, which are not subject to control by us. You should always review the policies of these Service Providers to make sure that you are comfortable with the ways in which they collect, use, maintain, protect and disclose your information. We do not list our current Service Providers because they change from time to time. If you would like the names of any of our Service Providers, please email us at yourfriends@unforged.net
The Service Providers we use may transmit cookies to your computer or device when you click on ads that appear on or through the Service.
As a convenience to you, we may also provide links to other third-parties from within the Platform. If you click on one of these links, you will be redirected to that third-party’s site (via affiliate cookies) and such third party may also transmit cookies to you. We do not have any control over that or how they collect, use, maintain, protect and disclose your information.
We rely on consent for some of the cookies we use (see our Cookie Notice for more detail).
You can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies. You do this through your browser settings. Since each browser is a little different, look at your browser's Help Menu to learn the correct way to modify your cookies. If you turn cookies off some features that make your site experience more efficient will be disabled and may not function properly. However, you will still be able to place orders.
We, along with other companies such as Google, use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookies) and third-party cookies (such as the DoubleClick cookie) or other third-party identifiers together to improve the user experience.
Google Ads:
The Site uses Google AdWords to advertise on third party websites to previous visitors to our site. It could mean that we advertise to previous visitors who haven’t completed a task on our site, for example using the contact form to make an inquiry. This could be in the form of an advertisement on the Google search results page or a site in the Google Display Network Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on someone’s past visits to the Site. Of course, any data collected will be used in accordance with this privacy policy, as well as Google’s privacy policy.
Google Analytics:
We use a tool called “Google Analytics” to collect information about use of the Site. Google Analytics collects information such as how often users visit the Site, what pages they visit when they do so, and what other sites they used prior to coming to the Site. We use the information we get from Google Analytics to improve the Platform and its related features, functionality and performance. Google Analytics collects only the IP address assigned to you on the date you visit this Site, rather than your name or other identifying information. We do not combine the information collected through the use of Google Analytics with personally identifiable information that has not been anonymized and/or aggregated. Although Google Analytics plants a permanent cookie on your web browser to identify you as a unique user the next time you visit the Site, the cookie cannot be used by anyone but Google. Google’s ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visits to this Site is restricted by the Google Analytics Terms of Use and the Google Privacy Policy. You can prevent Google Analytics from recognizing you on return visits to the Site by disabling cookies on your browser.
You can set preferences for how Google advertises to you using the Google Ad Preferences page, and if you want to, you can opt out of interest-based advertising entirely by cookie settings or permanently using a browser plugin.
DoubleClick: We may use Google Analytics and Google Adwords remarketing codes to log when users view specific pages or take specific actions on a website. This allows us to provide targeted advertising in the future. If you do not wish to receive this type of advertising from us in the future you can opt out using the DoubleClick opt-out page or the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page.
Google has additional information available about its Remarketing Privacy Guidelines, Policies, and Restrictions on its website.
Google Tag Manager:
The Site uses Google Tag Manager. Google Tag Manager is a solution that allows marketed website tags to be managed using an interface. The Tag Manager tool itself (which implements the tags) is a cookie-less domain and does not register personal data. The tool causes other tags to be activated which may, for their part, register data under certain circumstances. Google Tag Manager does not access this information. If recording has been deactivated on domain or cookie level, this setting will remain in place for all tracking tags implemented with Google Tag Manager.
We may share your personal information with:
- our service providers, organisations who support the services we offer through the Platform and only process your personal information on our behalf, following our instructions and data protection law;
- Service providers help us with things like website and data hosting, distributing communications, supporting or updating marketing lists, customer service, facilitating feedback on our services, digital invoicing and payment processing providers, and IT support services;
- these organisations (which may be third party suppliers, agents, sub-contractors and/or other companies in our group) will only use your information to the extent necessary to perform their support functions.
We may provide aggregated and anonymised data to:
- academic institutions, service delivery partners, or research bodies. If we wish to provide any personal information which is not anonymised, we will provide detailed privacy information at the time (including individual opt-ins where applicable). Personally identifiable user data will not be shared outside of Unforged without explicit user permission.
- if we run surveys, competitions, promotional campaigns, offers or other occasional activities and you opt-in with a partner (for example, if you chose to enter a prize draw we manage with a partner organisation). We will provide more detailed privacy information at the time.
- our auditors, legal advisers and other professional advisers.
- potential investors, or if we sell or buy any business or assets then a potential seller or buyer.
- any person to whom disclosure is necessary for us to protect our rights, property, or safety, our clients, or other third parties, and to enforce our rights under this Notice or under any agreement (for example, our Terms of Service) with you. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of detecting and preventing fraud and cyber-crime.
- if required to do so by court order or if we are under a duty to disclose your information in order to comply with (and/or where we believe we are under a duty to comply with) any legal obligation. This includes exchanging information with law enforcement agencies, regulators, or other similar government bodies.
Third-party disclosure:
We do not sell, trade, or transfer information that can be used to identify anyone other than our website and app hosting partners and other parties who assist us in operating our website and app, conducting our business or serving our users. We ensure that our partners keep this information confidential and secure. If at some point we deviate from this commitment we will contact you and ask for your consent before proceeding.
We may also release information when required by law or when it is necessary to enforce our site policies or protect ours, yours or others’ rights, property or safety.
We do disclose data obtained from our sites and our app to academic institutions and research bodies for research purposes. However, we ensure that any such data is anonymised before it is transferred and that any recipients of this data adhere to adequate standards of ethics, data security and privacy. Anonymised visitor information may also be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.
Links to other companies:
Occasionally, at our discretion, we may include or offer third-party products or services from other companies on our website. These third-party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. We, therefore, have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites. Nonetheless, we seek to protect the integrity of our site and welcome any feedback about these sites.
Access to information:
Data Protection law gives you the right to access information held about you. Please contact yourfriends@unforged.net for more information.
In certain circumstances, you have the following rights over your personal information:
- to be provided with a copy of your personal information,
- to ask us to correct or delete your personal information,
- to request us to restrict how we use your personal information (for example, while we investigate your concerns about the accuracy of data, or lawfulness of a certain use),
- to object to the further use of your personal information, including the right to object to marketing from us,
- to request that your provided personal data be moved to a third party, an
- where you have consented, to withdraw consent.
If you would like to exercise any of these rights in relation to the personal information we hold about you, you can contact us at yourfriends@unforged.net. We will respond to user data requests as quickly as possible, with a maximum turn around time of 2 months.
Changes to this Privacy Policy:
We will occasionally update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in our practices and services. When we post changes to this Privacy Policy, we will revise the "Last Updated" date at the top of this Privacy Policy and the revised Privacy Policy will come into effect on the date it was posted to our site or our app or as otherwise notified by us. If we make any material changes in the way we collect, use, and/or share your personal information, we will notify you by prominently posting notice of the changes on our sites and/or our app and, where appropriate, notifying you by email. We recommend that you check this page from time to time to inform yourself of any changes in this Privacy Policy. By continuing to use our site or our app after we have posted a revised Privacy Policy you acknowledge that you have consented to the revised Privacy Policy.
How you can contact us:
We would love to hear from you. If you have any questions, comments or feedback please get in touch atyourfriends@unforged.net