Privacy

Browsing and technical data

You do not need an account to search the catalog, open drawing ideas or visit YouTube links. Hosting and service providers may process technical information needed to deliver and protect the site, such as the request time, URL, browser or device details and IP address in operational logs. We do not use this information to build child profiles.

Favorites on your device

Saved ideas are stored in this browser’s local storage. We only store the saved drawing identifiers there; the list is not sent to DoodleScout. Clearing browser data removes your saved ideas. The site does not use advertising cookies.

Analytics and cookies

We use Vercel Web Analytics to understand which pages are useful and to keep the site healthy. We also use Vercel Speed Insights to measure anonymous, real-world performance such as loading times and Core Web Vitals. These services can receive the time, page or route, referrer where available, approximate location, device type, operating system, browser, network speed and script version.

We also count a few simple actions as custom events in Vercel Web Analytics. This helps us see whether search finds what people look for and whether the AI studio works well. The events are:

• A search with no results, and a search with results. Both include the age group if one was chosen. A search with results also includes a size range: 1–5, 6–20 or 21 or more.
• Pressing Play on a lesson video. This includes one age group the lesson suits and the difficulty estimate, when we know them.
• A Draw now pick. This includes the age group when there is one.
• The weekly challenge. We count when a challenge is viewed, and when a challenge opens the AI studio or search. The details we add to these events record only where on the site the challenge was shown (the home page, the AI studio page or the challenge page itself). They never include the challenge theme, anything you type, or who you are. As with page views, the address of a challenge page includes its page path.
• In the AI studio we count when a drawing starts, finishes, is blocked by the safety checks (moderation or child-suitability), fails, or reaches a drawing limit. Each includes the drawing type, the difficulty level and the colour mode, when known.

The details we add to these events never contain your search words, AI keywords or anything you type in a form. They do not include favorites, names, accounts or any ID for a person, device, network or visit. Like page views, an event sent from your browser also carries the address of the page it happened on, but we remove anything after the page path (such as search words) before it is sent. For a lesson page that address includes the lesson’s page path, as with page views. Drawing events in the AI studio are sent from our server and carry only the address of our drawing service, not of a page you visited. We count events, not people, and we do not use them to follow anyone from one visit to the next. Vercel Web Analytics still receives the technical information described above.

Vercel says its Web Analytics does not use third-party cookies, does not associate analytics with an individual IP address, and discards its visitor session after 24 hours. Vercel says Speed Insights data points are anonymous and are not tied to an individual visitor or IP address. See Vercel’s Web Analytics privacy information ↗ (opens in a new tab) for its current details.

Suggestions and removal requests

If you send a source suggestion, drawing suggestion or source-removal request, we receive the fields in that form: for example a name or subject, URL, source type and your explanation. Website-owner applications additionally ask for a contact email, a public ownership or control link and a permission confirmation. Please do not put personal details or information about children in the free-text fields.

We store these submissions in Turso so they can be reviewed, and send them to the site operator through Resend email. Website-owner contact details and permission evidence stay in the suggestion database until the request has been handled; there is currently no automatic deletion period for these records. Resend may retain email content and delivery logs under its own policies.

To limit abuse, we count how many forms a connection sends. For that we store a keyed hash of the connection’s IP address or IPv6 network, not the raw address, with a counter that expires within 15 minutes. Expired counters are removed when a later form is accepted.

AI drawings and the gallery

DoodleScout AI Studio accepts short text keywords, a difficulty level and a colour mode, plus an optional JPG, PNG or WebP reference image from your device or a secure image link. We send those choices and the optional reference image to OpenAI to moderate the subject, generate the image and check the source and finished image for unsuitable content. A reference image is used only for that generation and is not saved in the public gallery. Do not upload personal photos or enter names, personal details or details about a child.

Every approved result is saved in the public AI gallery. The image, generated title, keywords, activity, difficulty, colour mode and whether a reference image was used (never the image itself) can be viewed by anyone. No name or account is attached. Gallery records are kept indefinitely unless the site operator hides them; hiding a drawing deletes its stored image, but copies made by others cannot be recalled. The public gallery does not grant unrestricted permission to download or broadly reuse an AI drawing. The Terms allow limited non-commercial downloading and printing; see the Terms of Use for the applicable use restrictions.

The OpenAI API is also subject to OpenAI’s data controls. OpenAI says API data is not used to train its models unless a customer explicitly opts in, while abuse monitoring logs may be retained for up to 30 days by default. The suitability request uses store: false, but OpenAI’s current policies and our project settings still apply. Read OpenAI’s API data controls ↗ (opens in a new tab).

Reports and moderation

A report on a public AI drawing is deduplicated per drawing and connection. To do that, we store a keyed hash of the connection’s IP address or IPv6 network, not the raw address. A daily cleanup job is configured to remove report and alert records once they are older than 30 days; deletion can be delayed if scheduled jobs are unavailable. A report does not remove a drawing automatically; it queues the drawing for operator review. Report alerts are sent to the operator by email.

Content checks and human review reduce risk but cannot guarantee that every result is suitable for every child. Please use the Report button when a public drawing needs attention.

External services

Catalog results use a privacy-enhanced YouTube player. When the player loads or plays, YouTube may process information according to Google’s policies. Source links take you to YouTube videos or channels with their own terms and privacy policies.

Read the Google Privacy Policy ↗ (opens in a new tab) for more information about YouTube’s data processing.

Retention and your rights

We keep data only for the purpose described above: local favorites stay until you clear them, AI gallery records stay until they are removed, the configured cleanup job removes reports after 30 days, and suggestions remain until they have been handled. Hosting and provider logs can have separate retention periods.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete or limit the use of your personal data, and to object or complain to a data-protection authority. DoodleScout has no account portal. To make a request, use the source removal form on the Sources page and begin the reason with “Privacy request”. Include only what we need to find the relevant submission or public drawing.