Parent permission is an integral part of using ClassDojo. When you visit ClassDojo and give parental consent, you are granting permission for the following:
Consent to use ClassDojo if your child is under 13:
ClassDojo follows the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and its implementing regulations under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (collectively “COPPA”) rules for parental consent. COPPA protects the online privacy of children under the age of 13 and requires ClassDojo to obtain parental consent or notice (as appropriate) prior (with limited exceptions) to the collection, use, and disclosure of that child's personal information. ClassDojo extends the U.S -based COPPA consent protections in all jurisdictions, even if not required. If we rely on other legally applicable grounds for processing children’s personal information (e.g. if we rely on legitimate interest in the European Union and the United Kingdom), we will still use the FTC COPPA consent methods described to provide further transparency for parents.
School Use
Your child's teacher may wish for your child to use ClassDojo in connection with their classroom or school, including to use a feature of ClassDojo called Student Stories that allows students to post photos and videos of their classwork directly to ClassDojo, and may set up your child’s Student Account on their behalf in order to allow them to access their Student Account in school* (or may give your child a unique code to set-up their own student account). Additionally, you may set up your child’s Student Account on ClassDojo. Due to the requirements of COPPA, ClassDojo requires parents (if they are setting up their child’s Student Account on ClassDojo) to give consent before the child can then login to their Student Account and further access and use ClassDojo (including to upload any content)*.
If your child sets up their own account in connection with the classroom or school use (after receiving the unique code from their teacher), they will set up their account with a username, password, and the unique code they have been given by their teacher. Consistent with the requirements of COPPA, we also ask for the child’s age, and if they are under 13, we will ask them for a parent or guardian email address so that we can seek parental consent. We will not use parent emails provided this way to market our Service to you, unless you have opted in to email marketing or have separately created an account on our Service. Students will have limited functionality within their Student Account until we receive your consent.
*Note, however, that your child's school or teacher may have elected to act as your agent and consented on your behalf directly, commonly referred to as "school consent." Under this type of consent, your child’s teacher may have created the Student Account on behalf of your child and your child will be able to access their Student Account in school. For more information on "school consent" under COPPA, please see the FTC's FAQ Section N regarding this as well as our FAQ for schools. Please contact your child's teacher if you have any additional questions. Please note that, in addition to the parent providing consent to ClassDojo (or the school utilizing “school consent”), we require your child’s teacher to represent to us that they have reviewed any content uploaded by a student while using their Student Account prior to the content being viewable by you on their portfolio.
Any Student Account (or access to a Student Account) created for the student by the parent, or the student’s teacher in class, or the student directly, are linked together (these are not different accounts).
Outside School Use
If you are setting up your child’s Outside School Child Account, or otherwise allowing your child to use or access ClassDojo outside of school, ClassDojo obtains parental consent directly from the parent. Additionally, we may ask for your consent if “school consent” was previously relied upon and we are now using personal information obtained from your child outside of the school context (e.g. for a non school or educational purpose).
Any Outside School Child Account will also be linked with the Student Account (if both exist), but only certain content will be viewable by the child’s teacher. Please see our FAQ for more details on what is viewable as well as our FAQ on how accounts are linked and the limited information shared between them.
How does a parent consent?
When setting up your child’s account
In order to set up your child’s account, you must first create a parent account on ClassDojo. In order to set up your child’s Student Account, you must also connect to your child’s class. Parents can also set up their parent account without connecting to their child’s class, but will not be connected to their child’s school (or any activity on their child’s account in school). After setting up your parent account, you can also create an Outside School Child Account for your child if you are using ClassDojo at home and not in connection with school use.
We will then ask you for your consent within your parent account in the ClassDojo mobile application or the ClassDojo website at the time you set up either of your child's accounts (e.g. Student Account or Outside School Child Account) - you will not have to leave your account to consent. You can see an example of this below:
What you are consenting to
You are giving your consent for your child or children to use a ClassDojo Student Account and/or for the use of an Outside School Child Account (depending on how your child is using ClassDojo), including for ClassDojo's collection, use, and disclosure of your child's personal information as set forth in the notice either sent to you through email (if your child is setting up their own account) or shown to you within your parent account in the ClassDojo mobile application or on the ClassDojo website at the time you set up either of your child’s accounts (as demonstrated above). Please Note: Parental consent will only be required once, for all connected student accounts.
Once we have obtained parental consent, the child’s account will be set up and accessible by toggling from the parent account or by accessing the child's individual QR code . Once the child is connected to a school, the parent may also access the Student Account through the Student Login Methods. Although not required under COPPA, we may choose to impose parental consent requirements on Student Accounts and Outside School Child Accounts 13 and above at our discretion.
What consent mechanism does ClassDojo use?
Student Account and Outside School Child Account Creation
When you are setting up your child’s Student Account or Outside School Child Account, ClassDojo currently obtains verifiable parental consent through what is commonly referred to under COPPA as “email plus" consent (see FAQ I.4). You will receive a second email from ClassDojo after you have given your consent through the method indicated above. We have obtained approval from iKeepSafe to use this method of obtaining verifiable parental consent under COPPA. If we later seek to use a child’s personal information in a manner beyond those allowed in the “email plus” consent (e.g. for expanded use of Dojo Islands where children are interacting directly with other children and personal information is shared) we will also obtain your parental consent through using a heightened verification method to verify you are the child’s parent and then obtain any additional required consent.
ClassDojo Plus
If you purchased ClassDojo Plus, we will seek to also obtain your parental consent through using a heightened verification method to verify you are the child’s parent. Using your payment method along with your Apple or Google biometrics - such as your fingerprint or FaceID - required by the applicable platform to make the purchase, helps to verify and prove your identity. Note that ClassDojo does not collect or have access to either your credit card information or your biometrics. For a list of what we receive from your payment method please see here. You will also receive a second email from ClassDojo after you have given your consent confirming your consent. We have obtained approval from iKeepSafe to use this method as a heightened method of obtaining verifiable parental consent under COPPA.
This heightened verifiable parental consent is done to ensure that if “school consent” was previously used, that we obtain your consent for the use of your child’s personal information outside of the school context. Additionally, some of the features that your child may use in ClassDojo Plus, may mean that we can’t rely on the lower level of “verification” that you are the child’s parent when we initially obtained your consent through the “email plus” method at the time you created your child’s Student Account or Outside School Child Account.
As example of how we obtain this “heightened” level of verifying you are the parent and your consent is set forth below:
Resources for parents:
- Answers to many top questions about privacy and security appear on the ClassDojo Privacy Center
- This Privacy Policy describes how ClassDojo products and services collect and use information. As stated in this Privacy Policy, ClassDojo does not use any student personal information (or any information associated with a student account) to serve behaviorally-targeted advertising to students and student’s personal information is never sold to anyone, including marketers and advertisers.
- Please see this page where we provide further transparency and an easy way for users to see the personal information we collect from each user type, including the sources from which the information was collected, the business purpose for which the information was collected, and the third parties with whom we disclose personal information for a business purpose.
- We’ve also made a short video for children that highlights the most important details in our Privacy Policy that they should know about.
For more information about COPPA and generally protecting children's online privacy, please visit OnGuard Online.