Child safety first

Safety & Privacy

RoboCode.Africa was built from day one for young learners. Every architectural decision — accounts, communication, data storage — was designed to protect children, not as an afterthought.

COPPA aligned GDPR-K aligned POPIA aligned Zim DPA aligned

Our commitments to you

Six pillars of child safety — each backed by technical controls, not just policy.

Accounts managed by ZivoCloud

Access control

Learners sign in with the ZivoCloud account they already use across the platform. RoboCode never creates or stores a second password.
School administrators see every member of their school — role, level, activity and last sign-in — and the reports that go with them.
A school administrator can suspend any member of their school immediately, and reinstate them later; platform staff can do the same across every school.
Teachers run their own classes and assignments inside the school, so a student's work always sits with a named teacher.

Student code runs in a sealed sandbox

Isolation

Code a student writes runs inside a short-lived container with networking switched off entirely — it cannot call out to the internet.
The container drops every operating-system capability, runs as a non-root user, cannot gain new privileges, and is capped on memory, processes and wall-clock time.
Nothing a student runs can reach another student's work or the platform's own data.
Runs are rate-limited per account, so the sandbox cannot be used to hammer anything.

Moderated communication

Chat safety

Team chat is the only in-platform messaging channel. There is no private, one-to-one messaging between students anywhere in RoboCode.
Team chat, posts and comments all pass the same filter before anyone else sees them: it blocks profanity, and it blocks email addresses and phone numbers so contact details cannot be swapped to move a conversation off-platform.
Blocked text is hidden from other users but kept, so staff can review what was sent and open a moderation case on it.
An account that keeps sending it can be suspended by a school or platform administrator.

Data minimisation

Privacy by design

We collect only the fields required for learning: name, email, school, and learning progress.
No advertising, no interest profiling, no third-party tracking pixels on any page used by students.
Avatars are generated from a short seed the learner picks — students upload no files, so there is nothing to scan or host.
Accounts, credentials and data storage are managed by ZivoCloud, which the whole platform shares.

Transparent audit trail

Accountability

Sensitive actions write an immutable audit-log entry — account suspensions and reinstatements, moderation decisions, and archived posts or comments.
Each entry records who acted, on what, and when; entries are scoped to a school when the action belongs to one.
Platform staff review the log from the admin console. Retention and storage are managed by ZivoCloud.

Incident reporting & escalation

Rapid response

Any user can report a concern via the in-app flag button. Reports go directly to our moderation queue.
Serious incidents (suspected abuse, harm to minors) are escalated to a dedicated safeguarding officer within 2 hours.
We cooperate fully with lawful requests from law enforcement and child protection agencies.
We publish a transparency report annually detailing moderation actions taken.

Regulatory compliance

We operate across multiple jurisdictions and meet the child-protection provisions of each.

COPPA

Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (USA)

Accounts, sign-in and age details are held by the ZivoCloud account, not by RoboCode
No behavioural advertising to minors — RoboCode carries no advertising at all
Access to, correction of, and deletion of a child's data on request

GDPR-K

General Data Protection Regulation — child provisions (EU / UK)

Age-appropriate design enforced at platform level
Data minimisation and purpose limitation
Right to erasure ('right to be forgotten') supported

POPIA

Protection of Personal Information Act (South Africa)

Lawful processing with explicit consent
Information Officer appointed
Breach notification within 72 hours of discovery

Zim DPA

Data Protection Act 2021 (Zimbabwe)

Registration of processing activities with the Cyber & Data Protection Authority
Cross-border transfer restrictions respected
User rights to access, correction and deletion honoured

We regularly review our practices against evolving regulations and engage external legal counsel in each jurisdiction. Our full privacy policy is available at /privacy.

Report a concern

If you have witnessed or suspect any harm to a child on our platform, please contact us immediately.

In-app report

Use the flag button on any content or profile to file an instant report to our moderation queue.

Safeguarding officer

Email safety@robocode.africa — serious incidents are escalated within 2 hours, 24/7.

Data requests

Parents and carers: email privacy@robocode.africa for access, correction or deletion of a child's data.

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