Knowunity

Is Knowunity safe?

Mostly, as long as parents know it is part study tool, part social network. Knowunity, run by a Berlin company, lets students share their notes and adds an AI tutor called Knowie. The study side is well run: data is hosted mainly in the EU, the AI providers are barred from training on students' questions, and no regulator has fined it. The social side brings the usual risks. Children from age 7 can comment on other users' notes and join group chats, and the free version carries ads targeted by school year and weak subjects. We score it 60/100, between ByteDance's Gauth (57) and Quizlet (62).

Group chats, comments and moderation

Knowunity lets students publish notes, study sets and quizzes that other users can see, comment on, like and save. It also has group chats that users can create or join, where they can send text, photos and files that every member sees, and the terms also refer to private chats. The German terms say public chats have community moderators, and the EU privacy policy says Knowunity uses AI to find illegal content in posts, comments and chats. A points system suspends accounts that break the rules, ending in a permanent ban.

What matters for parents is the age range. The German terms let children register from age 7, with a parent's explicit agreement for anyone under 18. The terms do not say how that agreement is checked. The App Store rates the app 4+ and Google Play gives it USK 6+. The terms name moderators only for public chats, and both kinds of chat put young children in contact with teenagers and adults they do not know. For younger children, Lingokids has no chat or user content on the child side.

What Knowunity collects and who sees it

Apple's privacy label for Knowunity lists usage data as used to track you across other companies' apps. It links purchases, contact details, identifiers and usage data to you, and lists search history and usage data as used for third-party advertising but not linked to your identity. Google Play says device IDs and crash logs are shared with other companies for analytics.

The EU privacy policy is long and specific. With the user's consent, Knowunity may use the country, region, school year, school type and "problem subjects" from a profile to steer advertising. It also uses Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, Google and LinkedIn ad tools to measure its own campaigns and build audiences, again with consent, collected through a consent tool when the app first opens. Hosting runs on Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, mainly in the EU (Frankfurt and Ireland), though the policy does not rule out transfers to the US.

The US privacy policy reads very differently. It says Knowunity shows no third-party ads, collects only one identifier from children under 13 and never uses their data for ads or AI training. But it also says, "we do not collect any personal data from you. We do not place cookies on your computer or device", which its own App Store label contradicts, and its children's section refers to itself by the wrong section number. A policy that does not match the product is a weakness in its own right.

The AI tutor and your data

Questions typed into the AI tutor, along with uploaded documents and photos, go to outside AI providers. The EU policy names OpenAI, Anthropic, Google's Gemini and Mistral, and says each is contractually barred from training on that data. It asks students not to enter addresses, phone numbers or other personal details. The US terms add that Knowunity may use anonymised and aggregated interaction data to improve its own features, and that students who object should not use the AI features.

How to set up Knowunity for a child

1. Register the child yourself, so you know which parts of the app they use and which email address is on the account.
2. Talk about group chats: never share a phone number, school name or photos of themselves there, and leave any chat that moves to another app.
3. Refuse non-essential tracking and ad personalisation in the consent screen at first launch.
4. Leave "problem subjects" and other optional profile fields blank if you do not want them used for ads.
5. Delete the account in the app when it is no longer used.

How we scored it

Regulatory record (86) is Knowunity's strongest factor: no fines and no published investigations. Privacy (52) and transparency and control (58) are held back by ads steered by school data and a US policy that contradicts the app. Scams and harmful content (58) reflects chats and public comments open to children from 7, only partly offset by moderators and AI checks.