1. What we hold
- Who you are. If you sign in with Google or Apple we receive your email address, your name and your provider account id. If you use an emailed sign-in link, we hold the email address you gave us. There is no password, so we never hold one.
- Your profile. Username, display name, the avatar you picked from our preset set, your time zone, your daily goal, and your visibility setting.
- What you have learned. Which Track you are on, which Lessons you have finished, every answer you gave, the memory state of each Item, your Streak, your XP, your Gems ledger, your Hearts and Energy, your Quests and your League standing.
- Who you Follow. The social graph is one-directional. Two people who Follow each other are shown as Friends. Nothing is imported from your contacts, ever.
- Speaking attempts. When you use a speak Exercise, the recording is sent to our scoring service, compared against the phrase you were asked to say, and a coarse result is returned. We keep a recording only where you have agreed to it being used to improve the scoring.
- Technical data. Basic device and browser information, error reports, and product analytics about which screens are used. If you turn on reminders, we hold the push subscription your browser issues.
We do not accept uploaded images, audio you author, or video. There is no chat and no direct messaging, so there are no messages to hold.
2. Why we hold it
- To run the app, keep your place in a Track, and show you the right Lesson next.
- To schedule reviews — that is what the per-Item memory state is for.
- To operate the Streak, XP, Gems, Quests and League features you chose to use.
- To send the sign-in link you asked for, and reminders you opted into.
- To find and fix faults, and to see which parts of the app confuse people.
- To improve the curriculum. Near-miss answers are recorded so that genuinely valid Patois we failed to accept can be promoted into the accepted set.
3. Playing as a guest
You can start without an account. A guest gets an anonymous identity stored in a cookie, and everything you do is attached to it. If you later create an account, that progress moves across in full. If you never do, the guest identity and its progress are deleted automatically after a period of inactivity.
4. Who else touches it
We use a small set of service providers. Each one only processes what it needs to do its job, and none of them is permitted to use your data for their own purposes.
- Vercel — hosting and content delivery.
- Neon — the database.
- Resend — sign-in links and, if you opt in, the reminder email.
- Google and Apple — only if you choose to sign in with them.
- PostHog — product analytics and error monitoring. Its data is stored in the United States.
- Google Analytics — audience and acquisition reporting. It receives screen views and interface events, never your answers, and we have turned off every advertising signal it offers.
- Upstash — rate limiting, which is what stops the sign-in endpoint being abused.
- Modal — the pronunciation scoring service, which receives the audio for a speak Exercise and returns a result.
We do not sell your data, we do not share it with advertisers, and we run no advertising.
6. How long we keep it
- Your account and learning history stay until you delete your account.
- Inactive guest identities are cleaned up automatically.
- Error reports and analytics are kept for a limited retention window, then dropped.
- A speaking recording is discarded once it has been scored, unless you have agreed to it being kept for evaluation.
7. What you can do about it
- Change or clear most of your profile from Settings at any time.
- Set your profile to private so other learners cannot see it.
- Turn reminders off, which also removes the push subscription.
- Ask for a copy of your data, or ask us to delete your account and everything on it.
Write to [email protected] and say which one you want. Deletion is permanent — progress cannot be restored afterwards.
8. Children
LearnPatois is not directed at children under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal data, contact us and we will remove it.
9. Changes to this policy
If this policy changes in a way that materially affects you, we will say so in the app before the change takes effect. The date at the top of this page is always the date of the current version.