The short version
- You don't need an account, an email address or a password to use the Lingvio app.
- We recognise an installation by a random ID created on your device — not by who you are.
- Your speech is turned into text so the tutor can answer it. We don't store recordings of your voice.
- The name you type into your profile stays on your device and is deliberately left out of everything sent to the AI.
- We don't sell personal data, we don't show ads, and we don't hand data to data brokers.
1. Who we are and what this covers
This policy explains how Lingvio (“Lingvio”, “we”, “us”) handles personal data in the Lingvio app for iOS, on this website, and in the Lingvio web dashboard you can open from it. It applies whenever you use any of the three.
For anything in this policy — a question, a request, a complaint — write to dateasker@gmail.com. We are the controller of the data described here.
2. What we collect, and why
Speech and conversations
The microphone runs only while you are holding the talk button or while a live voice session is open. In ordinary practice your speech is transcribed by Apple's Speech framework on your iPhone; depending on the device and the language, Apple may carry out part of that recognition on its own servers under Apple's privacy policy. The resulting text, the recent turns of the same conversation, your target language, your level and the scenario you picked are then sent over an encrypted connection to our API, which passes them to our AI provider to produce the tutor's reply, corrections and score.
In live voice mode the audio streams from your device straight to OpenAI's Realtime service, using a session key that our server mints for a few minutes at a time — the provider key itself never reaches the app. Lingvio does not record your sessions to a file and keeps no audio on its servers.
Learning data
Your native and target language, your level, lesson and dialogue history, streaks, XP, achievements and session summaries. In the iOS app this lives on your device. If you use the web dashboard, the equivalent profile and progress is stored in the dashboard's database so it is there when you sign in again.
What you type into your profile
A first name and a learning goal are optional. They stay on your device, greet you inside the app, and are deliberately excluded from anything sent to the AI provider.
Usage and diagnostics
Events such as app opened, onboarding completed, lesson completed, practice turn submitted, paywall shown and purchase started / completed / failed, together with a random installation ID, a session ID, a conversation ID, the app version, device model, operating system version, and the language and level on your profile. Crash reports (stack traces and device state at the moment of a crash) come from Firebase Crashlytics. This is how we see where the product breaks and where people get stuck; it carries no name, no email address and no message text.
Purchases
Subscriptions are sold by Apple. When you buy or restore one, Apple hands the app a signed transaction, which we send to our server to check that the subscription is genuine, and we store the resulting entitlement against your random installation ID. We never receive your card details, your Apple ID or your billing address.
Support messages
If you email us, we keep your message and your address for as long as it takes to help you and to keep a record of what was asked.
This website
lingvio.app stores your language and theme choice in your browser's local storage. There is no advertising or tracking script on the site. Web fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, which means your IP address is visible to Google when the page loads, and our host keeps ordinary server logs (IP address, page, time, user agent) for security and diagnostics.
3. What we never collect
Lingvio does not ask for and does not receive your contacts, your photo library, your precise location, health data, or your payment card details. It does not use voice recognition to identify you as a person — only to turn speech into text. There is no account system in the app, so there is no password to lose.
4. Why we are allowed to use it (EEA and UK)
- To run the tutor — performance of our agreement with you.
- To sell and verify subscriptions, and to keep tax and accounting records — performance of that agreement, and our legal obligations.
- To keep the service working and stop abuse of the AI proxy — our legitimate interest in a service that stays available and affordable.
- Product analytics and crash reporting — our legitimate interest in understanding where the app fails and where learners give up. You can limit this with the tracking prompt (see section 6).
- Answering support — performance of our agreement and our legitimate interest in helping you.
6. Tracking and advertising
There is no advertising in Lingvio. On first launch, iOS asks whether Lingvio may track you across apps and websites. If you decline, our analytics tools do not use Apple's advertising identifier. You can change your answer at any time in Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking on your iPhone, and you can switch off personalised measurement for the whole device there too.
7. Where your data is processed
Lingvio's API and the providers listed above run on infrastructure that may sit outside your country, including outside the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom. Where a transfer of that kind needs a legal basis, we rely on appropriate safeguards, such as the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, and on the providers' own transfer frameworks.
8. How long we keep it
- Voice audio — not stored by us at all.
- Conversation text — kept by our API only as long as needed to produce your reply, run the service and investigate abuse or faults, then deleted.
- Analytics events — up to 14 months.
- Subscription and entitlement records — while the subscription is active, and afterwards for as long as tax and accounting law requires.
- Support email — up to 24 months after the conversation ends.
- Everything held on your device — until you delete the app.
9. Your choices and your rights
On the device. Microphone, speech recognition, notifications and tracking are all permissions you can withdraw at any time in iOS Settings. Deleting the app erases the profile, learning history and entitlement token stored on it — but it does not cancel a subscription; that is done in the App Store.
Your legal rights. Depending on where you live, you may ask us for a copy of your data, ask us to correct or delete it, ask us to restrict or stop a particular use, or ask for it in a portable form. In California you may also ask what we collected and request deletion or correction; we do not sell or share personal information, and we will never treat you differently for exercising a right.
How to ask. Email dateasker@gmail.com. Because we hold no name or email address against your app data, we may need something that ties a request to a specific installation — for example the App Store transaction for your subscription. If we genuinely cannot identify you from what we hold, we will tell you so rather than delete the wrong records.
If you are in the EEA or the UK and you think we have handled your data badly, you can complain to your local data protection authority. We would rather you told us first.
10. Children
Lingvio is not directed at children under 13, or under the higher minimum age set by the law where you live (16 in parts of the European Economic Area). We do not knowingly collect data from them. If you believe a child has used Lingvio and left data with us, write to us and we will delete it.
11. How we protect it
Traffic between the app, our API and our providers is encrypted in transit. Provider keys never ship inside the app: the app receives short-lived session keys instead. The subscription entitlement token is held in the iOS Keychain. And the strongest protection is the one built into the product — we collect little, and what we collect is not tied to your identity. No service can promise perfect security, but we do treat a breach as something to fix and disclose, not to hide.
12. Changes to this policy
When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. If a change materially affects what we collect or who receives it, we will say so in the app or on this page before it takes effect. Continuing to use Lingvio after that means you accept the updated policy.
13. Contact
Lingvio — dateasker@gmail.com
We answer privacy requests in the language you write in, and we aim to reply within 30 days.