Privacy policy

This policy covers the lerne.now iPhone app and this website: what they collect, why, who else handles it, how long it is kept, and how to have it deleted.

The short version

• You sign in with your email address. There are no passwords.
• The details you give for your sentences, such as your name and city, are used to build your lessons, and some are sent to the services that write German, make speech and check answers for us.
• Recordings from speaking exercises are turned into text. We don’t keep the recordings.
• No ads, no tracking across apps and websites, and we never sell your data.
• You can delete your account in the app at any time, on the Profile tab. That removes your email address and signs you out, but your details and learning progress stay, no longer linked to your email address.

Who is responsible

TODO: name and postal address of the person or company that runs lerne.now.

Write to us at hallo@lerne.now about anything in this policy.

What we collect

Your account

Your email address, to sign you in with a one-time code that we email you. The code is stored only in scrambled (hashed) form and stops working after 10 minutes. Once you are signed in, the app stays signed in until you log out or leave it unused for a year.

What you tell the app about yourself

The answers that go into your sentences: your name, where you live and where you come from, the languages you speak, your job and where you work, what you order and how you like to pay. If you choose to, also whether German words about you should take the masculine or feminine form, such as Lehrer or Lehrerin.

Your learning

The lessons you have done, your answers in practice and whether they were right, the words you are reviewing and when each is due again, and the days you practised.

Your settings

Your daily goal, your reminder time and time zone, and whether sound effects and speaking exercises are on.

Your voice

In a speaking exercise the app records what you say and sends it to our server, which has it turned into text to check your answer. We don’t store the recording. The app uses the microphone only after you allow it.

Reminders

If you allow notifications, the push token Apple gives your device, so that we can send your daily reminder.

Subscriptions

Apple handles the payment when you subscribe. From Apple we receive the transaction: its ID, the plan, when it ends and whether it renews. We never see your payment details.

Crash and performance reports

The app reports crashes, errors and how quickly its screens load, so that we can fix problems. These reports are not linked to your account and don’t contain your email address or what you type.

Server logs

Our servers record technical details of each request, such as the IP address, the feature used, how long it took and any error, to keep lerne.now running and secure and to find problems.

This website

This website sets no cookies, uses no analytics and loads nothing from other companies, not even its fonts. The name you type into the sentence on the home page stays in your browser. Visits are recorded in the server logs described above.

Messages you send us

When you write to us through the contact form, the name, email address and message you give, so that we can read and answer it.

Why we use it

• To give you lerne.now, as agreed when you create an account: signing you in, building lessons from your details, checking your answers, speech, the reminders you asked for and your subscription. The legal basis is the contract with you (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).
• To keep it secure and working and to fix bugs, with crash reports and server logs. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in a reliable, secure service (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
• The microphone and notifications only with your permission, which you can take back at any time in the iOS Settings app (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR).

We don’t use your data for advertising, don’t sell it, and don’t track you across other apps or websites.

Who else handles it

These companies run parts of lerne.now for us and receive only what they need for it:

• Resend sends the sign-in emails. It receives your email address.
• Requesty, in its EU region, passes requests to Google’s Gemini models, which fit your details into German sentences, pick out the words worth learning, and check typed answers that don’t match exactly. They receive your details, your answers and, if you set it, the word form you chose.
• Mistral AI turns German sentences into speech. A sentence can contain your details, such as your name.
• Bunny.net stores that audio and delivers it to the app.
• AssemblyAI, in its EU region, turns recordings from speaking exercises into text.
• Apple handles App Store purchases and delivers push notifications.
• Sentry receives the app’s crash and performance reports.
• Dash0, in its EU region, stores our server logs, metrics and traces.
• TODO: the hosting provider, and the country of the servers and the database.

Some of these companies are based outside the EU, for example in the United States. TODO: confirm the safeguard for each of them, such as the EU–US Data Privacy Framework or the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.

How long we keep it

• Your email address and push tokens until you delete your account. Deleting it replaces your email address with a placeholder, deletes your push tokens and signs you out on every device. Signing in with the same email address afterwards starts a new account.
• Your details, learning progress and settings stay after you delete your account, no longer linked to your email address.
• Sign-in codes for 10 minutes, and sign-ins until you log out or leave the app unused for a year.
• Recordings are not stored by us.
• Subscription records stay after you delete your account, no longer linked to you, so that Apple’s notices about the purchase, such as renewals and refunds, can still be handled.
• Sentence audio is made once per sentence and shared by everyone with the same sentence. It isn’t linked to an account, so it stays when you delete yours, and it can contain your details, such as your name. Write to us and we will delete the audio of sentences with your details.
• Messages from the contact form until they are answered and no longer needed. Write to us and we will delete yours.
• Server logs and crash reports for TODO: number of days.
• Backups of the database for TODO: number of days.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask us for a copy of your data, have it corrected or deleted, restrict or object to how we use it, and get it in a format you can take elsewhere. You can change most of your details in the app and delete your account on the Profile tab. For anything else, write to hallo@lerne.now.

You can also complain to a data protection authority, for example the one where you live.

Children

TODO: the minimum age for lerne.now. In Germany, people under 16 need a parent’s consent.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we update the date at the top. If a change affects what we do with your data, we will tell you in the app or by email before it applies.