Privacy Policy

English News Easy ("the Service") protects your personal information and manages inquiries in compliance with applicable data protection laws. This Privacy Policy details how we collect, process, and protect your information.

1. Purposes and Scope of Processing

The Service collects the minimum necessary personal information to provide user accounts, and does not process data for purposes other than those listed below.

• Items Collected & Processed: Email address, social login identifiers (when linking Google or Apple), profile information (nickname, profile image), in-app purchase and subscription status (via RevenueCat), advertising identifiers (IDFA/ADID, subject to consent), service usage records (lesson completion histories, bookmarks, etc.), user-generated content (news opinions, diary entries, and the AI corrections made to them), synthesized speech (TTS) generated to read corrected sentences aloud (see Section 5), and voice recordings transmitted for pronunciation assessment (not stored; see Section 5)
• Purpose of Use: User identification, keeping users signed in, tracking/managing learning progress, calculating learning points (XP), providing AI sentence correction and pronunciation assessment, sharing posts according to the visibility you choose, verifying purchase entitlements, personalized advertising, and ad performance analysis
• Collection of Advertising Identifiers: We use the Google AdMob SDK to provide personalized advertisements, and we collect and share advertising identifiers (IDFA) under user consent. Users can reject the collection of advertising identifiers at any time through device settings or the ATT consent pop-up.

2. Processing and Retention Period

• Your personal information is retained from sign-up until you delete your account. When you request account deletion, we immediately stop using your personal information and block access to the Service.
• To handle withdrawal-reversal requests and to prevent fraudulent sign-ups and abuse, your data is kept in separate storage for 30 days and then permanently destroyed. You may restore your account by signing in again within this period.
• Learning records: Individual lesson completion logs are used to calculate learning points (XP) and to show recent study statistics. They are retained for at most 6 months from the day you last studied that news item and are then deleted automatically. Before deletion, the accumulated points and study dates are folded into a per-article summary record, so your total XP is preserved. However, once the detailed logs are deleted, the completion status of individual learning steps may be displayed differently.
• Content you write: News opinions, diary entries, and their AI corrections are retained until you delete them yourself or delete your account (no separate retention limit applies). You can delete any individual post in the app at any time.
• Corrected-sentence speech (TTS): When you use "Listen to native pronunciation," a synthesized voice that reads your corrected sentence aloud (this is not your own voice) is generated and stored on our server (Cloudflare R2) to speed up playback and save credits. This audio is retained for up to 6 months from its last generation and then deleted automatically, and is destroyed together with your other data when you delete your account.
• Voice recordings: Not stored on our servers (see Section 5).
• However, if preservation is required under relevant regulations, the Service retains data for the duration specified by law.

3. Destruction Procedures and Methods

• Procedures: Personal information that has achieved its purpose is taken out of use, kept in separate storage, and becomes subject to automatic deletion once 30 days have passed since the account deletion request.
• Methods: Electronic files are permanently deleted using technical methods that render the records unrecoverable.

4. Consignment and Cross-Border Data Transfer

For operations and features, the Service consigns personal information processing to external service providers, and data may be transferred to and stored in servers located abroad (e.g., the United States).

• Supabase: User authentication and database hosting (international transfer)
• Google Cloud Platform: Hosting of the application server that handles AI processing (international transfer)
• Cloudflare, Inc.: Storage and delivery of corrected-sentence speech (TTS output) (international transfer)
• Google (Gemini API): AI sentence correction and pronunciation assessment — the sentences you write and the audio submitted for pronunciation assessment are transmitted for processing. Once the result is returned, the Service does not retain the audio. (international transfer)
• RevenueCat: In-app purchase and subscription verification (international transfer)
• Google / Apple / Facebook / Kakao: Social sign-in authentication and native appstore payment processing
• Google AdMob: Serving personalized advertisements and analyzing ad performance (international transfer)

5. Handling of Voice Recordings

The Service records your voice for the shadowing and pronunciation assessment features. Voice data is handled as follows.

• Stored on your device only: Recording files are saved only on your own device; they are never uploaded to or stored on our servers. If you clear the app's cache/data or uninstall the app, the recordings are deleted along with it.
• Temporary transmission for assessment: Only when you request a pronunciation assessment is the recording sent to the assessment server. The server processes it in memory, returns only the result (score and feedback), and does not store the audio itself, discarding it immediately after processing.
• What is stored: Only the result of the assessment (score and text feedback) is saved as part of your learning records.
• Distinction from synthesized speech (TTS): The above concerns recordings of your own voice. Separately, the synthesized speech (TTS) that reads corrected sentences aloud is not your voice and is stored on our server for playback convenience (see Section 2 for its retention period).

6. Sharing Content with Other Users

For each post you write (news opinions, diary entries), you choose its visibility: Public / Friends / Only me. Posts are shown according to that choice.

• Only me: Not shared with other users. It is processed on our servers to provide the Service, including storage and AI correction.
• Friends: Visible only to users you and they mutually follow.
• Public: May be shown to other users of the Service. In addition to users who follow you, your post may also be surfaced at random in the feeds of users who do not follow you, to help people discover one another.
• Your nickname, profile image, and a masked email handle (e.g., joh**e) are displayed alongside your post. You can change a post's visibility or delete it in the app at any time.

7. Rights of Data Subjects and How to Exercise Them

• You may request withdrawal at any time using the "Delete Account" feature in the app. Use of your data stops immediately, and the data is permanently destroyed after 30 days (you can restore the account by signing in again before then). Paid subscriptions must be cancelled separately in the App Store or Google Play.
• You may also contact the Privacy Officer via email to request access, correction, deletion, or suspension of your data, and we will process it without delay.

8. Security Measures

We implement technical security measures, including HTTPS encryption in transit, Database Row-Level Security (RLS) policies, encryption at rest provided by our database host, and encrypted credentials storage using the device's secure areas (Keychain/Keystore).

Please note that the posts you write are stored in a form the Service can read, so that AI correction and sharing according to your chosen visibility can be provided. In other words, end-to-end encryption (which would make your content unreadable even to the operator) is not applied. We access such content only to the minimum extent necessary and only for legitimate reasons, such as troubleshooting, legal compliance, or handling reports of Terms violations.

9. Privacy Officer and Contact

If you have any questions or complaints regarding personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer:

• Privacy Officer: Juhyeon Kim
• Email: support@englishnewseasy.com

10. Children's Privacy

The Service does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we discover that personal information has been collected from a child under 13 without parental consent, we will delete it immediately.

11. Changes to This Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy is effective from the date indicated above. Any updates or modifications will be announced at least 7 days in advance through the Service interface or website.