Privacy policy
Last updated:
In short: we only process the data the app needs to work. We never sell your data, there are no ads, we do not track you across apps or websites, and you can delete your account and all your progress from the app itself whenever you like.
This policy explains how we process your personal data when you use the Using English app and the website usingenglish.app, in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR) and Spanish Organic Law 3/2018 on Personal Data Protection and the guarantee of digital rights (LOPDGDD). The Spanish version prevails in case of discrepancy.
1. Who is responsible
The data controller is Queens English Academy, S.L.U., tax ID B19406305, with address at Carrer de Peris Brell, 66, 46022 València (Valencia), España. You can find all its details in the legal notice. For anything about your data, write toinfo@usingenglish.app.
2. What data we process, why and on what legal basis
| Data | Why | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Account: email, name, username and password (stored encrypted; we never see it). | Creating your account, signing in, resetting your password and sending you service emails. | Performance of the contract (art. 6.1.b GDPR). |
| Settings: app language and time zone. | Showing the app in your language and counting your streak and reminders by your day, not our server's. | Performance of the contract. |
| Progress: answers, set scores, missed questions, streak, practice days and statistics. | Marking your answers, saving your progress and showing your statistics. | Performance of the contract. |
| Profile photo, if you choose to upload one. | Showing it on your profile and to your friends. | Your consent (art. 6.1.a), which you withdraw by deleting the photo. |
| Friends and challenges: requests, friendships, challenges, their results and alerts about them. | Letting you add friends, challenge them and see the friends ranking. | Performance of the contract, only if you use this feature. |
| Notifications: your device's notification token, your reminder preferences, the time you usually practise, and which reminders we sent you and whether you opened them. | Sending you reminders so you keep your streak, not sending more than needed, and picking the best time if you turn on smart scheduling. | Your consent, given when you allow notifications and withdrawn in the app or your phone settings. |
| Purchases: your plan, an anonymous customer ID and the purchase ID. Apple or Google take the payment: we never receive your card details. | Unlocking your plan and letting you restore it on a new phone. | Performance of the contract and compliance with legal obligations (tax and consumer law). |
| Session: identifiers of the session open on each phone. | Keeping you signed in and allowing the account to be open on only one phone at a time, to protect it. | Performance of the contract and our legitimate interest in account security (art. 6.1.f). |
| Diagnostics: when the app crashes, a report with the phone model, system and app version, the screen and the error, and your internal user ID (no email or name). We also measure performance on a small sample of sessions. | Finding and fixing bugs and keeping the app stable and secure. | Legitimate interest in the app working properly. It is minimal and expected; you can object by writing to us. |
| Enquiries: what you tell us when you write to us, and your email. | Replying and resolving your enquiry or request. | Performance of the contract or, if you are not a user, legitimate interest in replying. |
To create an account we need your email, username and password: without them we cannot provide the service. Everything else (photo, friends, notifications, purchases) is optional.
We do not use your location, contacts, camera or microphone. The app only asks for access to your photos if you want to add one to your profile, and only uploads the one you choose. There are no ads and no cross-app tracking, and we make no automated decisions with legal effects on you nor build profiles for that purpose: “smart scheduling” only decides what time to send you a reminder.
3. What is stored on your phone
The app stores on your device only what it needs to work: your session (in the system's secure storage), your language, sound volume and whether you have seen the tutorial. This is technical information required to provide the service you ask for, so it does not require consent (art. 22.2 LSSI). We do not use cookies or tracking technologies for analytics or advertising.
4. What other people can see
If you use the friends feature, other users can find you by searching for your username and see your name, username and photo. Your friends also see your challenges with them, their scores and your position in the friends ranking.Your email is never shown. You can decline requests and remove friends at any time.
5. Who we share it with
We do not sell or hand over your data. Only the providers we need to run the service access it, as data processors, under contract and following our instructions:
- Supabase (Supabase Inc.): database, sign-in, account emails and photo storage, on servers in the European Union (Ireland).
- RevenueCat (RevenueCat Inc., USA): managing in-app purchases.
- Expo (650 Industries Inc., USA): sending notifications.
- Sentry (Functional Software Inc.): crash reports, hosted in the European Union.
- Cloudflare (Cloudflare Inc.): hosting and protecting this website.
These also take part as independent controllers, under their own privacy policies:
- Apple and Google, who sell and charge in-app purchases and deliver notifications to your phone (Apple Push Notification service and Firebase Cloud Messaging).
- YouTube (Google), which plays the explainer videos. It only connects when you open a video and, when you watch it, Google may process data under itsprivacy policy.
We may also disclose data to courts or other authorities when the law requires it.
6. Transfers outside the European Economic Area
Some of these providers are based in the USA or may access data from outside the European Economic Area. In those cases the transfer is protected by GDPR safeguards: the provider's certification under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (a European Commission adequacy decision) or the Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the Commission. You can ask us for more information about these safeguards.
7. How long we keep it
- Your account, progress and friends data, for as long as you have the account.
- If you delete your account, your account, progress, friends and challenges, notifications and photo are erased straight away. They may remain in the server's encrypted backups, which overwrite themselves within 30 days at most and are not used for anything else.
- Crash reports, for 90 days at most.
- Emails you send us, for as long as needed to help you and at most one year afterwards, unless we need them longer to handle or defend a claim.
- Purchase data, for as long as tax and commercial law requires (generally between 4 and 6 years). Apple, Google and RevenueCat keep that record, and it is linked to your store account.
8. Your rights
You can exercise these rights at any time, free of charge:
- Access: know what data of yours we process and get a copy.
- Rectification: correct it. You can change your username and photo in the app; for anything else, write to us.
- Erasure: delete it. You can delete your account from the app (see how).
- Objection to processing based on legitimate interest, such as crash reports.
- Restriction of processing in the cases provided by law.
- Portability: receive your data in a structured, commonly used format.
- Withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting earlier processing.
Write to info@usingenglish.app from your account email saying which right you want to exercise. If we cannot confirm it is you, we will ask for the minimum needed to verify it. We will reply within one month; if the request is complex we may extend this by two more months and will tell you.
If you believe we have not handled your data properly, you can lodge a complaint with the Spanish Data Protection Agency (C/ Jorge Juan 6, 28001 Madrid, aepd.es) or the authority of your country. We would appreciate it if you wrote to us first so we can try to sort it out.
9. Minors
You must be at least 14 to create an account. If you are younger, you may only use the app with the consent of your parent or legal guardian, as required by article 7 of the LOPDGDD. If a guardian believes a child under 14 has given us data without that consent, they can write to us and we will delete the account.
10. Security
All communications are encrypted, passwords are stored encrypted, your session is kept in your phone's secure storage and each user can only read and change their own data thanks to access rules on the server. Answers are marked on the server. Within our team, only the people who need it for their work can access the data, using protected personal accounts. If there were ever a security breach that put your data at risk, we would notify the AEPD and, where required, you, as the GDPR demands.
11. This website
usingenglish.app uses no cookies, analytics or ads, and fonts are served from our own domain. Our hosting provider, Cloudflare, processes technical data such as your IP address to serve the site and protect it from attacks, based on our legitimate interest in keeping it available and secure.
12. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy we will publish the new version here with its date. If the change is significant, we will let you know in the app before it applies.