Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Spanish Buddy is operated by Factorial Labs LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company ("we", "us", "our"). The service is the web application available at spanishbuddy.app and any related pages we publish. You can reach us at hello@spanishbuddy.app for any privacy or data-related questions.

2. What we collect

Effectively, nothing.

The web app stores progress information locally in your browser's localStorage. This includes:

• Your first name, only if you typed one in the onboarding step
• Your country and nationality, only if you selected from the dropdown
• Which lessons and steps you have completed
• Approximate time spent in each lesson
• Your daily streak
• Your answers and self-ratings within quizzes and drills

This data never leaves your device. It is not transmitted to any server controlled by Factorial Labs. Other devices, browsers, or people cannot see your data. We have no copy of it.

We do not request, store, or process:

• Your email address
• Your precise location
• Your contact list, microphone, camera, or any other device sensor
• Any form of payment information (the service is free)

3. Third-party services

Loading the web page involves your browser making technical requests to a small set of content delivery networks. These services see standard request metadata (browser type, IP address, page requested) as part of normal HTTPS traffic, the same way any website works. Specifically:

• Netlify hosts the site itself and may keep standard request logs.
• Google Fonts serves the typography (Fraunces and Nunito). Google may log standard analytics about font requests.
• Cloudflare CDN delivers the html2canvas library that powers the "Share progress" feature on the lesson-complete page.
• Buy Me a Coffee loads a small button widget on the dashboard. If you click it, you leave our site for theirs, and their privacy practices apply.
• Google Analytics 4 measures aggregate usage so we can see which lessons help and which don't. Details, including how to opt out, are in section 5 below.
• jsDelivr CDN serves the cookie-consent banner library on every page.
• Browser Text-to-Speech. Audio playback uses your browser's built-in speechSynthesis API. No external service is contacted for this; whether your browser sends anything to a cloud TTS provider depends on your browser's own settings.

We do not control these third parties, and we recommend reviewing their privacy practices if it matters to you.

4. Cookies

Loading Spanish Buddy will set a small number of cookies, depending on the choices you make in the consent banner that appears on your first visit.

• sb_cookie_consent is set as soon as you click anything in the banner. It remembers whether you accepted or rejected analytics so we don't show the banner on every page. It lives on your device for about six months, after which we ask again. It is set by Spanish Buddy itself.
• _ga and _ga_N6ERMW1ZBQ are set by Google Analytics, but only if you accept analytics in the banner. Together they store an anonymous client ID used to count unique visitors and tie page views into sessions. They expire after two years.

If you reject analytics, Google Analytics still loads, but in cookieless mode, a Google feature called Consent Mode v2. In that mode it writes no cookies and stores nothing on your device; it sends anonymized pings to Google for aggregate counts only, with no client ID and no way to link visits across pages.

You can revisit your choice at any time by clicking Cookie preferences in the footer of any page. If you switch analytics from accepted to rejected, the _ga cookies are deleted from your browser automatically.

Some of the third-party services listed in section 3, in particular Netlify, Google Fonts, Cloudflare, and jsDelivr, may set their own technical cookies necessary for content delivery. We don't configure those; they're part of how the underlying services work.

5. Analytics

Spanish Buddy uses Google Analytics 4 (property G-N6ERMW1ZBQ) to see which lessons get used and where people stall out. We use this to improve the course. We do not use it for advertising, retargeting, or any individual profiling.

What Google Analytics sees when you visit a page, assuming you accepted analytics:

• An anonymized client ID (the _ga cookie value, a random number that does not identify you)
• The page you viewed and how long you stayed on it
• Your approximate location, derived from your IP address, which is then discarded; we never see the raw IP
• Your device type, browser, screen size, and referring URL
• Any custom events we configure, such as which day of the course you completed

It does not see your name, your email, your lesson answers, or anything from your local progress data. We don't send those to Google.

Where the data goes. Google Analytics is operated by Google LLC in the United States. If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, your data is transferred to Google's servers in the US under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, to which Google is certified. IP addresses are anonymized in transit by GA4 and are not stored.

Legal basis (EEA, UK). Your consent, given via the cookie banner. You can withdraw consent at any time using the Cookie preferences link in the footer of every page, and on withdrawal we delete the _ga cookies from your browser automatically.

Retention. Anonymous user-level data is retained by Google for two months and then deleted. Aggregate reports (page views, unique visitors per week) remain visible to us indefinitely.

How to opt out. Three ways:

• Click Reject in the cookie banner on first visit.
• Open the Cookie preferences link in the footer at any time and switch analytics off.
• Install Google's opt-out browser add-on, which opts you out of Google Analytics across all websites.

Google's own practices are described in their Privacy Policy and their partner-sites notice.

6. Children's privacy

Spanish Buddy is suitable for learners of all ages and we do not impose an age restriction. In line with the United States Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and similar protections elsewhere, we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13. Because we do not collect personal information from anyone, this is naturally satisfied. If you believe a child under 13 has somehow provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will work with you to address the concern.

7. Your rights

Because all data is stored locally on your device:

• You already have a copy. Your data is in your browser; you can inspect it via your browser's developer tools (look under localStorage for spanishbuddy.app).
• You can delete it at any time. The dashboard has a "Reset all progress" button. You can also clear your browser's site data for spanishbuddy.app to remove everything in one step.
• There is nothing to request from us, we don't have a server-side copy of your data, so we have nothing to access, transfer, or delete on your behalf.

If you are in the European Union, the United Kingdom, or California, you have additional rights under GDPR, UK GDPR, and CCPA respectively. These rights apply to data we process about you. Since we do not process personal data, there is nothing held by us to access, correct, transfer, or restrict. The right to deletion is satisfied entirely by your own actions on your device.

8. Data security

The simplest security posture is to have no data. By design, Spanish Buddy has nothing on a server that could be breached. The site is served over HTTPS, so traffic between your browser and our hosting is encrypted in transit.

9. International users

Spanish Buddy is intended primarily for English-speaking learners of Mexican Spanish, and is hosted in the United States. By using the service, you understand that any technical request metadata (such as that described in section 3) may be processed in the United States or in any country where our third-party providers operate.

10. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this policy occasionally. The "Last updated" date at the top of the page reflects the most recent change. If a change is material, we will note it visibly on the page. Continued use of the service after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

11. Contact

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