Privacy Policy

Last updated: March 17, 2025

Desi Lingo ("we", "us", "our") operates the website at desi-lingo.app and the Desi Lingo browser extension. This Privacy Policy explains what data we collect, how we use it, and your rights regarding that data.

1. Data We Collect

Account information

When you sign in with Google, we receive your email address, display name, and profile picture from Google. We do not access your Google contacts, calendar, or any other Google services. If you sign in with email, we store only the email address you provide. We use this information solely to identify your account.

Learning data

We store word statuses (unknown, seen, known, hidden), mined sentences, lookup events, reading session durations, and daily statistics. This data powers your dashboard, vocabulary tracking, and learning streak.

Anonymized word frequency

We collect aggregated word encounter and lookup counts across all users to build a better Hindi word frequency list over time. This data is fully anonymized and not linked to any user account. It contains only Hindi words and how often they appear across the platform, with no personal or identifying information.

Session metadata

To power your "study activity by content" dashboard, we store metadata about your learning sessions. For known video platforms (YouTube, Netflix, Prime Video) this includes the video title, URL, and session duration. For other websites, we store only the domain name (e.g., "bbc.com"), not the full page URL or path. We never store the actual page text, article body, or subtitle transcript.

Preferences

Your settings — subtitle styling, keyboard shortcuts, theme preferences, and mining behavior — are stored in your account so they sync between the extension and web dashboard.

Payment information

Payments are processed by Lemon Squeezy. We do not store your credit card number, billing address, or other payment details on our servers. Lemon Squeezy sends us a customer ID and subscription status so we can manage your access. Lemon Squeezy's privacy policy governs how they handle your payment data.

2. Data We Do Not Collect

We do not collect the content you read or watch. All Hindi text processing — tokenization, dictionary lookups, transliteration, and grammar detection — runs entirely in your browser. No page text, video subtitles, or article content is ever sent to our servers.

We do store lightweight session metadata (video titles and URLs for YouTube, Netflix, and Prime Video; domain names only for other websites) so your dashboard can show study activity by content. See "Session metadata" above for details.

The browser extension does not track your browsing history, inject ads, or collect analytics about which websites you visit.

3. How We Use Your Data

  • To provide the service — syncing word statuses, mined sentences, and settings between the extension and dashboard.
  • To display your learning statistics — heatmap, streak, vocabulary counts, session history.
  • To manage your subscription and feature access.
  • To improve the product — we may analyze aggregated, anonymized usage patterns (e.g., which features are most used). We do not sell or share individual user data with third parties.

4. Data Storage & Security

Your account data is stored in a PostgreSQL database hosted on Neon (neon.tech). The web application is hosted on Vercel. Both services use encryption in transit (TLS) and at rest.

The browser extension stores word statuses and mined sentences locally in chrome.storage.local as a cache. This data syncs with your server-side account when you are signed in.

5. Third-Party Services

  • Google OAuth — for authentication (optional). If you sign in with Google, we receive your email and profile info. You can also sign in with just an email address.
  • Lemon Squeezy — for payment processing and subscription management.
  • Vercel — for web application hosting.
  • Neon — for database hosting.
  • Anki / AnkiWeb — if you use the Desi Lingo Anki add-on, it authenticates with your Desi Lingo account to sync mined cards into Anki. No data is sent to AnkiWeb by us.

We do not use any third-party analytics, advertising, or tracking services.

6. Cookies

We use a session cookie to keep you signed in. We do not use tracking cookies, advertising cookies, or any third-party cookie services.

7. Your Rights

You can:

  • Access your data — your vocabulary, mined cards, and stats are visible on your dashboard at any time.
  • Export your data — mined sentences can be exported as tab-separated files or synced to Anki.
  • Delete your data — contact us to request full account deletion. We will remove all associated data from our servers.

8. Children's Privacy

Desi Lingo is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal data, please contact us and we will delete it.

9. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated "Last updated" date. Continued use of Desi Lingo after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

10. Contact

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or your data, contact us at support@desi-lingo.app.