Privacy Policy

ThaiCards is operated by ALEX SEARS, CPA, LLC, a Texas limited liability company, which is the data controller for the purposes of this policy. See also our Terms of Service.

What we collect

• Without an account: a randomly generated device identifier stored in your browser, your study activity (which words you review and how you grade them), general app interactions, and standard technical data such as browser type and a hashed IP address used for analytics, rate limiting, and abuse prevention.
• With an account: your email address, an optional display name, and a securely hashed password. If you sign in with Google, we receive your email and name from Google; we never see your Google password.
• Content you choose to save: saved or custom vocabulary and any practice content you explicitly save are stored with your anonymous profile or account so they remain available in the app. Unsaved practice content is not retained by ThaiCards.
• If you subscribe: payments are processed by Stripe (on the web), Google Play Billing (in the Android app), or Apple (in the iPhone and iPad app). We store a subscription reference, a purchase token, and license status so we can keep your Premium access in sync. We never see or store your card number.
• If you use speech practice: live microphone audio is transmitted securely to Google Cloud Speech-to-Text to return a transcript. ThaiCards does not retain the audio. Any transcript or practice content is kept only when the feature explicitly lets you save it.

What we use it for

• Saving your study progress and syncing it across your devices when you sign in.
• Operating the service: spaced-repetition scheduling, audio generation, translations, and abuse prevention.
• Sending transactional email you request, such as password reset links. We do not send marketing email.

What we do not do

• We do not sell or share your personal data with advertisers or data brokers.
• We do not use third-party advertising or cross-app tracking.
• We do not collect precise location, contacts, or photos. We do not retain microphone audio; optional speech-practice audio is processed only to provide live speech recognition.

Third parties we rely on

• Stripe for payment processing.
• Google for optional sign-in, text-to-speech audio generation, translation processing, and Google Cloud Speech-to-Text for optional live speech recognition.
• Resend for transactional email delivery.
• OpenAI and Anthropic for generating example sentences, translations, romanization, and AI tutor replies; the text you are studying may be sent for that purpose, never your account details or password.
• Google Play for subscription billing and purchase verification in the Android app, and Apple for the same on iPhone and iPad.
• YouTube for the embedded video player in LyricLens; YouTube may show its own ads and applies its own privacy policy while a video plays.
• Cloudflare for delivering the site and blocking abuse.

Retention and deletion

Your data is kept while your account is active. You can permanently delete your account and all study data at any time, either from Settings in the app or at flashcards.alexsears.org/delete-account.html. Deletion is immediate and irreversible. Anonymous device data can be cleared by clearing your browser storage.

Song captions in LyricLens

When you open a video in LyricLens, we fetch the caption track that the video platform already publishes for it, then add romanization and translation so you can study it. The corrected result is our own processed output, not a copy of the original captions, and we keep it so that returning to the same song is fast and consistent. We do not publish a browsable library of song lyrics, and we do not claim any rights in the underlying songs. Rights holders can ask us to remove specific content using the contact address below.

Classes for universities and language schools

A university or an adult language school can run a class (a course section, at a university) on ThaiCards. This section covers students who join a class with its link or QR code, the teachers and lecturers who run classes, and the school's admin contacts. The rest of this policy also applies.

• Adults only. Classes are for students aged 18 or older. We do not offer classes to anyone under 18.
• Consent when you join. You join a class only after you tick two boxes: that you agree to share your practice with your teacher, and that you are 18 or older. We record when you did so.
• What your teacher sees: your name as it shows in the app (your display name, or, if you have not set one, the part of your email address before the @), your student number if you choose to give one, and your practice numbers: reviews this week, cards said aloud this week, your streak, cards learned, cards due, when you last practised, when you joined, and your progress through the class word list. Your teacher never sees your messages, your email address or anything else in your account.
• What the school's director sees: counts only, for each class and for the school, such as how many students practised this week, reviews, cards learned and how many are falling behind. Directors never see a student's name, email address or messages. Teachers appear to directors as first name and last initial.
• Teachers, lecturers and admin contacts: we keep the email addresses your school gives us so we can recognise you when you sign in, and the word lists you upload. A member of our staff checks new cards in an uploaded word list before students see them.
• The school: we keep the school's name, its contacts' email addresses, its licences and its invoices. Students never see a price in the app.
• Leaving and deletion. You can leave a class at any time in Settings. Your teacher stops seeing your practice at once, and your own study progress stays in your account. We keep a record that you were in the class (the class, your join and leave dates, and when you agreed and confirmed your age) so seat counts and invoices stay correct. If you delete your account, we delete your study data, name and email address, and that record no longer links to you. A school can ask us by email to delete a class, its word list and its membership records.

Your rights in Thailand (PDPA)

If Thailand's Personal Data Protection Act B.E. 2562 (PDPA) applies to you, ALEX SEARS, CPA, LLC is the data controller. You have the right to be informed, to access your data and get a copy, to have it transferred, to object to or restrict how we use it, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, and to withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing consent to share your practice with your teacher means leaving the class. Our legal bases are your consent for sharing your practice with your teacher, and the performance of a contract for running your account and your school's licence. To use any of these rights, email us at the address below. You can also complain to Thailand's Personal Data Protection Committee.

Children

The service is a general-audience language-learning tool and is not directed at children under 13. Classes are for students aged 18 or older.

Where your data is handled

We operate from the United States, and our servers and your data are stored there. The providers listed above process data in the United States and other countries. If you use the service from outside the United States, including from Thailand, your information is transferred to the United States, which may not have data protection laws equivalent to those where you live. We make that transfer because it is necessary to provide the service you asked for, and we protect your data as this policy describes. Where that transfer is from the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, or the equivalent UK addendum, as the safeguard for it.

Your rights in the EEA and the UK

If the GDPR or UK GDPR applies to you, you have the right to access your data, correct it, delete it, export it, restrict or object to how we use it, and to withdraw consent at any time. Our legal bases for processing are:

• Performance of a contract for running your account, syncing your progress, and handling your subscription.
• Legitimate interests for keeping the service secure, preventing abuse, and fixing faults.
• Consent for anything optional you switch on, such as speech practice using your microphone.
• Legal obligation for keeping records we are required to keep, such as tax records for payments.

You can exercise all of these yourself by deleting your account, or by emailing us. You also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.

Your rights in California

If the CCPA and CPRA apply to you, you have the right to know what personal information we collect and why, to request a copy of it, to have it deleted, and to correct it. You also have the right not to be discriminated against for exercising those rights. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined by California law, and we have not done so in the past twelve months. We do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for purposes beyond providing the service.

Contact

Questions, privacy requests, or copyright concerns:
ALEX SEARS, CPA, LLC
[email protected]

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