Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains what WordSpies ("we", "us") collects, why, who processes it on our behalf, and the choices you have. We collect only what we need to run the service.

Who we are

WordSpies is an independent language-exchange community based in the United Kingdom. Contact: contact@wordspies.co.uk.

What we collect

• Account information — display name, email address, date of birth (used for the 18+ age check — required, we store the date you gave), and a bcrypt hash of your password. If you sign in with Google, we receive your Google name, email and profile photo, and you provide your date of birth to us the first time you sign in.
• Profile content — the profile photo, city, and short bio you choose to add.
• Messages, voice messages and party audio — direct messages (text, GIF selections, voice notes) are stored on our servers to deliver them. Live party audio is relayed in real time and is not recorded by us.
• Follows and social graph — who you follow and who follows you.
• Approximate location — derived from your IP address at sign-up to suggest your city. We do not collect precise GPS location.
• Technical logs — IP address, browser type, device type, and page requests for security and abuse prevention. Session cookies keep you signed in.
• Push notification identifiers — if you opt in to push notifications, we store the endpoint your browser gives us so we can deliver them.

How we use it

• To let you sign in, message others, join parties, and play games.
• To send you invite, message and follower notifications (email, push) that you have not disabled.
• To keep the service secure and abuse-free (rate limits, block/report enforcement).
• To understand aggregate usage via anonymised analytics.

We do not sell your personal information. We do not use your messages or photos to train AI models.

Who processes data on our behalf

• Google Sign-In (Google LLC) — authentication if you use "Sign in with Google".
• Cloudflare Realtime SFU (Cloudflare Inc.) — relays live party audio in real time. No recordings.
• Brevo (Sendinblue SAS) — transactional email (invites, password resets, notifications).
• DigitalOcean — server hosting (London, UK).
• Google Analytics — anonymised usage statistics.
• Google AdSense & advertising partners — if enabled, may display ads on pages such as the homepage and blog. Ad partners (Google and its network) may use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits and interests. You can opt out of personalised ads at adssettings.google.com. Ads are never shown on the community, chat, party, or game pages.

Cookies & consent

We use three kinds of cookies:

• Essential — session cookies that keep you signed in and remember which chat / party you were in. These load without asking because the site cannot work without them.
• Analytics — anonymised page-view counts via Google Analytics. Only loaded after you accept cookies.
• Advertising — cookies set by Google AdSense and its partners to serve ads on marketing pages (home, blog). Only loaded after you accept cookies.

The first time you visit we ask you to Accept all or Reject all. If you reject, analytics and advertising cookies never load — you can still use the whole site. You can change your choice any time by clearing site data in your browser settings and reloading.

Retention

Account data is kept while your account is active. When you delete your account (Me → Delete account) we remove your profile, photo, messages, follows, and session tokens immediately. Server logs are kept for up to 30 days for abuse investigation.

Your rights (UK/EU GDPR)

You may access, correct, export or delete personal data we hold about you. Most is available inside the app; for anything else email contact@wordspies.co.uk and we will respond within 30 days. You may also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Age

WordSpies is strictly for users aged 18 and over. We ask for your date of birth at sign-up and refuse to create an account if you are under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a person under 18 has an account, email safety@wordspies.co.uk and we will investigate and, where appropriate, remove the account.

To keep our community safe we may, in future, ask you to complete a one-time identity or age verification via a trusted third-party provider (for example a selfie-plus-ID-document check, or an email-verification step). We will not do this without notice, and we will not share any documents you provide with anyone other than the verification provider strictly to complete the check.

Changes

We may update this policy. Material changes will be reflected by the "Last updated" date above.