FinnSana privacy policy

FinnSana is an app for learning Finnish. This policy explains what happens to your information when you use it. The short version: you can use FinnSana as a guest without any account, and then your learning progress never leaves your device. Signing in with Google or with an email address and password is optional: if you do, your progress is backed up so you can get it back on a new phone (section 2). The app has no advertising and no analytics.

0. Who is responsible for your data

The data controller is Kuvadoo, a sole trader business in Hämeenlinna, Finland. Email: kuvadoo@gmail.com.

1. What stays on your device

To remember your learning, FinnSana saves the following only on your own device, inside the app's private storage:

• your lesson and exercise progress, review schedule, mistakes and skill scores,
• your study streak and study time,
• your settings (daily goal, level, theme, sounds) and game best scores,
• the display name and avatar you choose in Me,
• the words you add yourself, with your notes and the pictures you choose for them,
• if you sign in: your account name, email address, profile-picture link, account ID and the sign-in session (never your password).

As a guest, this information is never sent to us or anyone else. Uninstalling the app (or clearing its storage in your phone's settings) deletes all of it.

Reset progress (Me → Reset progress) deletes from your phone your review schedule, lesson history, mistakes, skill scores, study time, streak, best scores and settings, including the display name and avatar. The words you added yourself, with their notes and pictures, are kept, so you don't lose what you typed; their reviews start again from the beginning. To delete them, remove them in My words. If you are signed in, the reset is also copied to your cloud backup and to your other signed-in phones: the progress made before the reset is removed there too.

2. Optional account (Google or email) and cloud backup

You can choose Continue with Google or Continue with email on the first screen or later in Me → Account & sync. Only if you do:

• With Google: we receive your Google account's name, email address, profile picture and a unique account ID. We never see your Google password.
• With email: you give your email address, a password and optionally a name. The password is handled by Google Firebase Authentication and is never visible to us. Firebase sends the emails to confirm your address and to reset a forgotten password.
• What is backed up: your learning progress from section 1 (lesson and review progress, streak, study time, settings and best scores) and the words you added yourself with their notes. Not backed up: the pictures of your own words and your display name and avatar (they stay on your phone only).
• Why: only to back up your progress and restore it when you sign in on another phone or after reinstalling the app. It is not used for advertising, profiling or anything else, and it is not sold or shared.
• Where: in Google Firebase, run by Google on our behalf as our data processor. Your progress backup (Cloud Firestore) is stored in the EU (Finland, europe-north1). Your sign-in details (Firebase Authentication: name, email, picture, account ID) are processed by Google, which may store them outside your country, including in the United States, under Google's data protection terms (EU Standard Contractual Clauses). When you sign in and when the app backs up, Google also logs your IP address and technical details of your device and app version for security, and keeps these logs for a limited time. FinnSana is used around the world, so if you live outside the EU your data is transferred to the EU and to Google's servers as described here. Data is encrypted in transit. Security rules let each account read and write only its own backup. Google's privacy policy applies: policies.google.com/privacy and firebase.google.com/support/privacy.
• Legal basis (EU): providing the backup service you asked for when you created the account (GDPR Article 6(1)(b)). You can stop it at any time by signing out or deleting your account.

Signing out stops the backup on that phone; your progress stays on the phone and the backup stays in the cloud. Deleting your account (Me → your profile → Delete account) immediately deletes your FinnSana account and its cloud backup; the progress on your phone stays and you continue as a guest. So that a deleted backup cannot be re-created (for example by another phone still signed in to the same account), we keep a record that holds only the random ID of the deleted account (no name, email or progress). You can also ask us to delete your account by email (section 8). See Delete your account and data.

3. What the app does not do

• No account is required; sign-in is optional (section 2). No phone number is asked for.
• No advertising, advertising identifiers or tracking across other apps.
• No location, contacts, camera or microphone access. FinnSana does not record your voice.
• No access to your photo gallery. If you choose to add a picture to one of your own words, you pick it with your phone's photo picker: FinnSana receives only that one picture, keeps a copy inside the app on your phone and never uploads it. Removing the word in My words removes FinnSana's copy of the picture; the photo picker may leave a temporary copy in the app's cache until your phone clears it, and uninstalling the app removes all of them.
• We do not sell your data.

The voices (computer-generated) and pictures are not sent by us: after you install the app, Google Play downloads them to your phone as part of the app (about 700 MB, once). After that FinnSana works offline. An internet connection is used only for that download and for the optional sign-in and cloud backup.

4. How long data is kept

Your learning data stays on your device until you delete it (section 1). If you signed in, your cloud backup and account are kept for as long as the account exists, and deleted when you delete the account or ask us to delete it. Requests by email are handled within 30 days.

5. Your rights

If you live in the EU or a similar region, you have the right to:

• see the personal data we hold about you and get a copy of it,
• have it corrected or deleted,
• receive it in a portable, machine-readable form,
• restrict or object to how it is processed,
• stop the backup at any time (sign out or delete the account), and
• complain to a data protection authority: in Finland the Data Protection Ombudsman (tietosuoja.fi/en), or the authority where you live.

As a guest, all your data is on your own phone and we hold nothing about you. If you signed in (with Google or email), write to us from that address and we export or delete your backup; you can also delete it yourself in the app (Me → your profile → Delete account).

6. Children

FinnSana is meant for learners aged 13 and over and is not directed at younger children. As a guest it collects no personal data. Creating an account is optional.

7. Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be published at this address with a new date.

8. Contact

Questions or requests about privacy: kuvadoo@gmail.com (Kuvadoo, Hämeenlinna, Finland).