Privacy Policy — Language News
Last updated: 1 November 2026
Language News takes news articles, rewrites them in the language you are learning at a level you can read, and adapts to you over time. Doing that needs a small amount of information about you. This page says exactly what, where it goes, and how to get rid of it.
It describes the app as it actually works, not a general template. If something here does not match what the app does, the app is wrong and I want to know.
What the app stores about you
Your account
Your email address. It identifies your account and is where password-reset mail goes.
A display name, if you choose to give one. It is optional and you can leave it blank.
Your password is never stored by this app. Accounts are handled by Google's Firebase Authentication, which holds your password in a hashed form. The app's own server never sees it.
Your settings
The language you are learning and the language you read in.
The reading level you declared.
Your time zone, as a region name such as Europe/London. This is used to decide when "today" starts for you, so your edition arrives at 06:00 where you actually are. It is not your location — it is a zone name reported by your device, and it cannot identify where you are beyond that.
The topics you said you were interested in or wanted to avoid.
How you use it
Your rating of each article: whether it was too easy, about right or too hard, and whether it interested you. Both are optional and you can clear a rating by tapping it again.
The editions generated for you and the articles in them.
What the app works out about you
From your ratings, the app builds a small profile of your reading: claims such as "finds past-tense verb endings hard" or "interested in football", each with a count of how much evidence supports it. This is what makes the app adapt, and it is the most personal thing it holds. It is tied to your account and is deleted with it.
What the app does not collect
No analytics. No advertising, and no advertising identifiers. No tracking across other apps or websites. No GPS or precise location. No contacts, photos, microphone or camera. No device identifiers beyond what signing in requires.
The app contains no analytics SDK at all — only Firebase's authentication component is installed.
Who else handles your information
Google (Firebase Authentication) holds your email address and your hashed password, and issues the token that proves to the app's server who you are. Google's handling of that data is covered by their own privacy terms.
Anthropic provides the language models that rewrite each article. For every edition, the app sends the model: the headline and summary of the candidate articles, the language you are learning, your declared level, your topic preferences, and the reading profile described above.
Your email address, your name and your account id are never sent to the model provider. The requests contain your reading profile but nothing that identifies you by name or address.
Railway hosts the server and its database.
News publishers. Articles come from public RSS feeds — currently the BBC, The Guardian and Ars Technica. The app's server fetches those feeds; your device does not contact the publishers, so they receive nothing about you. Tapping through to read an original article opens that publisher's site directly, and from then on their own privacy terms apply.
How long it is kept
Your account and everything attached to it are kept for as long as the account exists. Editions are not deleted on a schedule — your reading history stays until you remove the account.
Deleting your account
Settings → Delete account, inside the app. This is immediate and permanent:
your profile, settings, editions, ratings and reading profile are deleted from the app's database;
your sign-in account is then deleted from Firebase.
There is no undo and no grace period. If you want a copy of anything, take it first.
Your rights
If you are in the UK or the EU, you have rights over your personal data including access, correction, deletion and portability. Deletion is built into the app as above. For anything else, contact me and I will deal with it.
Children
Language News is not directed at children and I do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected or who it is shared with, the date at the top will change and the app will say so.
Contact
wordchesthelp@gmail.com