Legal
Privacy Policy
The short version: Sayobo gives you an anonymous account, remembers what you have learned, and does nothing else with it. There is no analytics, no advertising and no tracking of any kind.
Last updated
This policy explains what personal data Sayobo collects, why, who processes it and what you can do about it. It covers both the Sayobo app and this website, which collect quite different things.
Who is responsible
Sayobo is run by Alberto Acuña, an individual based in Spain, acting as the data controller under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Spanish Organic Law 3/2018 (LOPDGDD).
For anything in this policy — a question, a request, a complaint — write to hello@sayobo.com. There is no separate privacy team; that address reaches the person responsible.
What the app collects
An account is created for you the first time you open the app. It is anonymous: a random identifier, with no email address, no name and nothing that identifies you personally. It exists so your progress has somewhere to live and so the app can talk to the server at all.
If you later choose to create a permanent account — so your progress survives a new phone — you can sign in with Google, Apple or an email address and password. Only then does Sayobo learn an email address. If you use Sign in with Apple and choose to hide your address, Sayobo only ever sees Apple’s relay address, never your real one.
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| An account identifier | To attach your progress to you and nobody else |
| Your email address, if you create a permanent account | To sign you in, and to send verification or password-reset mail |
| Which lessons you have finished, and where you stopped in the audio | To resume where you left off and to unlock what comes next |
| A review schedule for each word and phrase you have practised | This is the spaced repetition — it decides what you are asked next |
| Which language pair and course version you are on | To serve you the right course |
| Questions you type to the lesson tutor | To answer them, and to keep the conversation there when you come back |
| Descriptions you write when creating a custom course | To generate that course |
| Ordinary server logs (including your IP address) | To keep the service running and to investigate abuse |
That is the whole list. Sayobo contains no analytics SDK, no advertising SDK, no crash reporter and no third-party tracker. It does not collect your contacts, your location, your microphone, your device advertising identifier, or anything about the other apps on your phone. Nothing you do in the app is profiled, and nothing is sold or shared for anyone else’s marketing, ever.
On your device
Downloaded lesson audio, your progress and your course list are also stored locally on your phone so the app works offline. That copy never leaves the device except as described above, and uninstalling the app removes it.
What this website collects
Browsing this site collects nothing. There are no analytics, no cookie banner and no cookies set by Sayobo. Cloudflare, which serves the site, may set a strictly necessary security cookie to distinguish people from bots.
The page loads its two typefaces from Google Fonts, which means your browser
requests them from fonts.gstatic.com and Google therefore sees your IP address
when it does.
If you fill in the “notify me” form, the address you type is stored along with: the date, the country Cloudflare’s edge resolved your connection to, which language version of the page you used, the page path, the referring page, your operating system and your browser’s language. Your IP address is not stored. This is used for one thing: to tell you when Sayobo is released. You can ask to be taken off the list at any time, at hello@sayobo.com.
Why we are allowed to process it
- To provide the app you asked for (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR — performance of a contract): your account, your progress, your review schedule, your custom courses and the tutor.
- With your consent (Art. 6(1)(a)): the waitlist on this website. You can withdraw it at any time, which for a mailing list means asking to be removed.
- Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): keeping the service available, secure, and free from abuse — server logs and the anti-abuse check on the sign-up form.
Who else processes your data
Sayobo is small, so it runs on other people’s infrastructure. These are processors: they act on instructions and may not use your data for their own purposes.
| Who | What they do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Google (Firebase) | Accounts, database, audio storage, the API | United States |
| OpenAI | Writes and voices lesson content; answers your tutor questions | United States |
| Cloudflare | Serves this website and the waitlist form | Global edge network |
Transfers to the United States rely on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses together with the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, where the provider is certified under it.
A note on the tutor and custom courses. When you ask the lesson tutor a question, or describe a custom course you want, that text is sent to OpenAI to produce the answer. Don’t type anything into either that you would not want to leave your phone. OpenAI does not use content submitted through its API to train its models.
Where your data is stored
Your app account and progress are stored in Google Cloud in the United States
(us-central1). The website’s waitlist is stored separately, in a European
Firestore database, and signups from the EU do not leave it.
How long it is kept
- Account and learning data: for as long as your account exists. Delete the account and it goes — see how to delete your account.
- Waitlist address: until Sayobo is released and you have been told, or until you ask to be removed, whichever comes first.
- Server logs: a short retention period, typically 30 days, after which they are discarded automatically.
Your rights
Under the GDPR you can ask to access your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to its processing, and receive a portable copy of it. Where processing rests on consent, you can withdraw that consent at any time without affecting what was done beforehand.
Write to hello@sayobo.com and you will get an answer within one month. You do not need to explain why, and using these rights costs nothing.
If you think your data has been mishandled you can complain to the Spanish data protection authority, the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (www.aepd.es), or to the supervisory authority in the EU country where you live.
Children
Sayobo is not directed at children. If you are under the age of digital consent where you live — 14 in Spain and Italy, 15 in Slovenia, 16 in much of the rest of the EU — please do not create an account without a parent or guardian’s permission. If you believe a child has given us personal data, write to hello@sayobo.com and it will be deleted.
Changes to this policy
This policy will change as Sayobo does. Whenever it does, the date at the top of this page changes with it, and earlier versions stay available on request.
A change that materially affects how your data is handled is posted here before it takes effect, and if your account has an email address attached you will be told by email. Smaller edits — a clearer sentence, a corrected link — are simply made.