Worso Privacy Policy
Version 2 · Effective: 7 September 2026
This Privacy Policy explains what personal data Vladislav Govorukhin, Hlaváčikova 17, Bratislava, Slovakia ("Worso", "we") collects when you use the Worso app and account service (the "Service"), why, who receives it, how long we keep it and what rights you have. We are the controller of this data. Contact us at dr.vains@gmail.com.
The short version. Text recognition happens on your phone; your photos and the recognised text never reach us. Our servers see your email address, the individual words you ask cards for, anonymous word counts from your scans, your subscription status and technical usage counters. We do not sell your data, do not show ads, do not use tracking or analytics SDKs and do not use your data to train AI models.
1. Data that stays on your device
The app stores the following only on your device (and in your own iCloud Drive if you use the manual backup in Settings → Backup):
- small thumbnails of the pages you scan and the full text recognised from them, per session;
- your word lists, learning cards, learning statuses and repetition schedule;
- cached pronunciation clips, illustrations and frequency charts;
- app preferences (interface language, default languages, learning settings).
We have no access to this data. It is covered by your device's own backup settings (iCloud or computer backup) under Apple's terms. The iCloud Drive backup file (WorsoBackup.plist) is created only when you tap "Back up" and is stored in your iCloud account, which Apple controls; deleting your Worso account does not delete that file.
Text recognition uses Apple's on-device Vision framework. No image or recognised text is transmitted to us or to any AI provider.
2. Data we collect on our servers
2.1 Account data
| Data | Source | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | you, or Google / Apple when you use social sign-in (Apple may give us a private relay address) | account identity, sign-in codes, security notices |
| Password (stored only as a salted hash) | you | authentication |
| Google or Apple account identifier ("subject") | Google / Apple | to recognise you on later sign-ins |
| Apple refresh token | Apple, if you use Sign in with Apple | kept only so we can revoke the Apple sign-in when you delete your account |
| Email-verified flag, account role, accepted Terms version, account creation and last-activity time (rounded to 5 minutes) | generated | account operation, proof of acceptance |
We do not collect your name, phone number, date of birth, address, contacts, location or device identifiers.
2.2 Sign-in codes and emails
Sign-in and confirmation codes are stored as hashes with their expiry and attempt counters. A log of every email we send you (recipient, subject, body, delivery status) is kept for 30 days so that we can help you if a code did not arrive. The body of such an email contains the code itself.
2.3 Words and cards
- Card requests. When you open a card, the app sends us the single word, the source language and the target language. We look the word up in a shared cache and, if absent, generate a card (Section 4). The card is stored in the shared cache together with the word and a reference to the account that first requested it (so we can prevent abuse). That reference is removed when you delete your account.
- Pronunciation. The text to be spoken (a word, a word form or an example sentence taken from a card) is sent to us and cached with the resulting audio and a reference to the requesting account, removed on account deletion.
- Illustrations and frequency charts are generated or fetched per card, not per user, and cached with the same account reference.
- Scan reports. After each scan the app sends us the language pair, the number of words and unique words, how many already had cards, and a list of up to 3,000 recognised words with how often each occurred. We store the counts and the language pair against your account, and we add the words to a global, anonymous frequency table ("this word was scanned N times in language X") that is not linked to any account and cannot be linked back. The list of words is not stored per user. Proper nouns in your text may therefore appear in the global table as bare words with a count.
- Card reports. If you report a card, we store the word, languages, your message and a reference to your account, and the report is emailed to our support mailbox together with your email address so we can reply.
- Unrecognised tokens. When a model decides a token is not a word, we count how often that token was asked and keep a reference to the last account that asked, for abuse monitoring.
2.4 Usage limits and AI accounting
To enforce free-tier allowances and fair-use limits we store per account: cards used today, AI tokens used in the current window and in total, speech characters and images used, and a request log with the model name, request type, token counts, status and error message. The request log never contains the word, the prompt or the model's answer. It is kept for 90 days and is de-linked from your account when you delete it.
2.5 Subscription data
If you subscribe to Worso Premium, Apple sends us a signed transaction. We store the Apple original transaction identifier, product identifier, expiry date and environment (production or sandbox) linked to your account. We never receive your payment card, billing address or Apple ID password; Apple processes payment under its own privacy policy.
2.6 Technical data
- Connection data. Our infrastructure providers (Cloudflare, our hosting provider) process your IP address and standard HTTP metadata (user agent, request path, time, status) to deliver the Service and defend it against abuse. Our web server writes access logs containing this data; the application itself does not store IP addresses. In-memory rate limiters hold the IP address for at most one hour.
- Operational metrics. We collect aggregated service metrics and per-account usage counters (cards, tokens, scans, speech, images) keyed to your internal account identifier, to monitor cost and abuse. They are not used for advertising or profiling.
- Application logs may contain your account identifier and, when a request fails, the word being looked up; they never contain your password.
We do not use analytics, advertising or crash-reporting SDKs, do not use cookies, do not use the Apple advertising identifier and do not track you across apps or websites.
3. Why we process your data and on what legal basis
| Purpose | Data | Legal basis (GDPR / UK GDPR) |
|---|---|---|
| Creating and operating your account, sign-in, verification codes | account data, sign-in codes, email log | performance of a contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) |
| Generating and delivering cards, pronunciation, illustrations, frequency charts | words and card requests, speech text | performance of a contract |
| Managing your subscription and free-tier allowance | subscription data, usage counters | performance of a contract |
| Preventing abuse and fraud; securing the Service | account references in caches, request log, rate-limit data, IP address in access logs | legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) — protecting the Service and its users |
| Improving the Service: anonymous word statistics, quality of shared cards, capacity planning | scan word table (anonymous), scan counts, operational metrics | legitimate interests — understanding how the Service is used; the data is minimised or anonymised |
| Answering support requests and card reports | your message, email address | performance of a contract / legitimate interests |
| Complying with legal obligations, e.g. tax and consumer law, lawful requests | subscription data, account data | legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, you may object (Section 8). We do not make decisions with legal or similarly significant effects about you by automated means. Providing your email address is necessary to have an account; everything else is optional or arises from features you choose to use.
4. Artificial-intelligence providers
Cards, pronunciation clips and illustrations are produced by third-party machine-learning models. What they receive is limited to the word (or the text to be spoken, or the card text to illustrate), the language pair and our fixed instructions. They never receive your identity, email, account identifier, IP address, photo or recognised text.
| Provider | Used for | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic, PBC (Claude models) | learning cards | United States |
| OpenAI, L.L.C. (GPT models) | pronunciation clips, illustrations, learning cards as fallback | United States |
| Google Books Ngram Viewer (public service) | word-frequency charts, receives the word and language only | United States |
We use these providers under their business/API terms, under which they do not use our requests to train their models and retain them only for limited abuse-monitoring periods set by the provider. We do not use your data to train any model of our own. We may change providers; the current list is always in this Policy.
Generated Content is labelled as AI-generated in the app. It may be inaccurate; see the Terms of Service.
5. Who else receives your data
We share personal data only with processors that help us run the Service, under contracts that bind them to use it only on our instructions:
- Scaleway SAS (France) — cloud hosting of our servers and database in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and delivery of our emails (Transactional Email).
- Cloudflare, Inc. (United States) — DNS, TLS termination and protection of our API; processes connection data.
- Apple Inc. — Sign in with Apple, App Store purchases and subscription validation, under Apple's privacy policy.
- Google LLC — Sign in with Google, if you choose it; we receive only your email, its verified status and your Google account identifier.
- AI providers listed in Section 4.
We may also disclose data if required by law or a valid legal request, to protect the rights, safety or property of Worso or others, or as part of a merger, acquisition or sale of assets (with notice to you). We do not sell personal data and do not share it for advertising.
6. International transfers
Our servers are in the European Union (Netherlands). Some providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, Cloudflare, Apple, Google) are in the United States. For transfers from the EEA, UK and Switzerland we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (with the UK Addendum where relevant) and, where the provider is certified, the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. Where the word sent to a provider carries no identity, the transfer involves no personal data at all. You may request a copy of the relevant safeguards at dr.vains@gmail.com.
7. How long we keep data
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Account data, subscription data, usage counters | while your account exists; deleted when you delete the account |
| Email log (incl. codes) | 30 days |
| Used sign-in codes | 7 days |
| AI request log (no content) | 90 days, de-linked from the account on deletion |
| Shared card, speech and image caches | indefinitely, as shared content; the reference to your account is removed on deletion |
| Anonymous scan word table | indefinitely (not personal data) |
| Scan counts, card reports, unrecognised-token references | while your account exists |
| Web-server access logs and application logs | 15 days; aggregated usage metrics 90 days |
| Encrypted database backups | rolling, up to 15 days |
| Inactive accounts | deleted after 24 months of inactivity following 30 days' notice |
8. Your rights
8.1 All users
You can see your email, change your password and delete your account in the app. For anything else, email dr.vains@gmail.com. We answer within 30 days (45 days for California requests) and may ask you to confirm the request from the account's email address.
Depending on where you live you have the right to access your data and receive a copy, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to processing based on legitimate interests, to data portability, to withdraw consent where processing is based on consent (this does not affect processing before withdrawal), and to not be discriminated against for exercising your rights. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority: in the EU, the authority of your country of residence (list at edpb.europa.eu); in the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office; in Mexico, the Secretaría Anticorrupción y Buen Gobierno.
8.2 Deleting your account
Settings → Subscription → Delete account. We ask you to confirm with your password or an emailed code. Deletion is immediate and permanent on our production database: your account row and everything linked to it (sign-in codes, usage counters, subscription record, scan counts, card reports) is erased, your emails are removed from the email log, and your Apple sign-in token is revoked with Apple. Shared cards, audio and images you triggered stay in the cache but no longer reference you. Deleted data disappears from backups within 15 days. Data on your device and in your iCloud Drive is not touched; delete the app and the backup file yourself if you wish.
Deleting your account does not cancel an App Store subscription; cancel it in your Apple ID settings.
8.3 Residents of the EEA, UK and Switzerland
Sections 3, 6 and 8.1 describe your GDPR / UK GDPR rights. Our legal basis for each purpose is in Section 3. We are established in Slovakia; the lead supervisory authority is the Office for Personal Data Protection of the Slovak Republic (dataprotection.gov.sk). We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer; dr.vains@gmail.com reaches the person responsible.
8.4 Residents of the United States
We do not sell personal information, do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, do not use it for targeted advertising and do not process sensitive personal information other than account credentials. In the last 12 months we collected the categories described in Section 2 (identifiers: email, account and Apple transaction identifiers; internet activity: usage counters and connection data; commercial information: subscription status) from you, Apple and Google, for the purposes in Section 3, and disclosed them to the processors in Section 5. Residents of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Utah, Texas, Oregon and other states with consumer-privacy laws may exercise the rights in Section 8.1, including the right to know, delete, correct and to appeal a refusal by writing to dr.vains@gmail.com. We honour Global Privacy Control signals where applicable; because we do not sell or share data, no opt-out is needed. Authorised agents may submit requests with proof of authority.
8.5 Residentes en México — Aviso de Privacidad Integral
Responsable. Vladislav Govorukhin, con domicilio en Hlaváčikova 17, Bratislava, Slovakia, correo dr.vains@gmail.com, es responsable del tratamiento de sus datos personales conforme a la Ley Federal de Protección de Datos Personales en Posesión de los Particulares.
Datos personales que tratamos. Correo electrónico; contraseña (almacenada únicamente como hash); identificador de cuenta de Google o Apple si usa esos inicios de sesión; estado de suscripción e identificador de transacción de Apple; contadores de uso (tarjetas, tokens, escaneos); las palabras individuales que consulta y el par de idiomas; dirección IP y metadatos de conexión en registros técnicos. No tratamos datos personales sensibles. Las fotografías y el texto reconocido permanecen en su dispositivo.
Finalidades primarias (necesarias). Crear y administrar su cuenta; verificar su identidad mediante códigos por correo; generar y entregar tarjetas de aprendizaje, pronunciación e ilustraciones; administrar su suscripción y las cuotas del plan gratuito; atender sus reportes y solicitudes de soporte; cumplir obligaciones legales.
Finalidades secundarias (no necesarias). Estadística anónima de palabras escaneadas y métricas de uso para mejorar el servicio. Si no desea que sus datos se traten para estas finalidades, escríbanos a dr.vains@gmail.com; su negativa no afectará el servicio.
Transferencias. Sus datos se remiten a encargados que actúan por nuestra cuenta (alojamiento en la Unión Europea — Scaleway; protección de red — Cloudflare, EE. UU.; proveedores de inteligencia artificial — Anthropic y OpenAI, EE. UU., que reciben únicamente la palabra y los idiomas, nunca su identidad; Apple y Google para inicio de sesión y compras). No realizamos transferencias a terceros que requieran su consentimiento, salvo las exigidas por ley. Si en el futuro fuera necesaria una transferencia que requiera consentimiento, se lo solicitaremos expresamente y podrá negarse.
Derechos ARCO y revocación. Usted puede ejercer sus derechos de Acceso, Rectificación, Cancelación y Oposición, revocar su consentimiento y limitar el uso o divulgación de sus datos enviando una solicitud a dr.vains@gmail.com con su nombre, el correo de la cuenta, la descripción clara de los datos y el derecho que desea ejercer. Responderemos en un plazo máximo de 20 días hábiles. También puede eliminar su cuenta directamente en la aplicación (Ajustes → Suscripción → Eliminar cuenta). Si considera que su derecho a la protección de datos ha sido vulnerado, puede acudir a la Secretaría Anticorrupción y Buen Gobierno.
Cambios al aviso. Cualquier modificación se publicará en la aplicación y en https://worso-api.vainslab.cc/legal/privacy, indicando la fecha de la última actualización.
9. Children
The Service is not directed to children and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16. If you believe a child under 16 has an account, contact dr.vains@gmail.com and we will delete it. Because any real word can be looked up, cards may describe adult vocabulary; the App Store age rating reflects this.
10. Security
Data in transit is encrypted with TLS. Passwords are stored as bcrypt hashes; sign-in codes as SHA-256 hashes. Access to our servers requires key-based authentication and is limited to the operator. Our database is not reachable from the internet. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your data we will notify you and the competent authority as the law requires.
11. Changes to this Policy
We will post updates in the app (Settings → Privacy Policy) and at https://worso-api.vainslab.cc/legal/privacy with a new effective date. For material changes we will notify you by email or in the app at least 30 days before they take effect and, where the law requires, ask for your consent.
12. Contact
Vladislav Govorukhin · Hlaváčikova 17, Bratislava, Slovakia · dr.vains@gmail.com