Privacy Policy

This policy explains what information Yapzy ("we", "us") collects when you use the Yapzy mobile app and related services (the "Service"), how we use it, what we keep and for how long, and the choices you have. We keep this simple and specific — we describe what the Service actually does, not boilerplate.

1. Information we collect

Account information

• Sign-in identity. Authentication is provided by Google Firebase. If you sign in with Google, we receive your Google account name and email address. If you continue as a guest, we receive neither — only an anonymous account identifier.
• Display name. The name you set in the app. Your friends can see it in their friends list and chats. Users who are not your friends only ever see a single initial derived from it (for example on the home screen), never the full name.
• Gender. The gender you declare in the app (male/female). It is used for matchmaking preferences and daily match limits.
• Email you give us voluntarily. If you use Settings → Send feedback you may add your email address so we can reply. That field is optional and can be left blank.

Device information

• Device identifier. On Android we collect the device's Android ID. We use it to enforce fair-use daily limits and free trials per device, and to prevent abuse (for example, creating new accounts to evade a ban or reset a daily limit). While your account is active, the device identifier is linked to it; that link is removed when you delete your account.
• Push notification token. A Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) token and platform type, so we can deliver notifications (for example, new messages or incoming friend calls).
• Crash and diagnostic reports. We use Firebase Crashlytics (Google) to receive crash reports and basic diagnostic information when the app fails, so we can fix it. These reports describe the fault and the device, not what you said.

Usage and presence

• Daily match counters (per account and per device) used to apply fair-use limits.
• Online status and a "last connected" timestamp, visible to your friends.

Content you create

• Chat messages. Text messages you exchange with friends are stored on our servers so your conversation history can be delivered and synced, together with delivered/read state. Typing indicators are transient and not stored.
• Practice recordings and transcripts. If you use AI Mode, your own voice is recorded and sent to be turned into text, and that text is saved to your account. Section 4 explains this in full — what is sent, who processes it, and how long each part is kept.
• Ratings and reports. After a call you can rate the other person (thumb up or down, with a reason on a thumb-down), and during a call you can report them. We store who rated/reported whom, the reason, and when. These records power our moderation and automatic-ban systems.

Payments

• If you buy a report pack, payment is taken on our payment provider's own checkout page. Your card, bank or UPI details never reach Yapzy. We receive and store only the payment reference, the amount, the status, and what it entitled you to.

Technical data

• IP addresses and basic request logs, used for security, abuse prevention and keeping the Service running. Call media may pass through our relay servers when a direct connection between devices is not possible (see section 2).

2. Voice calls are not recorded

Voice calls on Yapzy are real-time and peer-to-peer (WebRTC). We do not record, store, or listen to your calls. When a direct connection between two devices is not possible, the encrypted audio stream is relayed through our TURN relay server, which passes it through without storing it. What you say on a call exists only for the duration of the call.

One exception, and it only ever applies to you. If you switch on AI Mode during a call to get feedback on your own English, your own microphone is captured for that purpose and handled as described in section 4. The other person's voice is never captured — technically it travels a different path inside the app and never reaches the recorder, so nothing belonging to someone who did not switch this on is recorded or sent anywhere. Nobody can use this to record you.

Please remember the person you are talking to is a stranger: we cannot control what they do, including whether they record you using another device. Do not share personal information on calls.

3. Voice verification clips

Accounts that declare female gender may be asked to complete a one-time voice verification: the app shows a random sentence and you record yourself reading it (a short audio clip, up to 2 MB). This exists to keep matchmaking honest and safe. These clips are handled under strict rules:

• A clip is used only to decide the verification and for nothing else.
• It is reviewed by a human member of our team — there is no public access, and clips are never shared or published.
• The clip is deleted from our servers the moment a decision is made (approved or denied), and in every case no later than 24 hours after upload.
• Only the resulting status (verified / denied / pending) is kept on your account.
• Deleting your account also deletes any pending verification data, including any clip still held.

4. AI Mode: practice recordings and transcripts

AI Mode is the part of Yapzy that gives you feedback on your English. You can use it on its own, or switch it on during a call. Either way it records your own microphone only, and using it is entirely your choice — Yapzy works without it.

The recording

• It is sent to our servers to be turned into text. It is held in memory for the life of that one request and is never written to a file, a database or a log on our side. When the text comes back, our copy is gone.
• A speech-to-text provider processes it. To convert speech into text we pass the audio to Groq, a speech-to-text provider based in the United States, acting on our behalf. This means the recording is processed outside India. They receive the audio, return the text, and are not permitted to use it for anything else.
• We do not sell your voice, use it for advertising, or use it to train AI models — ours or anyone else's.
• Long recordings are shortened before upload. If a session runs past about eight minutes of speech, only the most recent part is sent, and the app tells you that it was shortened rather than doing it silently.

Recordings kept on your own phone

AI Mode keeps your last five practice recordings on your device, inside Yapzy's private app storage, so you can play back what you said next to the correction. These never leave your phone and we cannot read them. Older ones are deleted automatically as new ones replace them, and signing out, deleting your account or uninstalling Yapzy removes them all.

The transcript

The text of a practice session is saved to your account. This is what lets Yapzy measure how your English is improving — your speaking pace, filler words, the range of vocabulary you use, how long you speak without stopping, and the grammar points worth looking at.

The words are kept for 30 days and then deleted automatically. What stays is the measurements taken from them, so your progress and your history remain intact: we keep the numbers, not the sentences. After that window a session still counts toward your progress, but its written report can no longer be opened — and you are told it is too old to review rather than being shown an empty one.

5. How we use your information

• To operate the Service: create your account, match you with other users, connect calls, deliver messages and notifications.
• To give you feedback on your English and track your progress, if you use AI Mode.
• To apply fair-use limits: daily cross-gender match limits and per-device free trials.
• To keep the community safe: process ratings and reports, apply automatic and manual bans (including device-level bans), and verify accounts as described above.
• To take payment for report packs and grant what you bought.
• To secure and maintain the Service: debugging, crash diagnosis, abuse and fraud prevention.

We do not use your data for advertising, and we do not sell your personal information to anyone.

6. What we share (and what we don't)

• With other users: your display name (friends) or its initial (non-friends), your online/last-connected status (friends), your gender (used in matching), and the messages you send them. Never your email address or device identifiers.
• Service providers: we use Google Firebase (Google LLC) for authentication, push notifications and crash reporting; Groq (United States) to convert practice recordings into text; a payment provider to take payments; and hosting providers (such as Hetzner) to run our servers. These providers process data on our behalf to provide the Service.
• Legal: we may disclose information if required by law, or where necessary to investigate abuse, protect users' safety, or enforce our Terms of Service.
• No selling, no ad networks, no third-party analytics.

7. How long we keep data

8. Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time, either from inside the app or on our public deletion page: delete-account.html. Deletion is permanent and cannot be undone. It removes:

• your profile and account record, and your Firebase login (so the account can no longer sign in);
• your friendships, friend requests, and blocks (in both directions);
• the link between your account and your device identifier;
• your push notification tokens;
• your voice-verification records, including any clip still held;
• your practice sessions, transcripts and progress measurements, and the practice recordings held on your own phone.

As described in section 7, safety records (reports, ratings, ban records), anonymous per-device counters, payment records we must keep for accounting, and messages you already sent to friends may be retained.

9. Your rights

Depending on where you live (for example under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, or the EU/UK GDPR), you may have rights to access, correct, or delete your personal data, to withdraw consent, and to complain to a supervisory authority.

• Access & correction: most of your data (name, gender, friends, messages) is visible and editable directly in the app.
• Deletion: use in-app account deletion or the deletion page.
• Anything else: email us at support.yapzy@gmail.com and we will respond as soon as we reasonably can. This is also our grievance contact.

10. Age requirement

Yapzy is for adults only. You must be at least 18 years old to use the Service. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If we learn that a user is under 18 we will terminate the account and delete its data. If you believe someone on Yapzy is under 18, please report them in-app (report reason "underage") or email us.

11. Security

All traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit (TLS; calls use WebRTC encryption). Verification clips are stored outside any public web directory, are accessible only to authorized reviewers, and are deleted on decision. Practice recordings are never written to disk on our servers at all — they are held in memory for the single request that transcribes them. Access to production systems is restricted. No system is perfectly secure, but we design for data minimisation: of the most sensitive thing we handle — your voice — calls are never recorded, practice recordings are never stored, and verification clips are stored for hours at most.

12. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will update this page and its effective date, and for material changes we will notify you in the app. Continued use of the Service after a change means you accept the updated policy.

If we change how your voice or your recordings are handled, we will update this page and the Google Play Data Safety information at the same time, before the change reaches the app.

13. Contact us

Questions, concerns, or requests about your data:
support.yapzy@gmail.com