App: Lingua News
Developer: Natalia Waligóra
Last updated: October 2026
When you sign in with Google, we receive:
If you instead create an account with an email address and password, we store your email address (used only to identify your account) and a unique user ID. Your password is handled by Firebase Authentication, which keeps only a securely hashed form of it; we never see or store your password ourselves. Firebase also sends you the emails this needs — a link to verify your address and, if you ask for one, a link to reset your password.
We also store the following, both on your device and in your account on Firebase so that it syncs across devices:
If you send us feedback from inside the app, we store what you wrote together with your user ID, so we can understand the context and follow up. Sending feedback is entirely optional.
We collect anonymous usage analytics via Google Analytics for Firebase: app opens, screens viewed, lessons started/completed, scores and similar in-app events, together with device type, app version and language. Google Analytics also records which country a request came from; Google works this out on its own servers from the network (IP) address. The app itself never asks for or reads your device’s location — it holds no location permission at all. This data is aggregated and used only to understand how the app is used and to improve it — it is not used to identify you personally.
Optional: saying a word aloud (microphone). In a review, the “Say it” exercise lets you say a word out loud so the app can check it. The microphone is used only while you have tapped the microphone button and the screen shows that it is listening — at most a few seconds each time — and the app asks for your permission the first time. Your voice is turned into text by the speech-recognition service of your phone’s operating system (on Android usually Google’s, on iOS Apple’s), under that company’s own privacy policy; depending on the phone and your settings this may happen on the company’s servers. The app receives only the resulting text, compares it with the word and then discards it. We do not record, store or send your voice or what you said to our servers, and we do not use it for analytics, advertising or to identify you. You can refuse the permission or switch it off at any time in your phone’s settings; the exercise then works by building the word from letters instead, and nothing else in the app changes.
When the app runs into a problem, Firebase Crashlytics sends us a crash or error report. These reports contain technical diagnostic information — the type of error and where it happened in the app, device model, operating system version, app version and app performance details — together with your user ID and email address, so we can tell whether a problem affects one person or everyone. We use them only to find and fix faults.
Optional: screen recording to improve the app. Only if you switch on “Help us improve the app” in Settings (it is off by default, and applies from the next launch), the app records how you use it with Microsoft Clarity: where you tap and scroll and which screens you move between, together with device type, operating system version, app version and an approximate location derived from your network address. The recordings show the screens of the app, but personal content is hidden: your name and photo, your email address and password, anything you type (such as your own topics or feedback) and your list of topics are hidden from the recording. The news and lessons shown in the app are not personal data and are visible. Microsoft processes this data under its own privacy policy. You can switch it off at any time in Settings; recording then stops immediately and nothing further is sent.
Firebase also generates an installation identifier for your copy of the app. It lets analytics and crash reports from the same installation be grouped together. It is not the Android advertising ID; the app does not collect or send the Android advertising ID.
Optional: helping us measure our ads (Meta). The first time you use the app, we ask whether you are happy for us to tell Meta when one of our Facebook or Instagram ads leads to an install. It is your choice, and the app works exactly the same either way. Only if you say yes, the Meta SDK built into the app sends Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd. and its affiliates (“Meta”) the fact that the app was opened and that you finished a lesson, together with the technical data any internet request carries: your IP address, device model, operating system version and language, and an anonymous identifier that Meta’s SDK creates for this installation. We never send what you read, your vocabulary, your answers, your name, your email address or your account ID. Meta uses this information to measure how our ads perform and to show them to people who are likely to be interested, as described in Meta’s Privacy Policy. We rely on your consent (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR), and you can withdraw it at any time in Settings → Help LinguaNews reach more learners; from then on nothing more is sent.
Which ad brought you here. When you install from Google Play after tapping one of our ads, Google Play records where the link came from (the “install referrer”). On first launch the app reads it and, if it carries an encrypted ad reference from Meta, sends it to our server only to be decoded into the name of the ad, ad set and campaign. We do not store the referrer on the server. The app then keeps those names as anonymous properties in Google Analytics for Firebase, so we can tell which ad works. The reference identifies an ad, not you, and this step sends nothing to Meta.
We do not sell your data. We share data with other companies only as described in sections 1 and 3: with the services that run the app for us (Firebase, Groq) and, only if you agree, with Meta for ad measurement.
Your data is stored as long as your account exists. You can delete your account and everything associated with it at any time from Settings → Delete account in the app, or by following the steps on our account deletion page.
Anonymous usage statistics collected through Google Analytics for Firebase are kept for up to 14 months and are not deleted together with your account, because they can no longer be linked back to you.
If you turn off the Meta setting, we stop sending data to Meta immediately. Data Meta has already received is held under Meta’s own policy; you can manage it with the “activity off Meta technologies” controls in your Facebook or Instagram settings.
Lingua News is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect data from children.
Questions? Email us at: linguanewsapp@gmail.com