1. Who we are
Speak Tongues is made by Terra Virgo Corporation, a California corporation based in Fairfax, California (“we”, “us”). We are responsible for the personal information described in this policy. You can reach us at support@speaktongues.com.
This policy covers the Speak Tongues apps for iPhone and Android, the website at speaktongues.com, and the page guests use to join a group conversation in their browser (together, “Speak Tongues”).
2. The short version
- The audio of what you say is sent to our AI provider to be turned into text, and is never stored.
- The text of your conversations and sign translations is kept in your history for 30 days, then deleted automatically. You can delete any of it, or your whole account, at any time.
- Photos of signs and menus are translated and then discarded.
- Your email address is used to sign you in, to answer you when you write to us, and to contact you about your account or the service.
- A phone number is required to create an account. We use it only to contact you about your account or the service. We never sell it or share it for advertising, and you can change it at any time.
- We show no ads, use no analytics or tracking, and never sell or share your personal information.
- Payments go through Apple and Google. We never see your card details.
- Speak Tongues is for people 13 and older.
3. What we collect and why
Your account
- Email address: to sign you in (we email you a 6-digit code instead of using a password), to reply when you contact us, and to contact you about your account or the service, for example about a billing or security problem.
- Phone number: required to create an account; you give it when you sign up, in the app or on the website. We use it only to contact you about your account or the service, for example about a billing or security problem. We never sell it or share it for advertising, and we won't make marketing calls or send marketing texts to it unless you separately agree to that. You can change it at any time in the app or on your account page, and it is deleted with your account.
- First name: shown to the people in your group conversations and in transcripts of them.
- Your language: the language we translate into for you.
- Sign-ins: for each phone or browser you sign in on, the kind of device (iPhone, Android or web) and a short description such as “Safari on iPhone”, so your sign-ins can be told apart. Sign-in codes expire after 10 minutes.
Conversations
- Audio: while a conversation runs, what the microphone hears is streamed from your device to OpenAI to be transcribed. We never store the audio.
- Text: what each person said, as text, and its translations. We use it to show the conversation, to translate it, to read it aloud, and to keep it in your history.
- Speaking details: for each sentence, how loud and how long it was, measured on the device, and which translations the device had just played. We use these only to work out who spoke and to keep a phone from translating its own translations back.
Group conversations
Guests join without an account and never give us an email address. For each guest we keep the first name and language they enter, whether they joined from somewhere else, whether they joined from a browser or the app, what they say (as text), and a record that they saw and accepted the notice described in section 7. Each guest gets a key that works only for that one conversation.
Signs and menus
When you translate a sign, the photo is sent to OpenAI to read and translate the text, and then discarded. We keep the text that was found and its translation in your history.
Payments
You pay through Apple's App Store or Google Play. They send us a record of each purchase: what was bought, the price, the date, the store's transaction number and, later, whether it was refunded. We never receive your card number, billing address or other payment details. We also keep the charges on your tab: what each conversation or sign cost and when.
Messages to support
When you write to us, through the form on our support page or by email, we receive your email address, your name if you give it, the topic and your message.
Technical information
Like every website and app server, ours see the IP address and basic details of each request (the time, the page or function asked for, and any error). We use them to keep Speak Tongues running and secure and to limit abuse, for example to stop someone from guessing conversation codes. We don't use them to build profiles or for advertising.
On your device
The website uses no cookies. If you sign in on the website, your browser's local storage keeps your sign-in so you stay signed in, along with your chosen language for signs. The guest page keeps your place in a conversation in the browser's session storage, so it can carry on if the page reloads. Signing out or closing the conversation removes them.
4. How we use it, and what we never do
We use personal information only to provide Speak Tongues: to sign you in, run your conversations and sign translations, keep your history, keep your tab and verify your payments, answer you, contact you about your account or the service, keep the service secure, and meet our legal obligations, such as keeping tax records.
We do not:
- sell your personal information, or share it for advertising;
- make marketing calls or send marketing texts to your phone number, unless you separately agree to that;
- show ads, or use advertising, analytics or tracking tools in the apps or on the website;
- use your conversations, photos or history to train AI models;
- create voiceprints or identify anyone by their voice;
- read your conversations, except when you ask us to look into a problem or when the law requires it.
5. Our AI provider: OpenAI
Transcription, translation, spoken translations and reading signs are done by OpenAI, L.L.C., through its API. To do that work OpenAI receives the audio of what is said, the text to translate or read aloud, and photos of signs.
Under OpenAI's terms for API customers, OpenAI does not use this data to train its models. It may keep it for up to 30 days to monitor for abuse, and then deletes it, unless the law requires it to keep it longer. OpenAI's own privacy policy describes how it handles data.
Translations are made automatically by AI and can be wrong. See our terms.
6. Who else handles your information
We use a small number of service providers, under contracts that let them use the information only to provide their service to us:
- Amazon Web Services hosts our servers, database and backups in the United States (Oregon) and sends our sign-in emails.
- OpenAI does the AI work described above.
- Apple and Google distribute the apps and process payments. They handle that under their own privacy policies.
- Google hosts the inbox that receives messages sent to support@speaktongues.com.
We may also disclose information when the law requires it (for example, in response to a valid court order), to protect someone's safety, or to defend our rights. If Terra Virgo Corporation or Speak Tongues is ever merged or sold, your information would pass to the new owner under this policy, and we would tell you first.
7. Group conversations and consent
Before joining a group conversation, every guest sees this notice in their own language: Your speech is transcribed and translated by AI (Speak Tongues, via OpenAI). [The host] pays for this conversation and keeps the transcript. You can leave any time. Audio is not stored, only the text.
Joining is agreeing to it. Anyone who doesn't agree can simply not join, and anyone can leave at any time.
- While the conversation runs, everyone in it sees and hears what each person says, translated into their own language.
- When everyone in the conversation agreed when they joined, its transcript is saved in the host's history, which follows the 30-day rule in section 9.
- Each guest can download their own copy of the transcript, in their language, for 30 minutes after the conversation ends. After that, the transcript is kept only in the host's history.
- The host can remove anyone from the conversation.
In a one-on-one conversation, the other person doesn't see a notice on your phone. Please tell them that you are using Speak Tongues to transcribe and translate the conversation. Our terms explain why: in California and many other places, recording a conversation needs everyone's consent.
8. Signs and photos
A photo you translate is sent to OpenAI, read and translated, and then discarded: we don't store it. Only the text found in it and its translation are saved, in your history, for 30 days.
9. How long we keep it
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Audio of what anyone says | Not stored. It is streamed to OpenAI to be transcribed. |
| Photos of signs and menus | Not stored. Discarded once translated. |
| Your history: conversation text, group transcripts and sign translations | 30 days, then deleted automatically. You can delete any item sooner. |
| A group conversation on our server | While it runs and for 30 minutes after it ends, so guests can download their copy. After that, only in the host's history, if it was saved there. |
| Your account (email, name, language) and your tab | Until you delete your account. |
| Your phone number | Until you delete your account. You can change it at any time in the app or on your account page. |
| Sign-ins | Until you sign out on that device or delete your account. Sign-in codes expire after 10 minutes. |
| Payment records | While your account exists. When you delete it, they are kept without your email or name, for as long as tax and accounting law requires. |
| Messages to support | As long as we need them to help you and to keep a record of what we agreed. |
| Server logs | Up to 30 days, for security and troubleshooting. |
| Backups | We make an encrypted backup every night and keep each one for 35 days. |
| What OpenAI receives | Up to 30 days, for abuse monitoring, under OpenAI's terms. |
10. Your rights and choices
Wherever you live, you can:
- See and correct your information: your name, language, phone number and history are in the app and on your account page.
- Take a copy: download the transcript of any conversation in your history, or ask us for a copy of everything we hold about you.
- Delete any conversation or sign in your history or your whole account. See deleting your account.
- Object, restrict or withdraw consent: a guest can leave a conversation at any time, and anyone can ask us to stop a particular use of their information.
To ask for anything you can't do yourself in the app or on the website, email support@speaktongues.com from the address you sign in with. If you write from another address, we'll ask you to confirm that the account is yours. We answer within 30 days. If we can't do what you ask, we'll explain why, and you can ask us to reconsider by replying. We will never treat you differently for using these rights.
California residents
Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to know what personal information we collect, use and disclose; to delete it; to correct it; and to opt out of its sale or sharing. In the last 12 months we collected: identifiers (email address, first name, phone number, sign-in records, IP address); commercial information (purchase records and charges); internet activity (server logs); the audio and text of conversations; and photos of signs. They came from you, your device, and Apple or Google for purchases. We used them for the purposes in section 4 and disclosed them only to the service providers in section 6. We use the content of your conversations only to provide Speak Tongues to you.
We have not sold or shared personal information, including that of anyone under 16, and we don't. Because we don't sell or share it, there is nothing to opt out of; we also honor Global Privacy Control signals. You can use an authorized agent to make a request; we'll ask them for proof that you authorized them.
People in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom and Switzerland
Terra Virgo Corporation is the controller of your personal information. We rely on these legal bases: contract, to provide the service you signed up for (your account, conversations, signs, history and payments); consent, for guests taking part in a group conversation and the host keeping its transcript; legitimate interests, to keep Speak Tongues secure, prevent abuse and handle support, and to be able to reach you about your account or the service by phone; and legal obligation, to keep tax records. Besides the rights above, you have the right to data portability and the right to complain to your local data protection authority.
Other places
Many other countries and US states give you similar rights. You can use all of the rights in this section wherever you live.
11. International transfers
Speak Tongues runs on servers in the United States, and OpenAI processes data in the United States. If you use Speak Tongues from another country, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States, where data protection laws may differ from those where you live. We protect it as this policy describes wherever it is processed.
12. Security
Everything between your device and our servers is encrypted in transit (HTTPS). Sign-in uses one-time codes that expire after 10 minutes and allow only a few tries. A guest's key works only for one conversation. Your device talks to the transcription service with a short-lived pass from our server, so our OpenAI key never leaves our server. Backups are encrypted, and access to our systems is limited to the people who run Speak Tongues.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach ever affects your personal information, we'll tell you as the law requires.
13. Children
Speak Tongues is for people 13 and older. If you're under the age at which your country lets you agree to this on your own, you need a parent's or guardian's permission. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal information, email support@speaktongues.com and we'll delete it.
14. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we'll post the new version here with a new effective date. If a change is significant, we'll also tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.
15. Contact
Terra Virgo Corporation
Fairfax, California, United States
support@speaktongues.com