Privacy policy

Last updated: 13 October 2026

This policy explains what personal data Uncle Polar Spanish collects when you use unclepolarspanish.com, why it is collected, who it is shared with and what rights you have. We have tried to keep it short and in plain English.

Who we are

Uncle Polar Spanish is run by Uncle Polar Limited, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17312029), whose registered office is at 20 Wenlock Road, London, United Kingdom, N1 7GU (“we”, “us”). We are the data controller for the personal data described here. You can contact us about anything in this policy through the form on the Help page or by email at hello@unclepolar.com.

What we collect

If you create an account

• Your email address and password. We never store your password itself, only a scrambled version of it (a salted hash) that cannot be turned back into the password.
• Your learning progress. Your flashcards and their schedules, settings, minutes practised, awards, belts, notebook entries, memory hooks, goals and similar items, so they follow you between your devices.
• Social features you choose to use. Your display name, whether friends can find you, your friends, challenges, team quests and weekly league places. Other learners only ever see your display name, never your email address.
• Email choices. Whether you want reminder, weekly report or challenge emails, the hour you chose and your time zone.

When you use the voice and speaking features

• Recordings of your voice. When you ask for a pronunciation score, use Say it or speak with Uncle Polar, your recording is sent to Microsoft Azure to be scored or turned into text. We do not keep these recordings on our servers. Recordings you make in Reading, Sounds and the Dictionary stay on your own device.
• Conversations with Uncle Polar. What you say or type in Speaking and Uncle Polar's replies, are sent to OpenAI to write his next reply and your feedback. We do not store the conversations.
• A record of what the AI services cost. For each paid AI request we note your email address (or, if you are not signed in, your IP address), the kind of request, the page and the first 80 characters of the text involved. We use this to keep costs under control and to apply daily limits. These detailed records are deleted after 90 days. A daily total of cost per person is kept for our accounts.

When you visit

• Visit counts. A first-party cookie (up_vid) with a random number lets us count visitors. With each page visit we record that number, whether you are new, the page, the website that sent you (its name only), any campaign tags in the link, your country and whether you use a phone, tablet or computer. We do not store your IP address, email address or account with these counts. See the Cookies page.
• Your IP address is used briefly to stop abuse: to limit how many accounts, help messages and free voice requests come from one connection. Sign-up limits are cleared after two hours.

When you contact us

If you send a message or use Report a problem, we receive your message, your email address if you give it, the page you were on and technical details (your browser, screen size, whether you were signed in and any recent errors on the page) so we can fix the problem.

If you pay

Payments are handled by our reseller, Paddle (see below). We do not see or store your card details. We receive confirmation of your subscription, its status and the country you pay from.

Why we use it (our lawful bases)

• To provide the service you signed up for (contract): your account, syncing your progress, the social features, pronunciation scores, conversations, paid plans and the emails needed to run your account, such as password reset codes.
• Our legitimate interests: keeping the site secure, preventing abuse, controlling AI costs, fixing problems and understanding how many people visit and where they come from. We have weighed these against your privacy and keep the data to a minimum.
• Your consent: reminder and weekly report emails, which are off until you switch them on. The same goes for any optional cookies. You can withdraw consent at any time.
• Legal obligations: keeping records needed for tax and accounting.

Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal data and we do not use it for advertising. We use these service providers, who process data on our behalf under contract:

Paddle sells subscriptions to you on our behalf and is responsible for the payment and for sales tax. Paddle's own privacy notice covers the data it collects at checkout.

Where data goes outside the UK, we rely on the safeguards the law requires, such as the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or the UK–US data bridge.

How long we keep it

• Your account and progress: until you delete your account.
• Detailed records of AI requests: 90 days.
• Daily totals of AI costs and payment records: as long as we need them for our accounts and tax (usually six years).
• Visit counts: 36 months.
• Messages to us: as long as needed to deal with them.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time on the Account page (Delete my account and data). This deletes your account, progress, profile, friends, challenges, league places and email choices from our servers straight away. The daily totals of AI costs are kept for our accounts. Data stored on your own device (for example recordings) is removed when you clear your browser's data for this site.

Your rights

You have the right to ask for a copy of your data, to have it corrected or deleted, to object to or restrict how we use it, to have it moved to another service and to withdraw consent. To use any of these rights, contact us as above. We will reply within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, please tell us first. You can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) or, if you live in the EU, to your local data protection authority.

Children

Uncle Polar Spanish is not meant for children under 13. Children under 13 should not create an account. If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

If we make important changes, we will update the date at the top and, where appropriate, tell you by email or on the site.