Privacy policy
1. Who operates GoMe
GoMe is a Japanese-learning app developed and operated by Lê Việt Đức — an individual, not an organization.
Please send any questions, personal data requests, or complaints to: support@gomenihongo.com
2. What we collect
2.1 Information you provide
- Account: display name, email address, and profile picture if you sign in through a third-party service.
- A profile picture you choose yourself: if you pick a photo from your device as your profile picture, that photo is resized on your own device and then stored on our servers. This is entirely voluntary — if you do not pick one, your profile uses the GoMe fox image. At present this picture is shown only to you; if it later appears somewhere other people can see it, we will give notice in advance under section 10.
- Password: if you register with an email address, your password is stored as a one-way hash — we do not store and cannot read your original password.
- Learning goals: the goal you choose (travel, work, exam preparation, personal interest) and how long you study each day.
- Feedback & reports: what you send through the Feedback & bug report feature (bug descriptions, suggestions, or reports about other users).
2.2 Information generated as you use the app
- Learning progress: lessons completed, the score for each lesson, placement test results, and your current mountain floor.
- Review data: your spaced-repetition review schedule, the questions you have answered incorrectly, and the items you have saved.
- Motivation metrics: experience points, level, the number of days you studied during the week, and badges earned. Your display name and experience points appear on the Leaderboard for other users to see, unless you turn that off in Settings.
- Friends: friend requests sent and received, your friend list, and block status if you block someone.
- Preferences: interface language, sound and effects on/off, study reminder time, and light/dark mode.
2.3 Technical information
- IP address and browser/device information (user-agent) are stored with each sign-in session, in order to protect your account and detect unusual access.
2.4 What we do NOT collect
Beyond the data described above, the app currently does not collect the following:
- No audio recording, no microphone access. The app only plays audio; it does not record.
- No third-party behavioral analytics. We do not measure what you tap, which screens you view, or how long you stay. Crash and serious-error reports are the one exception — see section 2.6.
- No access to your contacts, location, or calendar.
- No unprompted reading of your photo library. The app opens your photo library only when you actively tap to choose a profile picture, and only the photo you select is sent — we do not view, scan, or store any other photo.
- Study reminders run entirely on your device — we do not send push notifications from our servers and we do not store notification device tokens.
- Exception when you buy a paid plan: we use RevenueCat to process and synchronize purchase status between the App Store/Google Play and the GoMe servers — this is not a behavioral analytics or crash reporting tool. Details in section 2.5.
- Exception when ads are shown: we use Google AdMob as our advertising network — this is not a behavioral analytics or crash reporting tool. Details in section 2.7.
Note for a future update: when the pronunciation practice feature launches, the app will need microphone permission. At that point this policy must be updated in the same release, stating what the recordings are used for, whether they are sent to our servers, and how long they are kept.
2.5 Payment data
If you buy a GoMe+ plan, we store: the plan purchased, the subscription status (active/canceled/expired), and the expiry or next renewal date. This data is synchronized from the App Store/Google Play through RevenueCat, a third-party payment processing service.
We do not receive and do not store your card number or payment details — those are handled directly by the App Store/Google Play.
2.6 Crash reports
When the app crashes, or when a feature breaks because of an error on our servers or a bug in our code, a report is sent to Sentry — a third-party error tracking service — so that we know about it and can fix it. A report is only sent for a real incident on our side: being offline, an action you cancel yourself (for example leaving a screen while it is still loading), or a mistake you make while typing do not count. While you are using the app normally, nothing is sent.
A report contains: the type of error and its location in the source code, the name of the feature or API path that failed (with identifiers stripped out, for example "/lessons/xxx/submit" rather than a path with a real id) and its error code if any, the app version, the operating system and device model (for example "iPhone 14"), the interface language, the time it occurred, and a few technical traces from just before the error (the names of the screens you had just opened, error messages in the log).
A report does not contain your name, email, profile picture, learning progress, the content of the exercise you were working on, or the name you gave your device. We have also completely disabled this tool's session replay and performance monitoring — neither of them has ever run.
Sentry stores reports on servers located outside Vietnam and deletes them automatically after 90 days.
2.7 Advertising
When the advertising feature is turned on, the app shows full-screen (interstitial) ads after you have finished viewing the results of a lesson, a test, a handwriting exercise, a video, or after you read a news article to the end — never while you are in the middle of a lesson, a review session, or a mock exam. We use Google AdMob as our advertising network.
- Before the first time you become eligible to see an ad (your account has passed its first 7 days), the app asks for tracking permission on iOS (App Tracking Transparency) and for your consent to ad personalization through a consent management tool (CMP) certified to the IAB TCF standard, provided by Google — required for every user, not only in Europe.
- If you consent, AdMob receives your device's advertising identifier (IDFA on iOS, advertising ID on Android) to choose ads that are more relevant to you.
- If you decline (tracking permission on iOS, or your choice in the CMP), you still see ads; the only difference is that ads are not personalized to you.
- You can review or change your personalization choice at any time in Settings → Ad privacy options (this row only appears when there is a choice to change).
- Ads are restricted to content suitable for a teen-and-older audience, applied to every account — the app does not ask for your date of birth to sort users individually.
- GoMe+ subscribers do not see ads. Frequency for free users: at most one ad per study session, none for new accounts during their first 7 days, and none right after a poor lesson score.
AdMob stores data on servers located outside Vietnam.
3. What we use your information for
- To create and protect your account.
- To personalize your learning path and review schedule to match what you have actually studied.
- To save your progress so that you can continue on another device.
- To send study reminders at the time you chose (these run on your device).
- To improve content quality based on common mistakes, in aggregate form, not targeted at any individual.
- When the advertising feature is turned on: to select which ads to show, measure ad performance, and (if you consent) personalize those ads — see section 2.7.
We do not sell your data.
4. Where your data is stored
The app uses Cloudflare infrastructure (servers, file storage, caching), the Neon (PostgreSQL) database, Sentry for crash reports (section 2.6), and Google AdMob for advertising (section 2.7). The servers of these services are located outside Vietnam, so your data is transferred and stored across borders. By using GoMe, you consent to this.
On your device, the app stores your sign-in session in the operating system's secure storage, together with a cached copy of your preferences so that it works when you are offline.
5. How long we keep your data
- While your account is active, your data is kept in order to support your learning.
- When you request account deletion (inside the app, or at gomenihongo.com/account/delete), your account and your data are deleted immediately from the live system — including the profile picture you uploaded. There is no waiting period and no way to restore it — be sure before you confirm.
- Exception: what you sent through Feedback & bug report is retained so that we can continue working on it, but its link to your account is removed — we no longer know whose it was.
- The system keeps technical backups in case of failure. Those backups may still contain your data for a short time before they are automatically overwritten, and we do not use them to restore a deleted account.
- If you request account deletion by email instead of inside the app, we handle it manually — the deletion does not happen instantly the way it does when you do it yourself in the app.
6. Your rights
You have the right to:
- See the data we hold about you.
- Correct your account information and preferences directly in the app.
- Delete your account inside the app, at gomenihongo.com/account/delete, or by emailing the address in section 1.
- Withdraw your consent by stopping use of the app and deleting your account.
Requests sent by email will receive a response within 30 days.
7. Age
GoMe is intended for users aged 13 and over. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you are a parent and find that your child has created an account, please contact the email address in section 1 so that we can delete it.
8. Security
Passwords are stored as one-way hashes; the connection between the app and our servers is encrypted. Even so, no system is perfectly secure — if a data breach affecting you occurs, we will notify you at your registered email address.
9. Learning content and source licenses
GoMe's learning content uses data from open datasets (JMdict, KANJIDIC2, KRADFILE, Unihan, KanjiVG, Tatoeba, Tanos) and synthesized speech from VOICEVOX Nemo. The full list of sources and licenses is on the Content credits screen in the app. This section has nothing to do with your personal data; it is stated here for transparency.
10. Changes to this policy
Every change is recorded with a new effective date at the top of this document.
For changes that affect your rights — how we use your data, a new third party, or how account deletion works — we will notify you in the app, the next time you open it, before the change takes effect. Minor changes (wording fixes, a new contact address) are recorded only with a new effective date.
11. Governing law
This policy is governed by the laws of Vietnam.
12. Contact
support@gomenihongo.com