Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-10-22

Emiko is a language-learning app for everyone from 7 years old. We collect as little as we can, keep it on our own server, and never sell it or use it for personalised advertising. There are no tracking or analytics tools from other companies. Emiko 1.0 shows no ads at all and contains no advertising SDK (section 4).

Data controller: Yogame LLC, Wyoming, United States of America. For anything about privacy, write to support@playemi.com.

1. What we keep and why

Your account

• How you sign in: Apple, Google or a code sent by email. One account can have more than one of these ways of signing in: you add them on the Me page, and remove one there as long as another remains.
• For each way of signing in: the identifier Apple or Google gives us for your account, or your email address if you sign in by email.
• For each way of signing in, the email address its provider gives us, if it shares one (Apple may give a relay address instead of your real one).
• Whether a parent created the account for a child, when the account was created and when you last signed in.
• For Sign in with Apple: a token from Apple, stored encrypted, so that we can revoke the Apple sign-in when you remove it or delete your account.

Purpose: so you can sign in and find your progress on all your devices.

Learning progress

Your interface language and the languages you learn, the name you choose for Emi to call you (on an account a parent created, it stays on the device), your country, difficulty and daily goal, sound settings, Emi's look, the picture you choose for your account, and the progress itself: your language saves, stages, stars, words, XP, the crystal, hearts, quests and game scores. Purpose: syncing your progress across devices. This progress record is limited to 600 KB.

Friends and weekly rankings

Learners with an account can add friends with the friend code every account has, or its link; there is no other way to find anyone. There is no chat, no messages and no free text between learners. Friends see each other's stats only: display name and picture, whether Gold is on, level, this week's XP day by day, crystal days, the languages being learned, words learned, game medals, bests and ranking badges, and when they were last active, in coarse terms only: today, this week or earlier.

By default everyone appears under a playful name the app generates, such as “Brave Falcon 27”. An adult may choose to show their own name, the one Emi calls them by, and only their accepted friends see it. Public game leaderboards and weekly leagues always show everyone under the generated name, with their picture, the level and the week's score, and someone who receives a friend request from you sees only your generated name and picture until they accept it. The picture is the one the learner chose among the app's five characters, a still drawing from the app itself and never a photo, or a generated one if they have not chosen. Friends and everyone else also see whether a learner has Gold: a crown on the picture and a golden name. On an account a parent created for a child, only the child's friends see it, never other learners.

We process each week's game scores and XP to rank learners: among friends, on each game's board, and in weekly league groups of up to 30. For each run sent to the boards we keep the game, its difficulty, score and counts, how long it lasted, its language and its time; scores the game cannot produce are flagged and not ranked. Any learner can block another: their friendship ends, the blocked learner cannot send them requests, and each is hidden from the other in lists and boards. Purpose: following your friends' progress and competing fairly.

Sessions and sign-in codes

Each device you sign in on has a session. We store a hash of each refresh token, never the token itself. A session ends when you sign out on that device, when we close it for safety, or after 180 days without use; its record is deleted 30 days after it ended, or at the end of those 180 days. For email codes we keep only keyed hashes of the code and the address; a code is valid for 10 minutes and its trace is deleted within a day.

Usage events

The app sends a small number of events to our own server only: finishing the start, starting and finishing a stage, signing in, opening the Gold page and buying, the notification permission, the state of the crystal and sharing it, the result of the age question (whether a parent is needed, without the year of birth), and the device speaking with its own voice where a recording is missing. If the app breaks, it sends a crash report: the error's name and message, the first lines of where it happened in the code and the version number, with anything that looks like an email, a number or a token removed first; no outside service is used for this. Each event carries its time, the kind of device and a few details. Purpose: learning what helps learners and where they get stuck. Events are deleted after 365 days, and events of accounts created by a parent are stored without any account identifier.

For a learner who has not signed in (a guest), the app sends our server five anonymous events only, so we know how many learners stay and where they stop: the first time the app opens, reaching each step of the start, finishing the first lesson, choosing to go on as a guest, and the first opening of each day with the number of days since the first one. Each carries its time, the kind of device, the app version and the interface language, and nothing else: no account, no address, no device or install identifier, so no event is linked to a person or to another event. None is sent before the age question is answered, and none is ever sent for a child. They are deleted after 90 days.

Notifications

If you allow notifications, we keep the notification token Apple or Google gives your device, the kind of device, its language and its time zone, so that notifications come at a good time for you, never between 22:00 and 08:00 on your device's clock. What we may send: a new friend request (on unless you turn it off, at most 5 a day), news from the Emiko team (on unless you turn it off, at most 1 a day and 3 a week), and, only if you turn them on, your weekly league result and a friend passing you (at most one of each a week). A child's account gets only the friend-request notification, without anyone's name. The daily reminder, and the reminder before a Gold trial ends, come from your device itself. The bell in the app lists these items for the last 30 days, and what it needs is deleted after 60 days at most. The token is deleted when it has not been renewed for 400 days, when you sign out on that device, or when you delete the account.

Gold subscription

Purchases are made through the App Store or Google Play; we do not see your card or payment-method details. We send the store a random purchase-owner identifier and verify purchase evidence with Apple or Google on Emiko’s server. We keep the subscription state, plan, trial, dates, product, store and transaction identifiers, and encrypted verification evidence, to support restoration, sync, renewal and cancellation. The identifier is linked to your account when you attach the purchase to it. A guest has a secret token in secure storage on the device and a hash of that token on our server. We retain store notification identifiers and completed jobs for 14 days to prevent repeats; guest purchase sessions expire after 90 days without use.

Server logs

Our server does not log request contents, headers or your address. The nginx access log drops the last part of the address and keeps no query strings, and is kept for 14 days, then deleted. To protect sign-in from abuse we count requests per address in memory only, and store a keyed hash of the network, not the address, with email codes. When a sign-in code is sent, our mail server writes the address it was sent to in its logs, as any mail server does; these logs are kept for 14 days, then deleted.

2. What stays on your device

• The year of birth is never stored. Only whether a parent needs to sign in is kept, on the device.
• In the speaking game the device listens with its built-in speech recognition, and the recording never leaves the device. Where that is not available, the voice is not sent anywhere.
• The voices are inside the iPhone and Android apps; the web version loads them from cdn.playemi.com.

3. Children

After the first lesson, Emiko asks one neutral question about the year of birth. If the learner is below the digital consent age of their country (13 in most countries, up to 16 in some EU countries, and 18 in India and Indonesia), the app asks them to hand the device to a parent, who passes a short gate and signs in with their own account. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children, the events of these accounts are stored without an account identifier, and no event is sent for a child using Emiko as a guest. On these accounts the learner always appears under a generated name, with the picture chosen among the app's five characters or a generated one, only their friends see whether they have Gold, a parent must approve on the device each friend request the child sends or accepts, and the child's real name never leaves the device. The stats used by friends and rankings are linked to the parent's account and appear only under the generated name. If you believe a child created an account without a parent, write to us and we will delete it.

Parental consent by email. In every country, before anything about the child is kept on our server, we send the parent a notice by email: to the address of the account they signed in with, or to one they enter in the app after the gate (Apple's hidden relay address works too). It lists what we keep about the child and why, says that we disclose none of it to anyone, and links to this policy. Meanwhile the child can learn fully on the device, but nothing about the child is sent to our server: no progress, friends, rankings or events. The parent agrees with the email's “I agree” button, which works once within 7 days. Two days after consent we email the parent a confirmation with a link to withdraw it at any time; withdrawing deletes from our server the child's progress, friends, rankings and friend requests, and the account goes back to waiting for consent. If no parent agrees within 14 days, we delete the address and the request, and the app asks again. We keep a record of each consent: its time, the notice's text, version and language, and how the parent signed in. As with every email we send, the mail server's logs keep the address for 14 days. This is the “email plus” method of the US COPPA Rule (16 CFR 312.5(b)(2)).

4. Who we share data with

We do not sell data and do not share it for personalised advertising. We use only these services, each for what it needs:

• Apple: Sign in with Apple, the App Store and iPhone notifications.
• Google: Sign in with Google, Google Play and Android notifications.
• Email: sign-in codes are sent from noreply@playemi.com by a mail server that runs on Emiko's own server, so your messages do not pass through an outside email provider. Mail you write to the domain's addresses (such as support) is kept in mailboxes on Emiko's own server and is not forwarded to another provider.
• Hosting: Contabo GmbH, with Emiko's server in Germany, inside the European Union.

Other learners: your friends see only the stats listed in section 1, and everyone else sees, on public leaderboards, in leagues and in friend requests, your generated name, your picture (the app character you chose, or a generated one), your level, the week's score and whether you have Gold, except on a child's account, whose Gold only its friends see. No one sees your email, your account identifier or exactly when you were active.

No ads: Emiko 1.0 shows no ads and contains no advertising SDK, so none of your data reaches an ad network, your device's advertising identifier is never read, and the iPhone tracking prompt is never shown. If we add ads in a later version, we will update this policy before it, including what the ad provider collects.

We may disclose data where the law requires it.

5. How long we keep data

6. Your rights

• Deletion: on the Me page, “Delete account” deletes the account at once, with all its ways of signing in (Apple, Google and email) and the addresses their providers gave, sessions, progress, events, notification tokens, friendships and requests, friend code, blocks, everything it has in leagues and on leaderboards, student Gold applications and their files, a parent's consent record and the address given for it, and subscription records (the purchase-owner identifier, the subscription state, transaction identifiers and encrypted verification evidence, and any guest purchases attached to the account), and revokes Sign in with Apple. If your Gold subscription is still renewing in the store, you can restore it on a new account. A copy stays in the nightly backups until they are deleted automatically after 14 days, and your email address stays in the mail server's logs, if a sign-in code was sent to it, until they are deleted after 14 days; we use these backups only to restore the service after a failure. A Gold subscription is cancelled separately in the store.
• Access, copy and correction: write to us from the account's email address and we will send you a copy of your data or correct it.
• Objection and restriction: you can turn notifications off in your device settings, and object to the use of events by writing to us.
• Friends and your name: you can remove or block a friend at any time, and go back to the generated name in settings.
• You may also complain to the data protection authority of your country.

Legal bases where the GDPR applies: performing the service you asked for (account, sync, subscription, friends and rankings), legitimate interest (security, first-party usage statistics and fair rankings), and your consent (notifications, and showing your name to your friends).

7. Security

All connections are encrypted (HTTPS). We store hashes of sign-in tokens, not the tokens; the Apple token is encrypted with AES-256-GCM; and logs hold neither full addresses nor request contents.

8. This website

playemi.com uses no cookies, no trackers and no scripts from other sites. The web version of the app at https://app.playemi.com keeps your progress in your browser and talks to our server only.

9. Free Gold for students in Algeria

When you ask for free Gold on playemi.com/dz we keep: your full name, the email address of your Emiko account once you confirm it with a 6-digit code, your Algerian mobile number, the photo of your student card or school certificate, and which of the two it is, the page's language and the time of the application, whether the student is 19 or older and, if not, the parent's or guardian's stated relation to the student and their declaration, then the decision, when it was taken and by whom in our team, the reason if it was not accepted, and how long Gold lasts if it was. The purpose: to check that you study in Algeria, give you Gold and tell you the decision. The basis: your own application and your consent on the page. Under 19, the age of majority in Algeria, the student's parent or legal guardian fills in the application: they state their relation to the student (father, mother or legal guardian) and tick a declaration that they apply on the student's behalf and agree to this processing, as Algerian law no. 18-07 requires for a minor. This rule is for this application only; the app's own age question is described in section 3.

• Only images are accepted (JPEG, PNG, WebP). Where it can, your browser redraws the photo before sending it, and our server takes its hidden data out once more (EXIF and the like, such as the place, the device and the time it was taken, and any second image attached to it). The file is kept encrypted with AES-256-GCM in our database, never at a public address, and only the Emiko team sees it, in the Yogame admin dashboard, meaning the people who hold its "Emi" permission alone; automated agents cannot reach it.
• The file is deleted 30 days after the decision, accepted or not, or 60 days after the application if it was not reviewed, and leaves the nightly backups within 14 more days.
• The application record without the file (name, address, number, the guardian's declaration if any, decision) stays while the account exists, so we can show you its status and Gold is not given twice, and all of it is deleted with the account.
• We share none of it with anyone. We write to you by email: the confirmation code, then the decision. On acceptance, the app also shows a notification on the account's devices if notifications are allowed there. We call the number only with a question about the application itself, and never use it for marketing.
• You have the rights in section 6, including, if you live in Algeria, your rights under Algeria's law on the protection of personal data. You can ask us to delete your application or its file earlier by writing to us.

10. Changes

If we change this policy we will publish the new version here with its date, and tell you in the app if the change matters.