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Privacy

McChinese — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 26 August 2026 · iDataGear Inc

The short version. McChinese has no account and no sign-up. Your progress, your settings and your saved items are stored on your own device and are never uploaded to us. We do not sell your data and we hold no database of users. Three things do leave your device: advertising requests to Google, anonymous usage and crash reports to Google Firebase, and — the first time you open a character's stroke animation — a request for that character's stroke data. Each is explained below.

1. Who we are

iDataGear Inc ("we", "us") publishes the McChinese mobile application — listed on some stores as Learn Chinese — and the web version hosted at idatagear.com/chinese/learnchinese/. This policy covers both.

Questions go to idatagear@gmail.com.

2. Information we collect about you

None that identifies you. We do not ask for your name, email address, phone number or date of birth. There is no registration, no login, and no user profile held on any server of ours. We have no way to identify you and no database of users.

The advertising, analytics and crash-reporting services described in sections 5 and 7 do receive technical information about your device. We never attach your identity to it, because we do not have one.

3. Data stored on your own device

The app saves the following locally, in its own storage on your device:

This data never leaves your device. We cannot read it, we do not back it up, and there is no cloud sync. The practical consequence is worth stating plainly: uninstalling the app permanently deletes all of it, and there is no way for us or for you to recover it afterwards.

4. Microphone and speech recognition

McChinese includes pronunciation practice. When you use it, the app asks for microphone permission and passes your speech to your device's own built-in speech recognition service to turn it into text.

We never receive, record or store your audio. The app only compares the text your device produced against the target text in order to score you. The microphone is active only while a speaking feature is actually on screen, and you can decline or later revoke the permission in your device settings — everything else in the app continues to work without it.

Depending on your device and settings, your operating system's speech recognition may process audio on-device or on the vendor's servers. On iOS, Apple's own prompt tells you when speech data is sent to Apple. That processing is governed by your device maker's privacy policy, not by ours.

5. Advertising

In the mobile app (Android and iOS)

The app is free to download and is funded by ads served through Google AdMob. It shows banner and occasional full-screen (interstitial) ads. To show and measure ads, Google and its partners may collect and use certain information, including your device's advertising identifier, general device information, coarse location derived from your IP address, and ad interaction data.

Where the law requires it — in the EEA, the UK and other applicable regions — the app shows a consent prompt from Google's User Messaging Platform before any ad request is made, so you can choose how your data is used for advertising. You can change that choice later from within the app. If a consent state cannot be established, the app requests no ads at all.

On iOS, McChinese does not show an App Tracking Transparency prompt and does not ask to track you across other companies' apps and websites. Because we never request that permission, iOS supplies the advertising SDK with an all-zero identifier.

Subscribers see no advertising at all.

On this website

idatagear.com participates in Google AdSense. Pages on this site, including the web version of the app, may load Google's advertising script, which can set cookies and use your IP address and browsing activity to show and measure ads. This help, privacy and contact page set does not carry ad units.

Your advertising choices

6. Purchases and subscriptions

McChinese offers an optional subscription, McChinese Premium, which unlocks the remaining HSK levels and school grades, pinyin practice, stroke-order animation and the handwriting pad, and removes all advertising. It is sold on two auto-renewing billing periods — one month and six months — which unlock exactly the same content.

Payment processing. The transaction is handled entirely by the store you installed the app from — the Apple App Store (Apple Inc.) or Google Play Billing (Google LLC). We never see or store your payment card number, billing address or any other payment detail. We only receive confirmation from the store that a purchase is active.

Your entitlement. Your subscription is tied to your Apple or Google account, not to your device, so it can be restored on a new phone with Profile → Restore Purchases, or from the subscription screen itself. A cached copy of the entitlement is kept on your device so the app knows what you have paid for while offline.

Free trial on install. New installations receive seven days of full access automatically. This is tracked on your device only; it is not an account entitlement, it does not renew, and it does not charge you anything.

Managing and cancelling. Manage or cancel at any time in your Apple Account or Google Play subscription settings. Refunds are handled by the respective store under its own policies.

Earlier purchases. If you bought the one-off Remove Ads product before subscriptions existed, it still grants you full access permanently, with nothing to do on your part.

7. Analytics and crash reporting

The mobile app uses Google Firebase Analytics and Firebase Crashlytics. These tell us which screens are used and send us a report when the app crashes, so that we can fix it.

What this involves: Firebase assigns your installation a random identifier and records screen views, session length, coarse device and operating-system information, and — if the app crashes — a stack trace and the state of the device at the moment of the crash.

We do not attach your name, email address or any other identifier to this, because we do not have one: the app has no account. We cannot use it to identify you, and we do not use it for advertising.

This data is processed by Google on our behalf under Google's privacy policy. Firebase is not enabled on the web version of the app.

8. When the app uses the internet

The learning content — every word, sentence, article and test — is bundled with the app and stored on your device, so the material itself works without a connection. The app reaches the network for these things:

9. What we share

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it with anyone for our own purposes. The only third parties involved are the ones described above:

We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect our rights and the safety of others.

10. Children

McChinese is intended for a general audience and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact us at idatagear@gmail.com and we will act on it — though in practice, because the app requires no account and collects nothing that identifies anyone, there is normally nothing for us to hold or delete.

11. Your rights and choices

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete or port your personal data. Because we hold no personal data that identifies you, there is normally nothing for us to export, correct or erase on request — but if you would like that confirmed in writing, just ask.

Governing law and jurisdiction: [[ GOVERNING LAW / JURISDICTION ]]

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app changes. The date at the top always reflects the current version. Material changes will be noted on this page.

13. Contact

iDataGear Inc
Email: idatagear@gmail.com
Web: www.idatagear.com

Registered address: [[ REGISTERED ADDRESS ]]