Privacy policy
BeiStar Chinese (北极星中文) is made by BCHAN Studio LLC ("BeiStar", "we", "us"). This policy explains what information we collect when you use the BeiStar Chinese app or beistar.app, why we collect it, and what control you have over it.
The short version: we collect your email address (so you can sign in) and your learning progress (so it follows you between devices). Speaking-practice audio is scored in real time on our own servers and is not saved. There are no ads in the app, we use no analytics or tracking SDKs, and we do not sell personal information. You can delete your account and everything tied to it from inside the app at any time.
Questions about anything here: support@beistar.app.
What we collect
Your account
You can create an account three ways:
- Email and password. We store your email address and a hashed form of your password (we never store the password itself). We use your email to sign you in, confirm your account, and reset your password. We do not send marketing email.
- Sign in with Apple or Google. We receive your email address and an account identifier from the provider. We store the identifier and email, nothing else. We never see your Apple or Google password, contacts, or other account data.
- A class card from your school. Schools can hand out QR-code class cards that sign students in without any personal information. A class-card account has no email address, no password, and no real name: just a seat number and a display name chosen by the teacher. See "Children and school accounts" below.
Your learning progress
Progress is tied to your account and synced to our servers so you can pick up where you left off on any device. This includes:
- which chapters, sections, and lessons you have completed, with scores and attempt counts;
- the vocabulary you have encountered, with review scheduling so the app knows when to bring a word back;
- the stories you have read and how far you got;
- your favorites: saved poems, bookmarked questions, and saved sentences;
- your app settings, reading preferences, and avatar (the avatar is a set of style choices such as hair color and outfit, not a photo).
Practice answers and feedback
We collect the answers you give in practice exercises, including answers you type in, and quick feedback you leave, such as rating a section too easy or too hard. When you first set up the app we also ask a short survey about your background and learning goals. The survey is optional and you can skip it; it asks about your situation (for example, student or working adult), never your age or birthdate. We use all of this to improve lessons and to tune what the app shows you next.
Reports and feedback
Most screens carry a flag button for telling us something is wrong: the pinyin, the English, the audio, a fact in the text, or the app itself. Settings also has a box for anything you want to say about the app in general, good or bad.
When you send one of these we receive what you typed, and the reason you picked where the form offers a list, along with which screen you were on, which lesson, section, or word it was about, your app version, and your device platform and OS version. These reports carry no advertising identifier and nothing else that would let us follow you around. They do not carry your device model either. The crash reports described under "Diagnostics" below are the one place we receive that.
Write only what you want us to have. Neither box needs anything about you to be worth reading.
Class-card accounts get the flag and its reason list, with no text box anywhere. See "Children and school accounts" below.
Speaking practice (voice)
When you do a speaking exercise, your microphone audio is streamed to our pronunciation server, which scores it as you speak and sends back a transcript and score. The audio is processed in memory on our own server, running our own speech model. It is not written to disk, not stored in any database, and not sent to any third party. When the exercise ends, the audio is gone; the only thing kept is your numeric score and attempt count.
Your device keeps a temporary copy of the recording so you can play back your own attempt during the exercise. That file lives in the app's temporary storage and is deleted when you leave the screen.
The microphone is only active while you are doing a speaking exercise, and you can revoke microphone permission at any time in your device settings.
Purchases
Pro subscriptions are bought through the Apple App Store or Google Play. Payment runs entirely through them: we never see your card number, billing address, or payment details. We receive and store the transaction identifiers the store gives us, which we use to confirm your subscription and enable Pro on your account. Apple's and Google's own privacy policies cover the payment itself.
Diagnostics
The app may send us crash reports and basic diagnostic information, such as your device model, operating system version, and what the app was doing when something went wrong, so we can find and fix problems. Diagnostics do not include your learning content or personal information.
Crash reports go to crash-tracking software we run on our own server, and we keep them for 30 days. No third-party crash or analytics service is built into the app, so nobody outside receives them. You can turn crash reports off in Settings, under "About".
Server logs
Like nearly every online service, our servers keep routine, short-lived logs of requests (IP address, time, and what was requested) for security, debugging, and rate limiting. Rate-limit counters are held in memory and expire within an hour.
What we don't do
- No ads. The app contains no advertising and no ad networks, and we do not share personal information for advertising.
- We do not sell personal information. Not to anyone, not in any form.
- No analytics or tracking SDKs. The app contains no third-party analytics, ad-tech, or tracking code, and it does not track you across other companies' apps or websites.
- No age or birthdate collection. We never ask for your date of birth.
- Camera, only for class cards. The camera is used solely to scan a class-card QR code, and the video is processed on your device. Only the decoded code is sent to us.
- Motion sensor, only for fortune sticks. The shake-to-draw fortune stick feature reads your device's motion sensor on the device. Motion data never leaves your phone.
- No access to your contacts, photos, or location.
Service providers
A small number of companies process data for us, each for one job:
| Provider | What it does | What it sees |
|---|---|---|
| Mailgun | Sends account email (confirmation, password reset) | Your email address and the message content |
| Apple | Sign in with Apple; subscription validation | Its own sign-in and purchase data |
| Google Sign-In; subscription validation | Its own sign-in and purchase data | |
| Stripe | Invoicing for schools that buy class-card seats | School billing contacts only; individual learners never touch Stripe |
That is the full list. Pronunciation scoring, progress sync, and content delivery all run on our own servers.
How long we keep things
- Account and progress data: for as long as your account exists. Deleting your account removes it immediately and permanently.
- Speaking-practice audio: not kept at all (see above).
- Server logs: short-lived and routinely discarded.
- Subscription records: receipts and store notifications are kept for billing integrity. After you delete your account they no longer link to you; what remains are store transaction identifiers, not your name or email.
- Teacher access records: when a teacher views a student's progress, that access is logged (see the next section). After an account is deleted, its rows in this log are kept but no longer reference any account.
- Reports and feedback: kept while we work through them, and afterwards as a record of what was said. If you delete your account they stay, with the link to your account removed. Email us if you want one taken down.
Teachers and classrooms
If you join a classroom (through a class card or a school program), the teachers of that classroom can see your display name, seat number, and learning progress: sections completed, scores, vocabulary counts, and reading history. Teachers cannot see your email address, favorites, or settings. Teacher access is limited to their own classroom, and every time a teacher views a roster or a student's progress, that access is recorded in an audit log.
Children and school accounts
You must be at least 13 to create your own BeiStar account, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 through self-registration. If we learn that a child under 13 has created an account, we will delete it.
Students under 13 can still use BeiStar in one way: through a class-card seat created by their school. These seats are designed to hold no personal information. There is no email, no password, no age, and no requirement to use a real name; the account is a seat number plus a display name the teacher chooses. We rely on the school to obtain any consent required for its students, acting as the school's service provider for that classroom. A school can revoke or rotate a seat at any time, which cuts off access.
A class-card seat can still flag a problem with a lesson, but it gets only the fixed list of reasons. There is no free-text box on a school seat, so there is nothing for a student to type personal information into, and our server discards any text that reaches it from one of these accounts.
Parents and guardians: if you have questions about your child's use of BeiStar through a school, start with the school, since it controls the seats. You can also reach us at support@beistar.app.
Deleting your account and data
Open the app, go to Settings, and under Account tap Manage account, then Delete account. The page that opens lists what deletion removes and what stays; deleting from there is immediate and permanent: your account, progress, vocabulary, favorites, settings, and subscription records are all removed. There is no grace period and no recovery.
If you can't get into the app, email support@beistar.app from the address on your account and we will delete it for you.
Class-card accounts are managed by the school, so the delete option is not shown there; ask your teacher or school to revoke the seat. The seat itself holds no personal contact information.
Full details, including what remains after deletion, are on the account deletion page.
Security
All traffic between the app and our servers uses TLS encryption. Passwords are stored only as bcrypt hashes, sign-in tokens are stored hashed, class-card codes are encrypted at rest, and our database is not reachable from the internet. No system is perfectly secure, but if we ever discover a breach affecting your personal information, we will notify you as the law requires.
Your choices and rights
- Access or export: email us and we will send you a copy of the data tied to your account.
- Correction: your email can be seen in Settings; other synced data reflects your own activity in the app.
- Deletion: in-app, any time (see above).
- California residents: you have the right to know what we collect (this policy is the complete list), to delete it, and to not be discriminated against for exercising those rights. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined in California law, so there is nothing to opt out of.
- Do Not Track: our app and website do not respond to Do Not Track browser signals, but we also do not track you across other sites or services, and we let no third party do so through our service.
Changes to this policy
When we change this policy we will post the new version here with a new effective date. If a change meaningfully affects how we handle your personal information, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.
Contact
BCHAN Studio LLC
support@beistar.app
beistar.app