Privacy Policy

Effective date: 6 October 2026

Lungli is a language-exchange app operated by Sonbola Apps ("we", "us"). This policy explains what we collect when you use Lungli, why, and the choices you have. Questions: sonbola.apps@gmail.com.

Who can use Lungli

Lungli is for people aged 16 and over. If the birthday given at sign-up shows an age under 16, the account is blocked and cannot be used. People aged 16 and 17 only see, and are only seen by, others aged 16 and 17.

What we collect

What you give us

• Account details: your email address and password. Passwords are stored by our authentication provider in hashed form; we never see them.
• Profile details: your display name, birthday, city, and — if you choose to give it — your gender.
• Language details: the languages you teach and learn, your level, your goals, the topics you like, how you prefer to practise and when you are usually free.
• The avatar you pick from the set the app offers. Lungli does not let you upload photos.
• Messages you send in one-to-one conversations and in groups, and corrections you make to another person's message.
• What you save to your Memory: a copy of a correction made to one of your own messages (the corrected text, your original message and the explanation), and words or phrases you add yourself, with your notes. Only you can see your Memory.
• Reports you send us about a person, a message or a profile, and the people you block.
• Messages you write to our team from Settings → Contact us, with the app's version, your kind of device (Android, iOS or web) and the app's language. We do not attach your email address to them; they stay until our team removes them.

What we collect automatically

• A push-notification token for each phone you sign in on, if you allow notifications.
• Your notification choices, privacy choices and the language and theme you pick.
• Technical records needed to run and protect the service, such as request times and rate-limit counters.
• Whether your app is open: while you use the app it tells us so about once a minute, so that the people you are already talking to can see that you are online and when you are typing to them. We keep only the time of the most recent signal, not a history, and never show when you were last online. You can turn this off in Settings → Privacy & safety; then you also do not see it for others.
• Error reports: if the app runs into an error it did not expect while you are signed in, it tells us what the error was, where in the app's code it happened, the app's version and your kind of device (Android, iOS or web). We count how often each error happens; we do not record who it happened to.

We do not collect your precise location, your contacts, or advertising identifiers, and we do not show ads.

What other people can see

Other members can see your display name, avatar, age range (for example "25–34", never your birthday or exact age), city and country, the languages you teach and learn with your level, and your goals, topics, practice preferences and free times. They never see your email address, birthday or gender.

You can hide your profile from search, limit who can write to you, pause your profile and turn off read receipts in Privacy & safety.

How we use your information

• To create and secure your account.
• To suggest language partners and groups that fit what you teach and learn.
• To deliver your messages and corrections, and to notify you about them if you asked us to.
• To keep the community safe: reviewing reports, removing content that breaks the Community Rules, and warning or suspending accounts.
• To meet legal obligations.

Messages in groups are checked automatically for contact details such as phone numbers and links before they are posted. One-to-one messages are not read by our team unless they are part of a report.

Where the law asks us to name a legal basis for this, it is:

• our agreement with you (the Terms of Service), for running your account, suggesting partners and groups, and delivering messages and corrections;
• your consent, for push notifications and for your gender if you choose to give it — you can withdraw either at any time in Settings;
• our legitimate interest in keeping the community safe, for reviewing reports, removing content, and warning or suspending accounts;
• our legal obligations, where a law requires us to keep or hand over information.

Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only with:

• Service providers that run Lungli for us: Supabase (accounts, database and real-time delivery), Render (the server that runs the app's service, in Frankfurt, Germany) and Google Firebase Cloud Messaging (push notifications).
• Authorities, where the law requires it.
• A successor, if Lungli is transferred to another operator; you will be told first.

Your account, profile and messages are stored by Supabase in the European Union (Frankfurt, Germany), and every request the app makes passes through our server at Render, also in Frankfurt. Like any web host, Render and its network provider process the internet address a request comes from in order to deliver and protect the service. Push notifications are delivered by Google, which may process a notification and your phone's notification token in the United States and other countries. Where information leaves the country you live in, our providers rely on the safeguards the law provides for such transfers, such as standard contractual clauses.

How long we keep it

• Your account and profile: until you delete your account.
• One-to-one messages: for as long as the conversation exists for either person.
• Group messages: removed automatically once nobody who could have read them is still in the group, apart from a short recent window and messages that were reported.
• Reports, warnings and suspensions: until the account they are about is erased (see below), so that safety decisions can be reviewed.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time in Settings → Account → Delete account. When you do:

• you are signed out everywhere and can no longer sign in;
• your profile is removed from Discover and from groups, and nobody can write to you;
• your open conversations are closed. Messages you already sent stay visible to the people you sent them to, shown as from a deleted account;
• your notification tokens, starred people, your Memory and notification settings are removed.

We keep a minimal record of the deleted account, and any reports, warnings or suspensions about it, to prevent abuse and to meet legal obligations. It is not erased on a timer: it stays until our team erases it, and you can ask us to do that at any time by writing to sonbola.apps@gmail.com. When it is erased, the record, the reports about the account and its warnings and suspensions are removed for good, and the email address can be used to sign up again. A report you made about someone else stays, without your name on it.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export or erase your information, and to object to or restrict how we use it. You can change most of it yourself in Settings. For anything else, write to sonbola.apps@gmail.com. You may also complain to your local data-protection authority.

Security

We protect your information with encryption in transit, access controls and the security measures of our providers. No service can promise perfect security; please use a strong, unique password.

Changes to this policy

If we make important changes we will tell you in the app before they take effect. The date at the top shows when this policy was last updated.

Contact

Sonbola Apps — sonbola.apps@gmail.com