Privacy Policy
Hey, great that you're using VocaCrush! So you know what happens with your data, we've summarized everything briefly and understandably for you here.
Last updated: September 2026
Contents · 11 sections
Who is responsible?
The controller responsible for data processing in the app and on this website is Marco Schwingel. You’ll find the postal address in the imprint.
If you have questions about data protection, you can reach us by email:
What data is stored?
Profile: We store a user ID, the name you chose, your languages and your license. You can also use fantasy names here - it doesn't have to be your real name.
Vocab sets & photos: When you take photos to scan vocabulary, they are sent to our backend and forwarded to the OpenAI API to recognize the words in the photo and convert them into vocabulary pairs.
Shared sets: If you share a set, we store a copy with its name, languages and vocabulary on our server. Anyone with the link can open it.
Your account
You don’t need to sign in or set a password: when you set up the app, it creates an anonymous account. So that you can get it back after reinstalling or on a new phone, the app keeps a recovery key in its settings. Android includes these settings in the backup of your Google account if backup is turned on. We only store an irreversible hash of the key.
Protection against abuse
When your account is created or restored, the app has Google confirm via the Play Integrity API that it is the unmodified app from Google Play. We only receive the result of this check. To stop an unlimited number of accounts from being created on one device, we also store, for 30 days, a pseudonymised, irreversible value derived from the device identifier (Android ID) together with the date – without any link to your account. We briefly process your IP address in memory to limit the number of requests.
Error reports and usage statistics
If an error occurs, we store an error report with your user ID, your IP address, the operating system and the app version so that we can find the error. Error reports are deleted automatically after 90 days.
Our servers log requests with the IP address so that we can detect errors and attacks. These logs are deleted after 15 days.
To improve the app, it uses Countly to record which areas and features are used. It does this with a random identifier that is not linked to your account.
What doesn't happen?
No passwords or sensitive data - we don't need that. Your photos are not stored permanently: they are processed to recognize vocabulary and then discarded. Only if recognition fails do we keep the image for a maximum of 30 days in order to improve image recognition. After that it is deleted automatically.
Advertising
VocaCrush displays advertising via Google AdMob. Google may collect certain data to show you personalized ads. You can find more about this in the Google Privacy Policy.
This website
The website remembers your language in a technically necessary cookie that expires when you close your browser. There is no tracking, no advertising and no content from other providers here.
Legal basis
We process your data to provide the app to you (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR) and on the basis of our legitimate interest in running it securely and financing it through advertising (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
Your rights
Your data is in your own hands: in the app under Settings you can change your name and your languages, export your sets and delete your account – any time, without going through us.
You also have the right of access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, data portability and objection, as well as the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority.
Delete account
You can delete your account yourself at any time: in the app under Settings. This deletes your account, your license, the recovery key and your sets – only shared sets remain, so that links you’ve sent keep working. If you only uninstall the app, this information stays stored. If you want to get rid of everything, delete your account in the app first.