Ponte
Back to Ponte
Privacy Policy
The short version
- We keep what an account needs: your name, your email address and your learning progress.
- No adverts and no cookies. We use analytics (PostHog) to see which parts of Ponte are used. It stores nothing on your device, is linked to your account ID and never your name or email, and you can turn it off in Settings.
- We do not sell or share your data for marketing.
- You can export your progress, or delete your account yourself in Settings, at any time.
Who we are
Ponte is a European Portuguese learning app at ponte.mikeops.pro. It is run by Michael Awude, trading as MikeOps, based in Portugal. He decides how your data is used, which makes him the "controller" under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In this policy, "we" and "us" means him.
For anything about your data, email contact@mikeops.pro.
What we collect, and why
If you use Ponte without an account
Your settings and today's question count are kept in your browser's local storage so the app works, and they stay there. Your answers are not saved at all. If usage analytics is on, we receive anonymous records of which screens and features you use (see Analytics). They are not linked to you and cannot be joined up across visits.
If you create an account
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Email address | To sign you in. We email you a one-time code each time you sign in with your email address. |
| Name and character | The name or nickname and the character you choose when you set up your account. We use them to greet you, and other players see them in Live Quiz. |
| Password (older accounts only) | Ponte no longer uses passwords. Accounts created before the change may still have one stored, only as a one-way hash that nobody can read, including us. It is deleted with the account. |
| Google account details | If you sign in with Google, Google tells us your name, email address, profile picture link and Google account ID. We use them only to create and sign in to your account. We never see your Google password, and we ask for nothing beyond your basic profile. |
| Apple account details | If you sign in with Apple in the iPhone app, Apple tells us your email address, or a private relay address if you choose to hide yours, and an Apple account ID. We use them only to create and sign in to your account. We never see your Apple ID password. |
| Learning progress | Your answers, scores, mistakes, flashcards, test results, streak, bookmarks, daily goal, and the level, reason for learning and study time you chose at setup. This is what the app is for: it lets you carry on where you left off, on any device. |
| When you agreed to these terms | The version of our Terms and Privacy Policy you agreed to, and when. We need a record of it. |
| Sign-in records | Our sign-in provider logs when you sign in, with your IP address and browser details. This keeps accounts secure and helps us spot abuse. |
Inviting a friend
When you invite someone, we store their email address, your name, and whether the invitation was sent and accepted. This lets us show you your invitations and stop anyone sending more than five a day.
Sending the invitation creates a pending Ponte account for your friend's email address, noting the name you chose so the email can say who invited them. Your email address is not included. If your friend never accepts and wants it removed, they can email us and we will delete it. Please only invite people you know and who would welcome it.
Live Quiz
When you play Live Quiz, the name you enter, your character, your answers and your score are shown to the other players in your room. To run the game fairly, our server keeps the room, its players, their answers and scores while the room is open, so it can mark answers and keep the scoreboard. Everything in a room is deleted when the host closes it, and any room is deleted at the latest 3 hours after it was opened. If the host removes you from a room, we keep a note of that only until the room is deleted, so you cannot rejoin that game.
Reporting and blocking. You can report another player in your room, block them, or both. A report records who sent it, who it is about, the name they used, the room code and the reason you picked from a list. We use reports only to keep Live Quiz safe: to review them, and if needed to suspend or close an account that breaks our Terms. The player you report is not told who reported them. When you block someone, we keep their account ID and the name they used so we can hide them from you and keep them out of rooms you host; you can see and undo your blocks in Settings, under Blocked players.
Quick match. If you choose Quick match, you play with other Ponte learners you may not know. Ponte gives you a name made from your character and a number (for example "Gaivota 427"), the same every time, so strangers never see the name on your account. Players who blocked each other are never matched. So that your next games don't repeat questions, we keep a list of which Quick match questions you have seen, for 30 days. Nobody else can see it, and it is deleted with your account.
Weekly leaderboard. The points, games and wins from your Quick matches are added up each week (Monday to Sunday) and shown to other learners on the leaderboard under your Quick match name. We delete each week's scores after 8 weeks. Practice games against Ponte's bots stay on your device and are not counted.
Friends and invitations. After playing with someone, you can send them a friend request. If they accept, you can see each other in your friends list and invite each other into a room. A friend sees the name you used in the game where you met, never your email address. We keep the friendship until either of you removes it, blocks the other or deletes their account. An invitation lasts while the room is open, for at most an hour.
If you open a Live Quiz invitation link, the room code is kept on your device for up to 2 hours so you can join after signing in, and is removed once you join.
Speaking practice
In a lesson's Speaking section you can say a sentence and Ponte shows which words it understood. This only happens when you tap the microphone, and Ponte never keeps your voice or what you said.
- In the iPhone app, Apple's speech recognition turns your voice into text. Where your iPhone supports European Portuguese without a connection, this happens on the iPhone itself. Otherwise your iPhone sends the audio to Apple to recognise it, under Apple's privacy policy. The app asks for permission the first time you tap the microphone.
- On the website, your browser's own speech service does it: Chrome and Edge send the audio to Google or Microsoft, and Safari to Apple. That company handles it under its own privacy policy, not ours. Your browser asks for the microphone the first time you tap it.
- Playing back your attempt (on the website) uses a recording kept only in the page's memory on your device. It is never sent to us and disappears when you close or reload the page.
If you'd rather not use the microphone, choose "I can't speak right now" and the lesson carries on without it.
Daily reminder
If you turn on the daily reminder in the iPhone app, your iPhone schedules it itself. Nothing about it is sent to us, apart from the analytics event that you turned it on (with the hour) or opened Ponte from it.
Analytics
To learn which lessons, games and features help people and where they get stuck, Ponte sends usage events to PostHog, our analytics service:
- What: the screens you open, and events such as finishing a lesson, a quiz, a game or a mock test (with the score), clearing a mistake, reaching your daily goal, checking your speaking (only the share of words understood, never your voice or what you said), turning on or opening the daily reminder, signing in or up (and how), opening a Live Quiz invitation link, finishing setup (with the level, reason and study time you chose), sending an invitation, joining or hosting a Live Quiz, starting a Quick match or a game against bots, sending a friend request or invitation (never to whom), and reporting or blocking a player (only the reason picked, never who). Each event also carries your device type, browser, operating system, screen size, language and time zone, the website that sent you to Ponte, the app version, and whether you use the website, the installed app or the iPhone app.
- Not collected: your name, email, answers you type, what you click on besides these events, or recordings of your screen.
- How it is linked: while you are signed in, events are linked to your Ponte account ID, so we can see how one learner uses Ponte over time. As a guest, events are anonymous and are not joined up across visits.
- Nothing stored on your device: analytics uses no cookies and no local storage.
- Location: PostHog uses the connection's IP address to estimate your country and city, and does not store the address itself.
- Error reports: if something in Ponte breaks on your device, it sends PostHog a short error report: what went wrong, on which screen, and where in Ponte's own code. Anything in it that looks like an email address, a sign-in code or a long number is removed first. It is linked to your account ID like the events above, so we can fix the problem.
- Turning it off: switch off Settings, Share usage data. It stays off on every device you sign in on. Ponte also sends nothing if your browser asks websites not to track you ("Do Not Track").
Our legal basis
- To provide the service you signed up for (contract): your account, your progress, sign-in emails and Live Quiz.
- Legitimate interests: keeping Ponte secure, preventing abuse such as invitation spam, reviewing Live Quiz reports and keeping blocked players apart, passing on an invitation you asked us to send, and understanding how Ponte is used so we can improve it (analytics). You can object to analytics at any time by switching it off in Settings.
- Legal obligation: where the law requires us to keep or disclose something.
We do not make decisions about you by automated means alone. Live Quiz reports are reviewed by a person.
Who else handles your data
We use a small number of services to run Ponte. Each handles your data only to provide its service to us:
| Service | What it does |
|---|---|
| Supabase | Hosts our database, runs sign-in, sends account emails and runs Live Quiz. Your account and progress are stored in London, United Kingdom, which the European Commission recognises as protecting personal data to EU standards. |
| Vercel | Hosts the website and the small server that sends invitations. Like any web host, it sees your IP address when you load the site. |
| Apple | Signs you in if you choose "Continue with Apple" in the iPhone app. If you choose to hide your email address, Apple gives us a private relay address instead. In the iPhone app, Apple's speech recognition checks your speaking practice (see Speaking practice). |
| Signs you in if you choose "Continue with Google". On the website it also serves the fonts Ponte uses, so your browser contacts Google's font servers when the page loads. The iPhone app has the fonts built in. | |
| jsDelivr | Delivers one open-source code library the website loads, so your browser contacts it when the page loads. The iPhone app has it built in. |
| GitHub | Makes and keeps our weekly database backups for 35 days. Each backup is encrypted as soon as it is made, and the copies kept cannot be read without our key. |
| PostHog | Our analytics service (see Analytics). It stores the usage events in its European Union data centre. |
| Our email delivery provider | Delivers the emails Ponte sends, from no-reply@mikeops.pro. |
Some of these providers may process data outside your country, including outside the European Economic Area. Where they do, they rely on legal safeguards such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
We do not sell your data, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers. We would disclose it only if the law required us to.
Cookies and local storage
Ponte does not use cookies. It keeps your sign-in session, settings and progress in your browser's local storage, which it needs in order to work, and, for up to 2 hours, the room code from a Live Quiz invitation you opened. You can clear it at any time in your browser settings, which signs you out. Analytics stores nothing on your device.
How long we keep it
- Your account and progress: as long as you have an account. When you delete it in Settings, your account, progress and the invitations you sent are deleted straight away. If you ask us by email instead, we do it within 30 days.
- Sign-in records: kept by our sign-in provider for a limited period for security, then deleted.
- Analytics events: up to 12 months, then deleted. They are linked only to your account ID, so once your account is deleted they can no longer be connected to you. You can ask us to delete them sooner.
- Invitations you receive: until you accept, or until you ask us to remove them.
- Live Quiz rooms: until the host closes the room, and never more than 3 hours.
- Live Quiz reports: 12 months, then deleted. If either account is deleted, the report no longer links to it, and keeps only the name that was used.
- Blocks: until you unblock the player, or either account is deleted.
- Backups: our encrypted weekly backups are kept for 35 days. When you delete your account, it disappears from the live database at once and from backups as they expire, within 35 days.
Your rights
You can ask us to:
- see what we hold about you,
- correct anything that is wrong,
- delete your account and data. You can do this yourself under Settings, Delete my account.
- give you a copy of your data. You can also do this yourself under Settings, Export progress.
- object to or limit how we use it.
Email contact@mikeops.pro from the address on your account and we will reply within one month. If you are unhappy with our answer, you can complain to your data protection authority. In Portugal that is the Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados (cnpd.pt).
Children
Ponte is not meant for children under 13, and they should not create an account. If you believe a child under 13 has given us their details, contact us and we will delete them.
Security
Connections to Ponte are encrypted. Each learner's progress is protected by database rules so that only they can read it, sign-in codes work once and expire within an hour, and no password is ever stored in readable form. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable steps to protect your data.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will update the version and date at the top. The next time you open Ponte, we will ask you to read it and agree again.