Privacy policy
How talar.is processes personal data while you learn Icelandic — plainly and briefly.
1. Who is responsible
The controller of your data is talar.is, Iceland. Questions and requests: info@talar.is.
2. What data we process
Only what the course needs:
- Account: email address, display name, password (stored as a hash), interface language.
- Learning data: your answers, cards, test results, mistakes and progress; the settings of your profile.
- Speech: recordings of your voice made in the speaking tutor and their transcripts, together with the tutor’s feedback.
- Usage logs: technical records of requests (time, path, status, approximate request size, provider costs) and of security events such as logins.
3. Why we process it
- To provide the course: lessons, cards, tests, the speaking tutor and your progress.
- To adapt the exercises and the tutor to your own answers (no profiling beyond your learning).
- To keep the service secure and working (login throttling, error diagnosis, cost limits).
- To improve the course content — on anonymised and aggregated data only.
4. Legal bases
- Performance of the agreement with you (the Terms of use) — account, learning data, speech recordings and transcripts needed for the tutor.
- Our legitimate interest in a secure, working and improving service — usage logs, security events, aggregated statistics.
- Your consent for optional features where we ask for it (for example a future analytics or recommendation feature). You can withdraw consent at any time.
5. Who processes data for us
talar.is uses the following processors under data-processing agreements. Only the data needed for the task is sent:
- Anthropic (language model): the tutor’s dialogue and the feedback on your lines — text only.
- OpenAI (speech recognition): your voice recordings, to turn them into text.
- Microsoft Azure (speech synthesis): the Icelandic sentences spoken to you — course text only, no personal data.
- DigitalOcean (hosting, EU region — see the hosting provider for the current data-centre location): the servers that run talar.is and store its database and files.
Some providers process data outside the EEA (United States). Transfers rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and/or the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.
6. How long we keep data
- Voice recordings: 30 days, then deleted automatically (the nightly clean-up). Transcripts and feedback stay with your learning history.
- Account and learning data: until you delete your account or ask us to delete it; then within 30 days.
- Usage and security logs: up to 12 months.
- Backups: rotated within 30 days.
7. Your rights
Under the GDPR (and the Icelandic Act No. 90/2018) you may:
- ask for access to your data and a copy of it;
- have inaccurate data corrected;
- have your data erased (account deletion);
- receive your data in a portable, machine-readable format;
- object to processing based on our legitimate interest, and withdraw a consent at any time;
- lodge a complaint with the Icelandic Data Protection Authority, Persónuvernd (personuvernd.is), or with the authority of your country.
Write to info@talar.is. We answer within one month.
8. Age
talar.is is for learners aged 16 and over. We do not knowingly process data of younger children; if you believe a child has registered, contact us and we will delete the account.
9. Cookies and local storage
talar.is sets only strictly necessary cookies, which need no consent:
- Session cookie — keeps you logged in during a visit; deleted when the browser closes.
- Security token — protects forms against cross-site requests; part of the session.
- Theme and language cookies — remember your colour theme and interface language for one year.
- "Keep me logged in" cookie — only if you tick that box; valid for 30 days.
- Cookie-notice cookie — remembers that you have seen the cookie notice, for one year.
Your browser’s local storage keeps interface preferences (for example the hint level or the last tab) on your device only. Nothing of this is sent to third parties.
There are no analytics, advertising or social-media cookies on talar.is. Should we add an optional analytics feature later, it will be off until you turn it on.
10. Changes
We update this policy when the service changes. The date at the top shows the current version; material changes are announced on the start page.