Privacy Policy

Who this is about

This policy covers anyone who creates a banter account or uses banter to practise a language. banter is operated by [[OPERATOR: confirm legal entity name and registered address]], referred to here as “banter”, “we” or “us”.

What we collect

We collect only what the product needs to run a conversation and score it:

• Account identity. You sign in either with Google (through Amazon Cognito) or with a one-time link we email you. Either way we hold your email address. If you use Google we also receive your display name and a stable identifier for your Google sign-in; we never see your Google password. There is no banter password at all.
• Sign-in records. While you are signed in, your browser holds a random session token in a secure, HTTP-only cookie, matched by a row on our side so we can sign you out everywhere at once. An emailed sign-in link is a single-use token that expires after 10 minutes and is deleted when used.
• What you say in a session. Each thing you say is stored as a text transcript, together with the timing of each word (when it started and ended, in milliseconds) and, where available, the speech recogniser’s confidence in that word. This is what the fluency metrics — speaking rate, pauses, response time — are calculated from.
• Scores and corrections. The fluency score for each session, its CEFR band, the sub-scores that make it up, and any grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation or register corrections generated for that session, quoting the exact words you used.
• Usage. How many minutes you have used today and this month, so your plan’s allowance can be enforced.
• Billing identifiers. If you subscribe, we store your Stripe customer and subscription IDs and your plan and subscription status. We do not store your card number or bank details — Stripe holds those.

What happens to your voice

Your microphone audio streams directly from your browser to our speech-to-text provider to be transcribed in real time. banter does not receive or retain the raw audio. It is assessed in flight and discarded; only the resulting transcript and word timings are saved. The optional video avatar does not change this: the avatar service receives only the words the AI partner is about to say, never your microphone, and banter never uses your camera.

Who we share it with

banter uses a small number of specialist processors to run the product. Each one receives only what it needs to do its job:

• Amazon Transcribe (speech-to-text). Your microphone audio streams directly from your browser to Transcribe over a short-lived, signed connection. banter’s server never sees the audio itself.
• Amazon Bedrock, running Anthropic’s Claude models (the conversation and the scoring). Receives the text transcript of your session — what you and the conversation partner said — to generate the next reply in character and, at the end, to judge your performance.
• Azure AI Speech (optional pronunciation assessment, where enabled). Would receive your transcript and word timings to produce a pronunciation sub-score. This is skipped, not substituted with a guess, when it is not configured.
• Anam or HeyGen (optional video avatar, on plans that include it). The avatar service receives the words the AI conversation partner is about to say, and streams the video of it saying them back to your browser. It does not receive your microphone — your speech goes to Amazon Transcribe — and banter never uses your camera at all.
• Amazon Cognito and Google (sign-in with Google, if you choose it). Cognito brokers sign-in with your Google account; Google confirms who you are and releases your email and name to Cognito with your consent at sign-in.
• Amazon SES (sign-in by email, if you choose it). Delivers the one-time sign-in link to your inbox. It receives your email address and the message itself.
• Stripe (payment). If you subscribe, Stripe receives your billing details and processes the charge. banter never sees or stores your card number — only the resulting customer and subscription IDs.

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it with anyone for their own marketing purposes.

Our legal bases for processing (GDPR)

• Contract. Most processing — running your sessions, scoring them, keeping your history, billing your subscription — is necessary to provide the service you signed up for.
• Legitimate interests. We use usage data to prevent abuse of free and paid quotas (for example, detecting a compromised account burning through minutes) and to keep the service reliable.
• Consent. Your browser only shares your microphone after you grant that permission directly to your browser. banter never asks for your camera. You can withdraw it at any time by ending the session or revoking the permission in your browser settings.

Your rights

Wherever you are, you can:

• Access and export everything banter holds about you, including your full transcripts and scores, as a downloadable file.
• Correct your account details. Your email address is how you sign in, so to change it, write to us at the address below and we will move your account across. Your name is taken from Google when you first sign in with it and is not updated after that; ask us and we will correct it.
• Delete your account and every row linked to it — sessions, transcripts, scores, corrections, usage records and your sign-in records. Deleting signs you out on every device immediately.
• Object to or restrict processing, and ask about the portability of your data to another service.

Export and deletion are self-serve, from /account, rather than a request you have to email in and wait on. Deletion is immediate and irreversible once confirmed, and it also cancels any active subscription so you are not billed after your account is gone.

How long we keep things

Transcripts, scores and corrections are kept for as long as your account exists, so your history and progress stay available to you. Deleting your account deletes them. Records Stripe holds on our behalf for billing and tax purposes are kept for as long as tax law requires — typically around seven years — even after you delete your banter account. That retention is a legal obligation on us, not a choice, and it is why account deletion detaches your Stripe record from your banter account rather than erasing it.

International transfers

banter’s infrastructure and its processors listed above run in the United States (AWS region us-east-1). If you are in the UK, EU or elsewhere outside the US, your data is transferred there to provide the service. [[OPERATOR: confirm the transfer mechanism relied on — e.g. Standard Contractual Clauses with each processor — and add it here]].

Children

banter is not intended for anyone under 16, and we do not knowingly collect data from children under that age. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

If we change what we collect or who we share it with, we will update this page and change the date at the top. Material changes will be flagged in the app.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or a request that is not covered by the self-serve tools above: privacy@idea-engine.studio.