SaunaSpeak is a web app for learning spoken Finnish, made and run by Aleksis Vējš,
an independent developer in Finland's neighborhood (EU). He is the one
responsible for your data. This page explains what we store, why,
and what you can do about it - in plain language, because nobody learns Finnish
to read legalese.
What we store
Account: your name, email address and a hashed password (we can never read the password itself). If you sign in with Google, we store the Google account ID that links the two.
Acquisition: the first page and referring site in your browser tab, plus campaign tags, are kept in session storage and attached to signup. We use these to understand which sources bring learners who return. Referrer queries and fragments are removed.
Practice sessions and pronunciation: we store session starts, graded sentence IDs, completion and abandonment, plus pronunciation attempt scores and provider status. When you choose Get feedback, your recording is sent to Microsoft Azure Speech for assessment. SaunaSpeak does not retain raw pronunciation recordings. Local recording comparison stays in your browser.
Learning data: which sentences and words you've studied, your self-grades, review schedule, streak, XP, checkpoints, preferences (goal, daily time, audio speed), timezone, and a few one-time product milestones such as opening or completing the free guided Situation. This is the product - spaced repetition and the learning journey can't work without it.
Chat messages: what you write to Väinö or a scenario character is sent to an AI provider to generate the reply (see below). Practice-attempt corrections are cached so identical mistakes get instant answers. When a character corrects a line of yours, that line and its fix are saved as a review card in your mistake deck; you can switch this off in the chat.
Notifications: if you allow them, we store the address your browser gives us for sending them, and the name of the device.
Messages to us: what you send through the contact or feedback form, with the name and email you give there.
Billing (Löyly+ only): payments run entirely through Stripe. We store your Stripe customer and subscription IDs and your subscription status - never your card number. If you start a free trial, we also keep Stripe's anonymous code for the card (not the number), so one card gets one trial.
What we deliberately don't do
No advertising, no selling or sharing data with data brokers - ever.
No advertising or profiling cookies. Analytics are page counts only: Umami, a cookieless, EU-hosted service, and Google Analytics, which sets a _ga cookie only if you allow it. Say no and it sets no cookie and sends only cookieless page pings; change your mind either way with the Cookies link at the bottom of any public page. Neither one is used for ads.
No social-media pixels, no fingerprinting.
Processors we rely on
A few services process data on our behalf, only to make features work:
our hosting provider (servers and database), Stripe (payments),
Google (sign-in, if you choose it), Microsoft Azure Speech (pronunciation feedback),
Umami and Google Analytics (page-view statistics),
an email delivery provider (verification, password-reset and optional
review-reminder mails), an AI provider (Anthropic, Google or OpenRouter -
chat replies and practice corrections; messages are sent for processing,
not used by us to train anything), and a speech-synthesis provider
(Microsoft or Google) for generating Finnish audio.
Emails
We send account emails (verification, password reset) and - if you keep the
toggle on in your profile - a daily reminder when reviews are due. The reminder
can be switched off in your profile at any time.
Your rights
Export: download everything we hold about you as JSON from your profile ("Download my data").
Deletion: delete your account from your profile - it removes your account, progress, word bank and review history immediately, and cancels any active subscription. This is irreversible.
Correction & access: for anything else (GDPR articles 15-21), email us and we'll sort it out.
Retention
We keep your data for as long as your account exists. Delete the account and
it's gone from the live database immediately. A database backup is made before
each update of the site and the last 14 are kept, so a deleted account can stay
in a backup until newer ones replace it. The one thing kept on purpose is the
anonymous card code from a free trial, which stops the same card from starting
a second one.
Contact
Questions, requests, complaints:
mail@saunaspeak.com.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority.