Version 2.0 · Last updated and effective 20 October 2026中文

Privacy Policy

This policy explains what personal information Read OutWard collects, why, who processes it for us, how long we keep it, and how you can see, export, correct and delete it. We do not sell your personal information, we do not show ads, and we do not track you across other companies’ apps or websites.

Summary#

• We collect what we need to run the Service. Your account, learning records and imported content let you keep learning on the web and on iPhone.
• Some data is processed by service providers. For example, narration is generated by voice services such as ElevenLabs, pronunciation is scored by iFLYTEK, and payments are handled by Apple or Stripe. The full list is in Third-party services.
• Pronunciation recordings never pass through our servers, and we do not keep them. Audio goes straight from your device to iFLYTEK for scoring; your phone keeps recent takes for you to replay, and you can turn that off.
• Data is mainly stored in the United States. Our servers run on Cloudflare; some providers are in mainland China.
• You can export or delete your data at any time in the app under Settings › Account & Sync; see Delete your account and data.

Who we are#

Read OutWard (listed as “阔读英语” on the mainland China App Store) is operated by Inchfield Technologies Limited, incorporated in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, which is the controller of your personal information. This policy covers the Read OutWard iPhone / iPad app, its widgets and the website readoutward.com. For any privacy question, contact support@readoutward.com.

What we collect and why#

Account and sign-in

• Email sign-in: your email address; we email you a 6-digit code (we store only a hash of it).
• Phone sign-in (China edition only): your mainland China mobile number; SMS codes are sent and checked by Alibaba Cloud’s number verification service.
• Sign in with Apple: the user identifier, email (possibly Apple’s private relay address) and the name you choose to share. We store Apple’s token encrypted so that we can revoke it with Apple when you unlink Apple or delete your account.
• Google sign-in: your Google account identifier, email and name. Authorisation happens on your device; we only receive and locally verify the identity token Google issues.
• Profile: the nickname and avatar you set (the avatar is resized before upload).
• Sessions: after sign-in we issue a session credential (a cookie on the web, stored in the Keychain in the app), valid for 30 days.

Why: to create and protect your account, let you sign in on several devices, and send sign-in codes and essential service messages.

Learning records and sync

When you are signed in, these records sync to your account: word cards (meanings, source sentences, review intervals), reviews, reading and listening positions, study time, plans and check-ins, favourites and bookshelf, highlights and reading notes, badges, weekly level checks and comprehension answers, interactive-book progress, scene challenges, and the learning milestones iRe notes down. When you are not signed in, these records stay on your device; after signing in you can choose to import them.

Why: to save and sync your progress, build study plans and review reminders, and compute the statistics in My English.

Content you import and create

• Imports (Global app): web articles you import (our server fetches the text from the link you give), RSS feeds, DRM-free EPUB books (members’ books are uploaded to sync; free accounts’ books stay on the device), pasted text (device only), and YouTube / Spotify episode links with subtitle files you provide.
• Reading notes, highlights and feedback you write.
• Chinese translations of imported articles are produced on your device by Apple’s system translation and are not sent to us.

Why: to display, split and sync your content and, when you ask, generate narration or explanations for it. We do not publish this content or use it to train models.

Voice and pronunciation scoring

• Pronunciation scoring (Global app): when you start scoring, the app asks us for a one-time scoring session (sending only the sentence to read), then your audio is streamed directly from your device to iFLYTEK’s speech evaluation service in mainland China, without passing through our servers. The results (overall and per-word scores and the reference sentence) are saved to your account and can be deleted one by one or all at once. iFLYTEK’s terms govern its handling of the audio.
• Recordings on your device: for replay, the app keeps up to your 200 most recent takes from the last 30 days on your phone. They are not uploaded and are excluded from iCloud backup. Turning off Keep recordings in settings deletes them immediately.
• Speech recognition: to compare your reading with the original, the app uses Apple’s speech recognition. On devices without on-device recognition, the audio is sent to Apple’s servers under Apple’s privacy policy. Transcripts are not sent to us.
• Web scene conversations: when you hold to speak in a web scene practice, your voice (up to 30 seconds) is sent to fal.ai’s speech-to-text service; the transcript and your replies are used to generate the conversation.

These need microphone and speech-recognition permission, which you can turn off in system settings at any time.

Narration and AI features

• Narration: most of our content has pre-generated narration. When you generate narration for imported content or tap to hear a sentence, the text is sent to a voice service (ElevenLabs, or MiniMax through fal.ai) to produce audio.
• AI explanations and translations (members): when you select a sentence (including one in the subtitles of an episode you imported) and ask for a definition, translation or explanation, the selection and its paragraph (up to about 1,200 characters) are sent through fal.ai and OpenRouter to an OpenAI model.
• Dictionary: words you look up are sent to our server to return definitions.
• AI credits: we record credit grants, spending and purchases for billing and abuse prevention.

Which features use AI is described in the AI-Generated Content Notice.

Payments and purchases

• App Store: Apple processes payment; we never see your card details. We receive Apple-signed transaction records (product, transaction ID, dates, amount, renewal status, refunds) and use a random account token to match them to your account.
• Web: cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Alipay and WeChat Pay are handled on Stripe’s hosted checkout, and payment details go directly to Stripe. We keep Stripe customer, subscription, order and invoice IDs, amounts, currency, region and refund status, and give Stripe your verified email for receipts.
• We show prices and payment methods for the country or region you visit from (inferred from your IP address, not stored).

Why: to activate and manage memberships, handle refunds and disputes, and meet accounting and tax obligations.

Notifications

• Push (Global app): if you allow notifications, we store your device’s push token, app version, language and time zone to send study reminders, study-buddy messages, trial-ending reminders and similar. You can turn each type off in the app; the token is removed when you sign out.
• Email: sign-in codes and essential account and payment messages are sent through our email provider, Resend.

Usage and diagnostics

• App usage events (Global app): we record a random installation identifier (new for each install), your account identifier (if signed in), app and OS version, device class (phone / tablet, not the model), language, membership status, and events such as opening the app, completing study tasks, playing narration and purchases. Identifiers of imported content are never recorded. We do not use the advertising identifier (IDFA) and do not track you across apps.
• Crash and performance diagnostics (Global app): crash, hang and performance reports from Apple MetricKit are uploaded anonymously, without account or installation identifiers.
• Website: we record page visits, sign-up and payment steps and reading progress ourselves, using random visitor identifiers. We do not fingerprint browsers or use third-party analytics or ad scripts. If your browser sends Do Not Track (DNT) or Global Privacy Control (GPC), we do not record this activity.
• Security: to prevent abuse and attacks, we process your IP address (rate-limit records mostly store only a hash of it) and a coarse browser type.

The China edition of the app does not collect the app usage events or diagnostics above.

Why: to understand whether features work, fix problems and prevent abuse.

Support and feedback

When you send feedback in the app or on the website, we receive your message, any contact details you leave (email or WeChat), screenshots you choose to attach, and the app version, OS version, device model, language and account identifier, to investigate and reply.

Study buddies

When you invite or accept a study buddy, they can see the display name you set and your daily study minutes (you can stop sharing minutes in settings). Blocking and reporting records the reason you give.

Information that stays on your device

Widget data (today’s study time, words, continue reading and so on) is written only to storage shared by the app and its widgets on your device; widgets do not go online. The My English export is generated on your device and handed to you.

Legal bases#

We process personal information to perform our contract with you (providing the features you use and processing payments), with your consent (for example microphone, notifications and cross-border transfer; you can withdraw it at any time without affecting earlier processing), for our legitimate interests (security, abuse prevention and product improvement, where these are not overridden by your rights), and to meet legal obligations (such as keeping accounting and tax records).

Who we share with#

We give service providers only the information they need for the feature concerned, and require them to use it only to provide their service to us:

Details are in Third-party services. Otherwise, we disclose personal information only with your explicit consent; when required by law, a court or a regulator; where necessary to protect the safety or property of you, other users or the public; or in a merger, acquisition or similar transaction (we will require the recipient to keep honouring this policy and tell you).

International transfers#

Our servers and most providers are in the United States; pronunciation scoring and SMS verification are done by providers in mainland China. Wherever you use the Service, your personal information may therefore be processed outside your country or region. If you use the Service in mainland China, your personal information is transferred abroad (mainly to the United States) for storage and processing. By using the Service you consent to these transfers; you can withdraw consent by deleting your account. We protect transferred information with contractual commitments, encryption in transit and access controls.

Retention#

Your rights#

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, copy, correct and delete your personal information, to restrict or object to some processing, to withdraw consent, and to receive a portable copy. Here is how:

• Export (access and portability): in the app, Settings › Account & Sync › Export account data produces a JSON file with your account, learning records, notes, reading history, payment records and more; My English › Export lets you export your word list (CSV) and your full learning record (JSON, with highlights and notes). For information the export does not include (such as App Store purchase records), email us.
• Correction: change your nickname and avatar and add or remove sign-in methods in the app; contact us to correct your email or other details.
• Deletion: delete individual notes, words and pronunciation results, or your whole account; see Delete your account and data.
• Withdrawing consent and turning features off: turn off microphone, speech-recognition or notification permission in system settings; turn off Keep recordings and individual notification types in the app; enable DNT or GPC in your browser to stop website activity recording.
• Other requests: email support@readoutward.com. To protect your account we may need to verify your identity first. We reply within 15 working days (or sooner if the law requires).

If you are unhappy with how we handle your information, you can complain to your local data protection authority, such as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data in Hong Kong, your EU or UK national authority, or the cyberspace administration in mainland China.

Children#

The Service is for people aged 13 and over and is not designed for children. Users under 18 should use it with a parent’s or guardian’s consent; in mainland China, personal information of children under 14 is sensitive personal information and requires a guardian’s consent. If we learn that we collected a child’s personal information without the necessary consent, we will delete it promptly. Parents and guardians can contact support@readoutward.com to review or delete their child’s information.

Security#

We encrypt connections with HTTPS; store only hashes of sign-in codes and session credentials; encrypt third-party sign-in tokens and integration secrets; keep the app’s session credential in the system Keychain; and limit server access to the people who need it. No system is perfectly secure. If a security incident could harm your rights, we will notify you and the authorities as the law requires.

Cookies#

The website uses a few necessary cookies and browser storage to keep you signed in, remember settings and count visits. It uses no third-party advertising or tracking cookies. See the Cookie Notice.

Changes#

We may update this policy; the version and date are shown at the top. For significant changes (for example collecting a new type of personal information, a new purpose or a new category of provider), we will notify you in the app, on the website or by email before they take effect, and ask for consent where it is required.

Contact#

Inchfield Technologies Limited (the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region)

Email: support@readoutward.com (please put “Privacy” in the subject)

Appendix: App Store privacy labels#

This is the mapping we use for the App Privacy section in App Store Connect, so you can see which data types the app itself collects. “Linked” means linked to your identity; no data is used for tracking. The Global app is Read OutWard; the China edition is “阔读英语”.