English Dict Privacy Policy

Last updated: January, 2020

Introduction

Your privacy is important to us. We understand that you are aware of and care about your privacy rights, and we take that seriously. This Privacy Policy sets forth your privacy rights and applies to personal data we may collect:

• Through our free, ad-supported and subscription-based mobile applications (apps);
• Through emails and other electronic communications between you and us (with your consent, where required by law); and
• Through any software provided on or in connection with our services and platforms, apps, and emails (collectively, the Services).

Your decision to use the Services and provide your personal data is voluntary. We indicate on our online, mobile, and other registration forms what types of personal data are requested. You may choose not to submit requested information online, or may choose to restrict the use of cookies (see Your Rights & Choices below for more information), but that may limit the services English Dict is able to provide to you.

The Services are a network of general audience sites, and are not targeted to, and do not knowingly collect personal data from, minors under 16 years of age. We request that these individuals do not provide personal data through the Services.

We recognize that information privacy is an ongoing responsibility, and so we will from time to time update this Privacy Policy as we undertake new personal data practices or adopt new privacy policies.

Cookie Notice & Cookie Policy

Our Services use cookies, which are small data files that are placed on the hard drive of your computer, tablet, smartphone, or other devices when you visit a website and other tracking tools on our website and digital platforms. When we refer to cookies, this includes other similar technologies such as pixel tags, or web beacons. For more information about these tools and your choices, please refer to Use of Our Services - Information Collected Automatically & Other Information and Your Rights & Choices below.

How We Collect & Use Your Personal Information

English Dict protects the identity of visitors to the Services by limiting the collection of personally identifiable information. Personal information provided by you to us will not be posted or published by us for viewing by third parties. In most cases, the information you provide is limited to first name, last name, email address, city, state, age, and phone number. We use this information to provide you with goods and services, including subscription services, publications, and the like. We do not sell personal information to anyone and only share it with third parties who are facilitating the delivery of our Services as provided in this Privacy Policy. You can enjoy many of our Services and their unique features without giving us your personal information.

• Subscriptions, User Login Registrations, and Mobile App Services
  When you subscribe to or register for a Service or download a mobile app service, we collect information about you that may include (but not be limited to) your name, email address, city, state, and age. We may also collect a personal mailing address and a phone number. Users may edit their information at any time to change, add or remove certain personal information. We process your personal information to administer and manage your subscription or other-like Service, deliver user benefits to you, inform you of prizes and other benefits or opportunities associated with your Service and respond to your information requests. We also may use this information for legitimate business purposes that help us analyze the demographics of our subscribers and understand our users' needs and interests to better tailor our products and services to meet users' needs and deliver additional services to our users.

• Promotions and other special features
  For specific promotions and to access certain features, such as the ‘save your words' feature, we collect information voluntarily submitted by you to us to deliver the requested feature that may include (but not be limited to) your name, email address, city, state, and age. You may edit this information at any time to change, add or remove it from our Services.

• Newsletters
  To register for or subscribe to receive an English Dict newsletter, you must provide us with your email address. When you open an email that contains a newsletter, we gather certain statistics, such as number of emails opened and clicks within a newsletter, using industry-standard technologies, including clear gifs, helping us monitor and improve our newsletters.
  
  You may manage your English Dict newsletter subscriptions by subscribing or unsubscribing at any time using the link included in the related email. Please note that if you have set your browser to block cookies, this may have an impact on your ability to unsubscribe. If you have any difficulties managing your email or other communication preferences with English Dict, please contact us at englishdict@hellotalk.com.

• Communications from our approved, third-party partners and us
  If you choose to provide us with your email address or other personal information, you also may receive the following types of emails from us:
• Emails related to subscription-maintenance activities;
• Emails highlighting new features, content, and usage tips for the Services; and
• Special offers and other marketing messages
• From us for additional English Dict and HelloTalk (English Dict's parent company) products and services, and
• From our approved, third-party partners, if you "opt-in" or give us your permission to send them.

• When you provide us with your personal information, you can let us know that you do not wish to receive special offers from English Dict or its third-party partners. Also, each special offer will have information available to allow you to "opt-out" if you no longer wish to receive special offers. When you open an email from us, we may gather certain statistics, such as number of emails opened and clicks within the email, using industry-standard technologies, including clear gifs, helping us monitor and improve our Services. 

• Surveys
  We may occasionally conduct online surveys. All surveys are voluntary, and you may decline to participate.

• Purposes for processing (using) personal data provided directly by you
  As explained above, English Dict processes your data to provide you with the products and services you have requested or purchased from us, including special features, subscriptions, newsletters, and other content. Sometimes we use third-party providers to facilitate the delivery of the services described above, and these third-party providers may be supplied with or have access to your personal information for the sole purpose of providing services to you on our behalf, such as Word of the Day. Also, we may disclose your personal information in special legal circumstances. For instance, such information may be used where it is necessary to protect our copyright or intellectual property rights, or if the law requires us to do so.
  To carry out these activities, English Dict may rely on many legal bases to process your personal data, including where:
• necessary to perform the contractual obligations in our Terms of Service and to provide the requested Services to you;
• necessary for a third party's, or our, legitimate interests;
• necessary to comply with a legal obligation or to defend legal claims;
• necessary to protect the public interest or vital interest of others;
• you have expressly made information public; or
• you have consented to the processing, which may be revoked at any time.

• We also use your data for legitimate business purposes that enable us to refine our products and services to better tailor them to your needs, communicate with you about other products and services offered by English Dict, secure your personal data, or comply with regulatory and legal obligations.

You can update your personal information and change your marketing preferences at any time by sending an email to englishdict@hellotalk.com.

• Payment card information
  You may choose to purchase goods or services from English Dict using a payment card. Typically, payment card information is provided directly by users, via the Services, and English Dict does not, itself, process or store your card information. We strongly encourage you not to submit this information by email. When English Dict employees receive payment card information from users by email, fax, phone, or mail, it is entered as instructed and then deleted or destroyed.

Use of Our Services - Information Collected Automatically & Other Information

Like other commercial websites, English Dict and our authorized partners use cookies (small files transferred from a website to its users' hard drives or browsers for record-keeping purposes), including strictly necessary, performance, functional, and personalization cookies, software logs, and other similar information gathering technologies throughout our Services to collect certain information automatically and store it in log files to monitor the use of the Services, gather non-personal information about our users, and for a variety of other legitimate business interests and purposes. This information may include (but is not limited to) internet protocol (IP) addresses, mobile device identifiers, the region or general location where your computer or device is accessing the internet, and other usage information about your use of our Services, including a history of the pages you view.

We also work with third-party analytics providers, ad networks, and advertisers in order to track your online activities over time and across third party websites, apps and devices, by obtaining information through the automated means (including cookies) mentioned above. The information received by us through these automated methods may include (but is not limited to) information about your activities across unrelated websites and mobile applications, information about the possible relationships between different browsers and devices, information that we receive from our third-party service providers, demographic data, information from social media providers, and information about your interests. We may add this information to the data we have already collected through our Services.

Please refer to Your Rights & Choices below for more information.

• Links to third-party websites
  The Services may contain links to other websites or apps that may carry advertisements or offer content, functionality, or applications developed and maintained by third parties. These third-party linked services and advertisements may use automated means to collect information about you and your use of these features. English Dict is not responsible for the privacy practices or content of these third-party linked services once you leave the Services, click an advertisement or sign up for a special offer. We urge all users of our Services to follow safe internet practices: Once you leave the English Dict Services, do not supply personal data to these third-party linked services unless you have verified their security and privacy policies.

• Purposes for processing (using) information collected automatically & other information
  We may use and disclose information collected automatically through our Services and other information for any purpose, except if it is considered personal data under applicable law. If we combine information collected automatically with the personal data provided by you, we treat the combined information as personal data and use it only in the manner described above.

On the basis of legitimate interests, we use this information (or combined information) to help us design our Services to better suit our users' needs, to provide and improve our Services, for identification verification, to provide support, for statistical and market research purposes to tailor content to usage patterns, for analytic purposes through tools such as Google Analytics, and to personalize your experience by presenting content, products, and offers tailored to you. This information, along with other information we gather when you login, also can be used to understand use across websites and devices to further improve our Services, and show you advertisements on the Services or other third-party websites and apps that may be tailored to your individual interests and enable us to offer the Services to you free of charge. We also may use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our servers and to administer our Services, analyze trends, track user movements and gather broad demographic information that assists us in identifying user preferences.

• Relevant content and recommendations
  We use Google Analytics Demographics and Interest reporting, which is a Google Analytics Advertiser feature that collects and stores standard internet log and user information on our behalf and gathers information about what pages you visit, how long you are on our sites, how you got here, and what you click on during your visit. This Google Analytics data is not tied to personal information, so this information cannot be used to identify who you are. For our legitimate business interests, we use the data provided by Google Analytics Demographics and Interest reports to develop our services and content around our user demographics, interests, and behavior on our Services.
  We use Sensors Data to collect and analyze data about how you interact with our Services. Sensors does this by collecting data on what our users are doing, including (but not limited to) what web pages you visit, what you click on, how much time you spend on each page. 

• Advertising and interest-based, behavioral advertising
  In order to provide you with premium content, free-of-charge, the third-party ad networks and advertisers help us deliver advertisements to you on the Services. The third-party ad networks and advertisers with whom we work are able to limit the online ads you encounter to those we believe are consistent with your interests. This type of advertising is called interest-based or behavioral advertising. The data collected may be used to infer whether you share interests with other users, and deliver advertising relevant to those inferences.

Since our Services are provided to you free of charge, we have a legitimate business interest in monetizing the delivery of our premium content to you on the Services through the display of advertising. To the extent required by applicable law or contractual obligations, we obtain your consent before using your information for interest-based, behavioral advertising.

English Dict does not provide any personal information to third-party ad networks or advertisers about visitors to the Services, however these third parties may use automated means, such as cookies, to collect information, which may include your IP address, directly from you when you use our Services. Our Privacy Policy does not cover the use of information that they may have collected from you on the Services or other websites or the use of data that you provide directly to such third-party partners; that usage is governed by the third party partner's privacy policy. For information about opting out of interest-based, behavioral advertising, please see our Your Rights and Choices below.

• Mobile device identifiers
  When you use a mobile device like a tablet or cell phone to access our Services, we may access and monitor one or more "device identifiers," which are small data files associated with your mobile device that uniquely identify your mobile device. A device identifier may deliver information to a third party partner or us about how you browse and use the Services. Some features of the services may not function properly if use or availability of device identifiers is impaired or disabled. For more information, please see our Your Rights and Choices below

• Anonymous aggregated data
  We may provide anonymous aggregated data to other companies we do business with for statistical purposes.

Your Rights & Choices

• Browser controls
  You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Services. For more information about cookies, please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org/. Please note that limiting third-party cookies via your browser controls does not prevent our first-party cookies from being set in this way.
• To manage or delete browser cookies, please see your browser's privacy settings.
• To manage or delete Flash cookies, please use the Adobe Flash Player Settings Manager here: http://​www.macromedia.com/​support/​documentation/​en/​flashplayer/​help/​settings_manager07.​html

• Google Analytics Ad Settings
  You can opt-out of this Google Analytics Advertiser feature using the Ads Settings located at https://www.google.com/settings/ads. You also can use the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-on to disable tracking by Google Analytics. To delete these cookies, please see your browser's privacy settings or follow the above instructions.

• Interest-based, behavioral advertising opt-out choices
  You can exercise choice about the collection of data for interest-based, behavioral advertising. Some advertising networks require that we specifically list their opt-out links below. When you opt-out of a network, you may receive an "opt-out" cookie so that the network will know not to assign you new cookies in the future. Please know:
• If you opt-out of interest-based, behavioral advertising you will continue to receive ads on our free, ad-supported Services, but not behaviorally targeted ads. Also, if you opt-out of English Dict's practices, you may continue to receive interest-based, behavioral advertising through other companies.
• If you erase your browser's cookies, you may need to perform this process again.
• If you would like to avoid all advertisements on our Services, sign up for a paid-for subscription service.

Children's Privacy

A note to minors: If you are under the age of 16, please get permission from your parent/legal guardian or school before using the Services. If we discover that we have collected any personally identifiable information from a child under the age of 16 without parental consent, we will suspend the associated account and/or remove that information from our database as soon as possible.

English Dict does not knowingly collect or solicit personally identifiable information from or about children under 16, except as permitted by law or otherwise provided herein. If we discover we have received any information from a child under 16 in violation of this policy, we will delete that information immediately. If you believe English Dict has any information from or about anyone under 16, please email us at englishdict@hellotalk.com.

Security of Your Information

Any personally identifiable information collected through this site is stored on limited-access servers. We maintain safeguards to protect these servers and the information they store. Also, to help protect the privacy of data and personally identifiable information you transmit through the use of our Services, we maintain physical, technical and administrative safeguards. We update and test our security technology on an ongoing basis. We strive to restrict access to your personal data to those employees who need to know that information to provide benefits or services to you. In addition, we strive to educate all of our employees about the importance of confidentiality and maintaining the privacy and security of your information.

Data Storage and Retention

We store your personal data on our servers located in Hong Kong. We retain your information for the duration of your business relationship with us and as long as necessary to permit us to use it for the legitimate business purposes that we have communicated to you and comply with applicable law or regulations. For more information on where and how long your personal data is stored, and for more information on your rights of erasure and portability, please contact us at englishdict@hellotalk.com.

Consent to Processing and Transfer of Information about You

English Dict's headquarters are in China. Information we collect from you will be processed in China and may be stored, transferred to, and processed in any country where we have facilities or in which we engage service providers. These countries may be outside your country of residence, and may have different data protection laws than your country.

EU Data Subject Rights

The EU GDPR and other countries' privacy laws provide certain rights for data subjects. A good explanation of them (in English) is available on the website of the United Kingdom's Information Commissioner's Office.

If you wish to confirm that English Dict is processing your personal data, or have access to the personal data English Dict may have about you, please contact us at englishdict@hellotalk.com. Before processing any such requests, we must first verify that it is a valid and lawful request and that you are in fact the data subject for such request. Please allow at least thirty (30) days for a response.

Copyright

All of the content on the Services is copyrighted by English Dict, or its licensors, and it cannot be redistributed or used for commercial purposes. 

Business Transfers

As we continue to develop our business, we might sell or buy subsidiaries, or business units. In such transactions, customer information generally is one of the transferred business assets but remains subject to the promises made in any pre-existing Privacy Policy (unless, of course, the customer consents otherwise). Also, in the unlikely event that English Dict or substantially all of its assets are acquired, customer information will be one of the transferred assets and will remain subject to our Privacy Policy.

Acceptance of Privacy Policy Terms and Conditions

By using the Services, you signify your agreement to the terms and conditions of this English Dict Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to these terms, please do not use this site. We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions of this policy at any time. Please take a look at the Effective Date at the top of this page to see when this Privacy Policy was last revised. Amended terms that materially impact or modify your privacy rights take effect 30 days after they are initially posted on the site. Your continued use of any of the Services following the posting of any changes to these terms shall mean that you have accepted those changes.

Questions, Comments or Complaints

To correct, update, or remove personally identifiable information, please email us at englishdict@hellotalk.com. If you have any questions or concerns, please also send an email to us.