Privacy Policy

1.1What this Policy covers

This Privacy Policy (this “Policy”) describes how Abyssinia Homes LLC, a limited liability company organised under the laws of the State of Maryland, United States (“Abyssinia Homes LLC”, “we”, “us” or “our”), collects, records, organises, structures, stores, adapts, retrieves, consults, uses, discloses, transfers, restricts, erases and otherwise processes Personal Information in connection with the TwinTalk marketing website at https://twintalk.app, the TwinTalk application at https://app.twintalk.app, and every product, feature, communication and service we make available in connection with them (together, the “Services”).

This Policy applies to you whether you are a visitor who reads a single page and leaves, a registered user of the application, a person invited to the Services by another user, or a person who corresponds with us about the Services. It applies wherever you are located.

1.2Relationship to the Terms and Conditions

This Policy is incorporated into and forms part of our Terms and Conditions (the “Terms”). Terms defined in the Terms and not defined here carry the meaning given to them in the Terms. Where this Policy and the Terms address the same subject matter, this Policy governs as to the processing of Personal Information and the Terms govern as to every other matter, including without limitation the disclaimers, the limitation of liability and the dispute-resolution provisions, each of which applies to any claim arising out of or relating to this Policy.

1.3What this Policy does not cover

This Policy does not govern the practices of any third party we do not control, including:

• operators of websites, applications or services to which the Services link or from which you reach the Services;
• the application stores, device manufacturers, operating-system vendors and network operators through which you obtain or access the Services;
• payment networks, card issuers and financial institutions involved in a transaction you initiate; and
• any other user of the Services, whose use of information you disclose to them in a call, a message or a profile is a matter between you and that user and is addressed at Section 9.2.

We encourage you to read the privacy notices of any third party whose services you use. Their inclusion in or accessibility from the Services is not an endorsement and does not make us responsible for their conduct.

2.1Identity of the controller

Abyssinia Homes LLC is the controller of the Personal Information described in this Policy for the purposes of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679, the “GDPR”), the UK General Data Protection Regulation as it forms part of the law of England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (the “UK GDPR”), and the equivalent term in every other statute in which it appears, and is the personal-information controller (개인정보처리자) for the purposes of the Personal Information Protection Act of the Republic of Korea (the “PIPA”).

Entity

Abyssinia Homes LLC

Jurisdiction of organisation

State of Maryland, United States

Registered address

306 W. Redwood Street, Suite 202, Baltimore, Maryland 21201, United States

Data-protection enquiries · Legal notices

contact@twintalk.app

2.2Privacy Officer

In accordance with Article 31 of the PIPA we designate a Privacy Officer responsible for the protection of Personal Information, for handling requests and complaints, and for remedying harm arising from the processing of Personal Information. The Privacy Officer may be reached at contact@twintalk.app.

We have not appointed a data protection officer under Article 37 of the GDPR, on the basis that we are not a public authority, our core activities do not consist of processing operations requiring regular and systematic monitoring of data subjects on a large scale, and we do not process special categories of data on a large scale within the meaning of Article 37(1)(c). Enquiries that would be directed to a data protection officer should be sent to the address above and will be handled by the Privacy Officer.

2.3Representatives and local agents

Where Article 27 of the GDPR or of the UK GDPR requires the designation of a representative in the European Union or the United Kingdom, or Article 31-2 of the PIPA requires the designation of a domestic agent in the Republic of Korea, we will make that designation and will publish the designee’s name, address and contact details in this Policy. Until a designation is published, correspondence of the kind that would be addressed to a representative or domestic agent should be sent to the Privacy Officer at contact@twintalk.app, which we monitor and to which we respond within the periods stated at Section 14.2.

4.1Account and identity information

Information you provide to create and hold an account: your name or display name, email address, authentication credentials or the identifier returned by a third-party sign-in provider you choose to use, your declared date of birth or age attestation, account status and settings, and the language pair you are learning in. Authentication credentials are stored in hashed and salted form and are not recoverable by us in plaintext.

4.2Profile and preference information

Information you choose to publish or configure: profile photograph, biography or introduction, interests, conversation topics, proficiency self-assessment, availability, notification preferences, interface language and the conversation mode you select. You decide what to put in a profile; anything you put there is visible to users with whom you are matched.

4.3Call Content and call metadata

In order to deliver a translated conversation at all, the Services process the audio and video of a call while it is in progress, together with the transcripts, captions and translations produced from that audio. We also process call metadata: who spoke with whom, when a call began and ended, its duration, the languages selected, connection quality measurements, and the technical events recorded to diagnose a failed or degraded call. The processing of Call Content is described in full at Section 7 (Real-Time Translation, Captions and Call Content), which governs it.

4.4Learning records

The record the Services build so that progress can be shown back to you: vocabulary encountered, phrases saved, corrections offered, session counts and streaks, and derived measures of fluency or improvement. These records are derived from your use of the Services and, where they relate to a conversation, from Call Content. They include your Twin and the readings of your calls from which it is built, described at Section 7.6.

4.5Communications with us and with other users

Messages, invitations and requests you send through the Services; reports you submit about another user and reports another user submits about you; and your correspondence with our support, safety and legal functions, including its contents, attachments and the metadata of its delivery.

4.6Transaction and billing information

Your subscription plan, its status and renewal date, billing country, the currency in which you are charged, the amounts charged and refunded, the date and result of each charge, the last four digits and brand of the payment instrument, the identifiers our payment processor assigns to you and to each transaction, and the record of the acknowledgement you give before each purchase (that access starts at once and purchases aren’t refunded: its version, language and time), kept with your consent receipts. We do not collect or store complete payment card numbers, security codes or bank credentials; those are submitted directly to a payment processor that processes them as an independent controller under its own privacy notice and under the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

Purchases are sold to you through Link, the consumer service of our payment processor, Stripe, which acts as merchant of record. Link receives your name, email address, billing address and payment details at checkout and processes them as an independent controller under its own privacy notice, including to provide receipts and order support. You may ask Link to delete what it holds about your purchases; doing so cancels any Subscription sold through it. If you signed up through a partner’s link or code, we also record that partner’s code against your account.

4.7Partner information

If you join our partner program, we process your name, contact details, the channels on which you publish, your partner code, the referrals and commissions attributed to you, and your payout status. Partners are paid by Rekomi (Uplup Inc.), which acts as payer of record: we give it your name, the email address of your account and the amounts we owe you; it collects your bank or PayPal details and your tax form itself, pays you through Stripe or PayPal, and files any tax form for your earnings in its own name, as an independent controller under its own privacy notice. We never receive your bank details or your tax form — only whether your payout account is ready, the kind of method and its country, and whether each payout arrived.

A partner sees only anonymised information about the customers they referred — such as the plan, the billing period and the month of the commission — and never a customer’s name, email address or payment details.

4.8TwinTalk Exchange, contact requests and founder calls

If you verify as a student or as faculty for TwinTalk Exchange, we process a campus record: your university, its email domain, a keyed fingerprint of your school address (never the address itself once its code is confirmed), when you verified and when you are due to verify again, your expected graduation month, your status, and the version of the enrolment confirmation you gave; for faculty, also the address of the public page on your school’s website that names you. While a code is pending we keep it only as a hash.

For every account we keep server-written labels — which of our audiences an account belongs to (for example member, student, alumni, faculty, buyer, partner) — and its origin: how it first and most recently came to us (a class code, an ambassador, a partner, a club, an event, a campaign or a page). Labels and origin are never shown to other members.

In the Exchange we also process your class membership (the class, whether you have a seat, and whether you chose to be counted in its class summary), your steady partner and weekly time, orders, quotes and invoices (the buyer’s name, organisation, billing contact and address, purchase-order number and any tax-exemption certificate), consent receipts (the enrolment confirmation, the open-partner choice), and certificates (the name as you chose it to print, your school if you chose to show it, the term, the figures it states, and its verification page).

If you apply to be a Campus Ambassador, we process where you post, why you applied, your answer to whether you may earn self-employment income (it only decides whether you are paid commission; we don't ask for or keep your visa or immigration documents), your agreement's version and time, your founder call, your code, and each month's results as counts (sign-ups and first conversations from your code, your own calls, the links to posts you log). If you plan an Exchange Night for a club, we process the club's name, the members you expect, a sister club you name, the dates you choose, and the Night itself; the other club's officer sees your club's name, your school and your choices.

A professor receives what a student sends them (a report) and a class summary: rounded figures about the students who chose to be counted, shown only when at least five of them have data for a figure, never naming or quoting anyone. A department sees counts of seats and of the students of the classes it funded, never a student.

If you write to us through the contact form we process your name, email address, role, the topic and the details it asks for (for example your school, course or organisation), your message, the language of the page and which of our pages sent you. If you ask for a call with our founder we process your name, email address, school, role, what you would like to talk about, your time zone, the time you chose, and the meeting and invitation we make for it. We use these only to answer you and to arrange and hold the call; we never add you to a mailing list.

4.9Device Data and Usage Data

Device Data and Usage Data as defined at Section 3, collected automatically when you use the Services. On the marketing website at https://twintalk.app this is limited to what is described at Section 8.1.

4.10Inferences

Conclusions we draw from the categories above, such as the language pair you are most likely learning, the times at which you are likely to be available, the proficiency band your usage suggests, whether an account presents a risk of fraud or abuse, and which features are likely to be useful to you, and the estimates of your language ability that your Twin draws from your calls (a level shown as a range, patterns in your speech, and suggestions for practice), described at Section 7.6. Inferences are Personal Information and are treated as such throughout this Policy.

4.11Sensitive Information

We do not ask for Sensitive Information and the Services are not designed to collect it. Two qualifications are necessary and are stated plainly rather than buried.

1. A live video call transmits your image and your voice, and a conversation may reveal information about health, religion, political opinion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or trade-union membership if you choose to speak about it. We do not seek that information, we do not index or profile on it, and you should not disclose it in a call unless you are content for the other participant to know it.
2. We do not use any part of your image or voice to create a faceprint, a voiceprint, a facial-geometry template or any other biometric identifier, and we do not use facial or voice recognition to identify you. This is stated as an unqualified commitment at Section 7.2.

We do not use or disclose Sensitive Information for purposes other than those permitted by section 1798.121 of the California Civil Code, and we do not process Sensitive Information for the purpose of inferring characteristics about you.

7.1What the processing consists of

A translated conversation cannot be delivered without processing the conversation. While a call is in progress the Services transmit and process its audio and video in order to convert speech to text, translate that text into the other participant’s language, render captions, and — where the feature is enabled — synthesise speech in the target language. This processing is automated, it is carried out for the duration of the call, and it is the purpose for which you are using the Services.

Parts of this processing are performed by Service Providers specialising in speech recognition, machine translation and speech synthesis. Each is engaged under a written contract that restricts it to processing on our instructions, prohibits it from using Call Content for its own purposes including the training of its own models except where we have separately and specifically permitted it, and obliges it to implement security measures no less protective than our own. The categories of recipient are listed at Section 9.1.

7.2No biometric identifiers

Speech recognition converts the sound of words into the words themselves. It does not build a model of the speaker, and the Services do not ask it to. We make this commitment in these terms because the statutes that govern biometric data — including the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act, chapter 19.375 of the Revised Code of Washington, Article 23 of the PIPA and Article 9 of the GDPR — turn on whether an identifier exists, and the answer here is that none does.

If we ever intend to introduce a feature that would require a biometric identifier, we will amend this Policy, describe the feature and its purpose, state the retention and destruction schedule, and obtain your prior written consent before any such identifier is created. We will not rely on your continued use of the Services as consent to that.

7.3Retention of Call Content

Audio and video are processed transiently for the purpose of the call and are not retained as a recording except in the circumstances listed below. Transcripts, captions and learning records are retained as described in Section 12 (Retention and Destruction) because they are the record of your progress that the Services exist to give you.

Call Content is retained beyond the call only where:

1. you have enabled a feature that records, saves or reviews a call, in which case the retention is the retention that feature describes and you may delete the result;
2. retention is strictly necessary and proportionate to the investigation of a report of abuse, a safety incident or a suspected breach of the Terms, in which case the material is segregated, access is restricted to personnel with a need to see it, and it is destroyed on the schedule at Section 12.2;
3. we are required to retain it by law, or by a subpoena, warrant, court order or other legally binding demand, or in order to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim; or
4. you have given separate, specific and withdrawable consent to a further use, in which case the retention is as described when that consent was sought.

A call has two participants. Anything you say or show in a call is received by the other participant, and the translation of what you said appears on that participant’s screen. That is what a conversation is. We cannot retrieve, recall or delete what another person has seen, heard, remembered or independently recorded, and this Policy does not purport to govern what that person does with it. The Terms prohibit a user from recording a call without the other participant’s consent, and a breach of that prohibition is a matter we will act on — but the prohibition is a rule, not a technical impossibility, and you should conduct yourself in a call accordingly.

7.4TwinTalk Business meetings

A TwinTalk Business meeting can have up to seven participants, including guests who join through a link without creating an account and give only a display name and the language in which they want to read. Everything said and typed in the meeting is received by every participant, in each participant’s own language.

The captions, the chat and the transcript of a Business meeting are stored with the meeting so that its participants can return to them. When the meeting ends, an automated recap — a summary, decisions, action items and figures — is written from the transcript and the chat by a language-model provider and stored with the meeting in each participant’s language. A glossary saved by the Business account holder is used to translate that account’s meetings and is not shown to guests. These records are kept as described in Section 12 (Retention and Destruction).

The Business account holder decides who is invited and is responsible for telling participants, before they join, that the meeting is translated, transcribed and summarised. A guest may ask us to delete what they contributed by writing to contact@twintalk.app.

7.5Model training

We do not use the identifiable content of your calls to train speech, translation or language models without your separate, specific, freely given and withdrawable consent, obtained apart from your acceptance of this Policy and of the Terms. We may use aggregated or de-identified data derived from use of the Services — including counts, error rates, quality measurements and statistics that cannot reasonably be linked back to you — to measure and improve the Services, and we do not attempt to re-identify such data.

7.6Your Twin

After each one-to-one call, the Services analyse your side of the conversation automatically so that you receive your Twin: a description of how you speak and understand the language you are learning. The analysis uses the words you said as speech recognition transcribed them, when each word was said and how confident the recognition was, the captions you opened, and how the other participant responded (for example, whether they asked you to repeat something). The other participant's words are used only as context — to establish what you were answering and how difficult their speech was to follow — and are never shown to anyone other than the two participants in the call. The analysis works on words and their timing; it does not use the sound of your voice, and Section 7.2 applies to it in full.

From that analysis we derive Inferences about your language ability: a level shown as a range, patterns in your speech, words you reached for, and suggestions for what to practise next. They are automated estimates, not the result of a test, and they are shown to you alone. Nothing about your Twin is disclosed to any other person unless you choose to share it, and any sharing feature will show you what is shared before it is shared and let you withdraw it. We do not infer health, emotions, religion, political opinions or any other sensitive matter from your calls, and we do not rank you against other users. Your Twin is not used to make any decision that produces legal or similarly significant effects concerning you.

You may turn this analysis off at any time in Settings, under “Analyse my speaking”. From that moment nothing further about you is recorded for or analysed by your Twin; the other participant in a later call still receives their own Twin, for which your lines remain context and statistics only. You may also delete your Twin at any time with “Delete my Twin”, which erases your Twin, the readings of your calls, the evidence behind them and the timing of your words; your calls, captions and scores are not affected. Everything your Twin holds is included when you download your data, and is deleted with your account. How long each part is kept is set out at Section 12.2.

Your Twin and your next calls. To help you practise, your Twin may choose one thing for you to work on next (you can pick another or turn this off on your Twin page). Your next calls then bring it up: some of the conversation cards in your turn may be ones whose answers use it, words you were looking for come up first in Word Bounty, and a short warm-up appears on your own screen as you join; nothing you say during the warm-up is recorded. The other participant's device is told which cards to deal, never what you are working on or why. Your later calls are then checked to show you whether it worked. We may also use figures from your own Twin — how much you talk in calls with different kinds of partner, by their stated level, conversation style and shared topics — as a small part of choosing which people we suggest to you. This never stops anyone from being suggested to you, is never shown as a reason, and never uses what another person said.

Sharing your Twin. You may choose to share a card of your Twin: its shape, one figure (for example the share of your hesitations made in the language you are learning), the period it covers and, only if you choose to show them, your level (when your Twin is sure of it) and your first name. You see the card before it is shared. A card never shows the people you talked with, anything said in a call, or your own words. You may save a card to your device as an image, or create a link at twintalk.app that anyone who has it can open; the page it opens shows that card, a short description of the Twin and a way to join the Services through your member invitation. A link is not submitted to search engines and asks them not to index it. It works until you stop it in Settings, or until you delete your Twin or your account, which stops all of your links; its record is deleted 30 days afterwards (at once when your account is deleted). For each link we count how many times people opened it and whether someone joined through it; we do not record who opened it, and keep only a code that changes every day, for two days, so that one visitor is counted once. What you share, and what others do with it once you have shared it, is your choice.

Sending your Twin to a teacher. You may send a report of your Twin to a teacher or anyone else you choose. You decide what it contains (its summary and, if you include them, sections on your speaking, your understanding, words and topics, and a lesson plan), the name it uses for you, an optional note, whether it stays as it was when you sent it or updates after your later calls, and how long its link works (7, 30 or 90 days, or until you stop it). A report may quote a few sentences you yourself said in your calls, never anything said by the other person and never their name. Before any sentence is included we remove names, places, workplaces, schools, long numbers and contact details in two steps: first by fixed rules, then with a language-model provider acting as our service provider, which can only mark words to remove and cannot change what you said. You see every sentence after this and may remove any of them; a sentence we could not check is left out. If you give us the teacher's email address, we use it to send that one email and to show you where your reports went, keep it with the report's link, and use it for nothing else. The report opens at a private link that is not submitted to search engines and asks them not to index it; the person who has it can read it on the web or download it as a PDF or as data, without an account. You can see each time your report is opened or downloaded (the time, and whether it was the page, the PDF or the data); we do not record who opened it, their address or their device. You may stop a link at any time, and deleting your Twin or your account stops all of them. A stopped or expired link's record, including the teacher's address and the times it was opened, is deleted 30 days later (at once when your account is deleted). What the recipient does with a report once they have read or downloaded it is between you and them.

7.7Statistics from many learners

We compile statistics from the Twins of many learners and from the calls behind them: for example, which patterns are common among people with the same first language learning the same language, how many weeks a pattern usually takes to settle, or how quickly the people learners talk with usually speak on a topic. We use these statistics to run, measure and improve the Services, including as starting points for new learners' Twins; to add short notes to the reports learners choose to send to a teacher (for example, that a pattern is common among learners with the same first language and usually settles within a few weeks); and in articles, research, marketing and social media posts about language learning that we publish.

Every such statistic comes from a group of at least 50 people, and every statistic we publish outside the Services from a group of at least 100, with its figures rounded. A statistic never contains a name, contact details, a photograph, a voice, anything said in a call, or an identifier of any person or call, and we do not publish one where we believe the group or its context would allow anyone to work out who belongs to it. We do not publish statistics that rank or compare people of one first language, nationality or other group against another. A statistic describes a group as it was measured at the time; it is general information about that group, not a statement about you or any other individual. People who have turned “Analyse my speaking” off, or have deleted their Twin or their account, are not included in statistics compiled after that.

These statistics are aggregated and anonymous: they do not relate to an identified or identifiable person and are not Personal Information. We do not attempt to re-identify anyone from them, and we require anyone to whom we provide them under contract not to attempt to do so. Compiling them is part of measuring and improving the Services as described in Section 7.5; where Applicable Data Protection Law requires a legal basis for it, that basis is our legitimate interest in understanding and describing how people learn languages, and you may object to it under Section 14.1 or by turning “Analyse my speaking” off. Because a statistic cannot be traced back to anyone, one compiled or published before you object, turn the analysis off or delete your Twin or account cannot be withdrawn; you will not be included in those compiled afterwards. We keep these statistics as set out for aggregated data at Section 12.2.

8.1The marketing website

The website at https://twintalk.app sets no cookie until you ask it to. Analytics run in a consent-denied mode by default, which means measurement takes place without an advertising identifier and without writing an identifier to your device, and the internet protocol address is truncated before it reaches the analytics provider. Two values are kept in your browser’s local storage rather than in a cookie: the language pair you selected in the picker, and the fact that you dismissed the offer to read the site in another language. Clearing site data in your browser removes both.

There is no consent banner, because on the default setting there is no storage to consent to. A control in the footer of every page lets you grant analytics storage if you would rather be measured properly, and withdraw it again in the same place, with the same number of clicks, effective immediately.

If you arrive through a partner’s link, the partner’s code is carried in the web address of the link you follow to sign up. The website does not store it on your device.

Following a partner’s link (https://twintalk.app/r/…) counts a click for that partner. We record the partner’s code, the page and the post the link names, the name of the website that sent you, and your country where our hosting provider supplies it. Your internet protocol address is not stored: it is combined with your browser’s description and a value that changes every day, and only the resulting one-way code is kept, so that one visit is counted once that day and cannot be linked to you on another. Link previews and automated requests are not counted. Click records are deleted after 13 months; partners see totals only.

8.2The application

The application uses cookies, local storage and comparable device storage for the following purposes:

Strictly necessary storage is exempt from the consent requirement of Article 5(3) of Directive 2002/58/EC and of Article 22(1) of the Information and Communications Network Act of the Republic of Korea, because the Services cannot be delivered without it. Everything else is subject to your consent where consent is required, and can be refused or withdrawn without loss of access to the Services.

8.3Browser signals and opt-out preference signals

We honour the Global Privacy Control signal and any other opt-out preference signal that Applicable Data Protection Law requires us to recognise, and we treat such a signal as a valid request to opt out of sale, sharing and targeted advertising for the browser or device that sends it. Because we do not sell or share Personal Information and do not conduct targeted advertising — see Section 10 (No Sale, No Sharing, No Targeted Advertising) — the signal has nothing to stop, and we recognise it regardless.

There is no consensus technical standard for the older Do Not Track header and browsers implement it inconsistently; we therefore do not represent that we respond to it. This has no practical effect, for the reason just given.

9.1Service Providers

9.2Other users

When you are matched with another user, that user receives what a conversation necessarily discloses: the profile information you have chosen to publish, your display name, your language pair, your live audio and video for the duration of the call, and the translated text of what you say. You control what goes into a profile and you control what you say in a call. We do not disclose your email address, your billing information, your precise location or your account identifiers to another user.

In a TwinTalk Business meeting, every participant receives the display names of the others and what is said and typed in the meeting, and can read its transcript and recap afterwards; see Section 7.4.

Information you disclose to another user is, from that moment, in that person’s hands. We are not responsible for what another user does with it, and the assumption of risk and release in the Terms govern claims arising out of the conduct of another user.

9.3Law, safety and the protection of rights

We may disclose Personal Information where we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to:

1. comply with applicable law, regulation, legal process, or an enforceable governmental or regulatory request, including a subpoena, warrant, production order or court order;
2. enforce the Terms, including the investigation of a potential breach;
3. detect, prevent or address fraud, security incidents, abuse or technical problems;
4. protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of us, our users or the public, as required or permitted by law; or
5. establish, exercise or defend a legal claim, or obtain legal advice.

Where we are legally permitted to do so we will make reasonable efforts to notify you of a legally binding demand for your Personal Information before we comply with it, unless the demand prohibits notice, the matter is an emergency involving a risk of death or serious physical injury, or notice would be futile or counter-productive. We object to demands we consider overbroad or improperly served, and we produce only what a valid demand actually requires.

9.4Corporate transactions

If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganisation, insolvency, bankruptcy, receivership, dissolution, or a sale or transfer of all or part of our business or assets, Personal Information may be disclosed to the counterparty and its advisers as part of diligence and may be transferred as part of the transaction. We will require any such counterparty to honour the commitments in this Policy in respect of information transferred to it, or to give you notice and a choice before it applies materially different terms.

9.5At your direction

We disclose Personal Information to any other recipient you direct or authorise, including where you connect a third-party service to your account or ask us to share something on your behalf. A disclosure made at your direction is governed by the recipient’s own privacy notice from the moment it is made.

11.1Where Personal Information goes

We are established in the United States and our infrastructure and Service Providers are located in the United States, in the European Economic Area, in the Republic of Korea and in other jurisdictions in which our providers operate. A conversation between a user in Seoul and a user in Chicago is by its nature a cross-border transfer, and there is no arrangement under which it could be otherwise.

The laws of a recipient jurisdiction may differ from those of your own, and public authorities in a recipient jurisdiction may have powers of access that the authorities in your jurisdiction do not. We address that risk through the safeguards described below; we do not pretend it can be eliminated.

11.2Transfer mechanisms and safeguards

For transfers of Personal Information out of the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland we rely, as applicable, on:

1. an adequacy decision of the European Commission, or the equivalent determination of the United Kingdom or of the Swiss Federal Council, under Article 45 of the GDPR;
2. the Standard Contractual Clauses adopted by the European Commission in Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/914, incorporating the United Kingdom International Data Transfer Addendum issued under section 119A of the Data Protection Act 2018 where the transfer is from the United Kingdom, under Article 46(2)(c) of the GDPR;
3. binding corporate rules or another mechanism approved under Article 46 of the GDPR; or
4. a derogation available under Article 49 of the GDPR, including the necessity of the transfer for the performance of a contract with you — which is the position where a call you initiate connects you to a participant in another country.

Where we rely on the Standard Contractual Clauses we conduct a transfer impact assessment and apply supplementary measures where the assessment calls for them, including encryption in transit and at rest, minimisation of the data transferred, and contractual commitments to challenge unlawful requests for access. You may request a copy of the clauses relevant to a transfer that concerns you, with commercial terms redacted, by writing to contact@twintalk.app.

11.3Users in the Republic of Korea

Articles 28-8 and 28-9 of the PIPA require that certain particulars be disclosed before Personal Information is transferred overseas. Those particulars are as follows.

Where the PIPA requires your separate consent to an overseas transfer we obtain it at the point at which it is required and not by reference to this Policy alone.

12.1The principle

We keep Personal Information only for as long as is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, for as long as you maintain an account with us, or for as long as a legal obligation, a limitation period or the defence of an actual or threatened claim requires — whichever is longest. When the period expires we delete the information or irreversibly de-identify or anonymise it, and where deletion from a live system is complete but a backup or archive still contains a copy, that copy is overwritten in the ordinary cycle of that system and is not restored into production except to recover from a failure.

12.2Retention schedule

Where Article 21 of the PIPA requires that Personal Information be destroyed without delay once the retention period has expired or the purpose has been achieved, we destroy it within five days of that date. Electronic records are destroyed by a method that makes recovery impossible; records on paper, if any, are shredded or incinerated.

12.3Deletion of your account

You may delete your account at any time from within the Services or by writing to contact@twintalk.app. Deletion removes your profile from the Services immediately and begins the periods in the schedule above. It does not remove the information we are required to keep — a tax record, an enforcement decision, a record of consent, or material within the scope of a legal hold — and it cannot remove what another user saw or heard in a call.

14.1Rights we extend to every user

The rights below are available to every user of the Services, wherever located, whether or not the law of your jurisdiction compels us to offer them. We extend them universally because operating one standard is both simpler and better than operating six, and because a right that depends on where a user happens to live is a right that will be administered inconsistently.

Access

to be told whether we process Personal Information about you and, if so, to receive a copy of it together with the categories, purposes, recipients, sources, retention periods and transfers described in this Policy as they apply to you.

Correction

to have inaccurate Personal Information about you corrected, and incomplete Personal Information completed, taking into account the purpose of the processing.

Deletion

to have Personal Information about you erased, subject to the exceptions at Section 14.4.

Portability

to receive the Personal Information you provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, and to have it transmitted to another controller where that is technically feasible.

Restriction

to have the processing of Personal Information about you restricted while a dispute about its accuracy or the lawfulness of its processing is resolved.

Objection

to object to processing carried out on the basis of legitimate interests, and to object at any time and without giving a reason to processing for direct marketing purposes.

Withdrawal of consent

to withdraw consent at any time, as easily as it was given, where consent is the basis of the processing.

Opt-out

to opt out of the sale or sharing of Personal Information, of targeted advertising and of profiling in furtherance of significant decisions. We do not do any of those things — see Section 10 (No Sale, No Sharing, No Targeted Advertising) — so there is nothing to opt out of, and the right is stated for completeness.

Non-discrimination

not to be denied goods or services, charged a different price, given a different level of quality, or threatened with any of those things, because you exercised a right under this Policy.

Appeal

to have a refusal of any request reconsidered, by the procedure at Section 14.5.

14.2How to exercise a right, and how quickly we respond

Send your request to contact@twintalk.app, from the email address associated with your account where you have one, stating the right you wish to exercise. Several rights can also be exercised directly from the Services, which is faster: profile fields can be corrected, learning records deleted, consents changed and an account closed without writing to anyone.

Requests are free. We may charge a reasonable fee, or refuse to act, only where a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, in particular because it is repetitive — and if we do, we will tell you why and how to challenge it.

14.3Verification and authorised agents

Before we disclose, correct or delete Personal Information we must be satisfied that the request comes from the person it concerns. We verify by matching the request against information already in the account, and we may ask for further information where the request concerns Sensitive Information or where the risk of harm from wrongful disclosure is high. We do not use information supplied for verification for any other purpose, and we delete it once the request is closed.

If we cannot verify a request we will say so and explain what would allow us to. A request we cannot verify is refused rather than partially honoured: disclosing one person’s Personal Information to another is the harm this procedure exists to prevent.

An authorised agent may make a request on your behalf on production of written authority signed by you, or a power of attorney under the California Probate Code. We may require you to verify your own identity directly with us and to confirm that you authorised the agent, as section 1798.135(c)(4) of the California Civil Code permits.

14.4When we may refuse

We will refuse a request, in whole or in part, only where Applicable Data Protection Law permits or requires it, and we will tell you which ground we are relying on. The grounds are:

1. compliance with a legal obligation, or retention required by law, including tax, accounting and anti-money-laundering obligations;
2. the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims, including material within the scope of a litigation hold;
3. the detection, prevention or investigation of fraud, abuse or a security incident, and the maintenance of a record of enforcement so that a pattern of abuse is not defeated by the deletion of the account that carried it;
4. the rights and freedoms of another person, including another participant’s interest in a conversation in which they took part;
5. the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and information;
6. a request that would require us to re-identify de-identified data, which we will not do; and
7. a request that is manifestly unfounded or excessive.

14.5Appeal

If we refuse a request you may appeal by replying to our decision, or by writing to contact@twintalk.app with the word “Appeal” in the subject line, within a reasonable period of the decision. An appeal is reviewed by someone other than the person who made the original decision. We will notify you of the outcome in writing, with reasons, within 45 days, and if we again refuse we will tell you how to complain to the supervisory authority or attorney general with jurisdiction over us or over you.

15.1European Economic Area, United Kingdom and Switzerland

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, the GDPR, the UK GDPR or the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection applies to our processing of your Personal Information, and you hold the rights conferred by Articles 15 to 22 of the GDPR: access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, data portability, objection, and the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing.

The legal basis for each purpose is stated in Schedule 1 at Section 6. Where the basis is your consent you may withdraw it at any time. Where the basis is legitimate interests you may object, and we will stop unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds that override your interests, rights and freedoms; where the objection is to direct marketing we will stop without exception.

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority of the Member State of your habitual residence, place of work or the place of the alleged infringement, with the Information Commissioner’s Office in the United Kingdom, or with the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner in Switzerland. We would prefer the opportunity to resolve the matter first, but the right is yours to exercise directly and nothing in this Policy requires you to come to us before you use it.

Providing Personal Information is not a statutory requirement. Where it is a contractual requirement — as account and billing information are — the consequence of not providing it is that we cannot create an account or take payment, and therefore cannot provide the Services.

15.2Republic of Korea

If you are in the Republic of Korea the PIPA applies. In addition to the rights at Section 14.1, you have the rights conferred by Articles 35 to 39-2 of the PIPA: to access your Personal Information, to require its correction or deletion, to suspend its processing, to withdraw consent, to request an explanation of an automated decision and to refuse one, and to claim damages, including the statutory damages available under Article 39-2 where the statutory conditions are met.

The particulars that Article 30(1) of the PIPA requires a personal-information processing policy to state are distributed through this Policy as follows: the purposes of processing at Section 6; the items processed at Section 4; the retention and use periods at Section 12.2; the entrustment of processing at Section 9.1; third-party provision at Section 9; overseas transfer at Section 11.3; the procedure and method of destruction at Section 12.2; the measures taken to secure Personal Information at Section 13; the rights of the data subject and how to exercise them at Section 14.2; and the Privacy Officer at Section 2.2.

You may also seek assistance from the Personal Information Dispute Mediation Committee (개인정보 분쟁조정위원회), from the Korea Internet & Security Agency’s Personal Information Infringement Report Centre (개인정보침해 신고센터), from the Personal Information Protection Commission (개인정보보호위원회), or from the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office or the National Police Agency cyber bureau. Article 39 of the PIPA places the burden of proving the absence of intent or negligence on the personal-information processor, and nothing in this Policy or in the Terms purports to alter that.

We do not process the Personal Information of a child under fourteen years of age. Article 22-2 of the PIPA requires the consent of a legal representative in such a case; our minimum age is stated at Section 16 and is higher, so the question does not arise.

15.3California

If you are a California resident the CCPA gives you the rights to know, to delete, to correct, to opt out of sale and sharing, to limit the use and disclosure of sensitive personal information, and not to be discriminated against for exercising any of them. The disclosures the CCPA requires are as follows.

Shine the Light. Section 1798.83 of the California Civil Code entitles a California resident to request the identity of third parties to which we disclosed personal information for their direct marketing purposes in the preceding calendar year. We disclose no personal information for that purpose, and the response to any such request will say so.

Minors. Section 22581 of the California Business and Professions Code gives a registered user under eighteen the right to request removal of content they posted. Our minimum age is stated at Section 16; a request of that kind will nonetheless be honoured.

15.4Other United States jurisdictions

The comprehensive consumer privacy statutes of the following states give you rights of access, correction, deletion and portability, rights to opt out of sale, targeted advertising and certain profiling, and a right of appeal: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia. We administer those rights through the single procedure at Section 14.2 and the appeal at Section 14.5, and we do not require a resident of one state to use a different channel from a resident of another.

Two statutes deserve specific mention. The Maryland Online Data Privacy Act applies to us with particular force because Abyssinia Homes LLC is organised in Maryland; it prohibits the sale of sensitive data outright and confines collection to what is reasonably necessary to provide the service requested, and we comply with both requirements as a matter of design rather than of policy. The Washington My Health My Data Act and the comparable Nevada statute concern consumer health data; we do not collect consumer health data, we do not maintain a geofence around any health facility, and we do not sell any such data.

We do not engage in processing that presents a heightened risk of harm of a kind requiring a data-protection assessment under those statutes; where we do, we will conduct and document one.

15.5Other jurisdictions

If you are in Canada, Brazil, Japan, Australia, Singapore, India, Switzerland, South Africa, New Zealand or any other jurisdiction with a general data-protection statute, the rights that statute confers are available to you through the procedure at Section 14.2. This includes, without limitation, rights under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and Quebec’s Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector; the Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados Pessoais; the Act on the Protection of Personal Information of Japan; the Australian Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles; the Personal Data Protection Act 2012 of Singapore; and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 of India.

Where the statute of your jurisdiction confers a right this Policy does not name, or confers a right in wider terms than this Policy states, that statute prevails and we will honour the right as the statute defines it. Nothing in this Policy is intended to waive, limit or narrow a right that the law of your jurisdiction makes non-waivable.