Legal
Privacy policy
Last updated: 18 October 2026
This policy explains what we collect, why, for how long, and your rights. It applies to frenchexaminer.com. The data controller is the publisher named in the legal notice; contact: contact@frenchexaminer.com.
1. What we collect and why
| Data | Purpose | Legal basis | Kept for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account: e-mail, display name, interface language, country, first language | Sign you in, personalise the service, statistics | Contract | Life of the account |
| Exam profile: target exam and date, target level, programme, optional age range | Personalise prompts and reports | Contract; consent for the age range | Life of the account |
| Written texts and transcriptions of your speech | Correction, your history, calibration of our assessment | Contract; separate consent for improvement use | Life of the account; anonymised on deletion |
| Voice recordings | Let you listen again in your report, handle disputes | Contract | 90 days, then automatic deletion |
| Voice recordings beyond 90 days | Improve the speaking assessment | Explicit, revocable consent only | Up to 24 months, deleted immediately if you withdraw |
| Pronunciation scores, levels, reports | Progress tracking, calibration | Contract | Life of the account |
| Official exam results you choose to share | Measure and publish the accuracy of our estimates (aggregated) | Consent | Life of the account |
| Usage events (pages, tests started, device type, country from IP, referrer, campaign tags) | Audience measurement, improvement | Consent for identified measurement; aggregated counting without identifier otherwise | 13 months |
| Purchases (pass, amount, Stripe identifiers) | Billing, access rights, accounting | Contract, legal obligations | Legal retention period |
| Support messages and disputes | Answer you, quality | Contract | 24 months |
We never compute a voiceprint or any biometric identifier from your voice. We never sell personal data. We do not store inferred sensitive data.
2. Processors
To deliver the service we share the strictly necessary data with: Anthropic (Claude models: your texts and transcriptions, for correction and assessment), Microsoft Azure (speech recognition, pronunciation scores and synthetic voice: your audio stream), Stripe (payments), Google (Google Analytics, only if you accept audience measurement), and our hosting provider in the European Union. If you choose to sign in with Google, Google (Firebase Authentication) confirms your identity and passes us only your e-mail address: we never receive your Google password, contacts or any other Google data. Each processor acts under a contract that limits what it may do with the data.
3. Cookies
We use a session cookie and an anonymous visitor identifier that are necessary for the service (quotas, security, remembering your consent). Audience measurement runs only if you accept it in the banner; see Cookies and measurement.
4. Your rights
You can access, export (JSON) and delete your data from your account page at any time, withdraw a consent, correct your profile, and object to a processing based on our legitimate interest. Deleting your account erases your personal data; purchases are kept in the minimal form required by accounting law, and productions are anonymised only if you had consented to improvement use, otherwise deleted. You can also write to contact@frenchexaminer.com. Residents of the European Union may lodge a complaint with their supervisory authority; residents of Québec and Canada benefit from Law 25 and PIPEDA respectively.
5. Security
Data is stored on servers in the European Union, encrypted in transit, with access limited to the operations team. Recordings are stored outside any public web folder and served only to their owner. Administrative access requires two-factor authentication and is logged.
6. Transfers outside the EU
Anthropic, Stripe and Google (for Google sign-in and, if you accept it, Google Analytics) process data in the United States, Azure Speech in the United States region we use for latency reasons; these transfers rely on the processors' standard contractual clauses and data-protection commitments.
7. Changes
We may update this policy; the date at the top shows the current version. We will inform you of material changes.