Inburgering MatePrivacy policy
What Inburgering Mate stores, who else processes your data, and what your rights are. In short: no ads, no analytics, no tracking, and we do not sell data.
Last updated: 31 October 2026. This policy covers the free app, this website and the online practice platform at /leren. The previous version, which covered the app only, stays online at rnjsxodyd90.github.io/inburgeringmateprivacy.
Who is responsible
The controller is the sole proprietorship of T.Y. Kwon (trading as Sura Steel, trading name Inburgering Mate), registered with the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce (KVK) under number 98957015, Jan Krosstraat 172, 2571 DD Den Haag, the Netherlands. Email: rnjsxodyd@gmail.com.
Inburgering Mate is an independent study platform. It is not affiliated with DUO, the Dutch government or any exam provider.
The app
The app for iPhone and Android is free, has no advertising and no analytics, and works fully without an account. You only ever make an account for the optional Inburgering Mate Plus subscription.
- Progress and settings (lessons done, vocabulary status, quiz and exam results, language, notification preferences) live in a local database (Hive) on your device only. They never leave the app. You can delete them in the app's Settings; uninstalling the app also deletes them.
- Account (optional). For Plus you sign up with your email address and a password, handled by Firebase Authentication (Google), the same system as the website (section 3).
- Plus subscription. Inburgering Mate Plus (product im_plus_monthly, €9.99 per month) is billed by the Apple App Store or Google Play. We never see your card details: the stores bill you under their own terms and privacy policies. To activate Plus we verify your purchase with Apple or Google and keep the store transaction identifiers and the expiry date in Firestore (
storeTransactionsandentitlements), linked to your account. - Microphone and recordings. Speaking practice asks for the microphone permission first. Recordings are saved in the app's temporary storage so you can listen back, and are never uploaded. They are removed when you delete them, reset progress or uninstall the app.
- Speech recognition. To transcribe what you say, the app uses the speech service of your operating system (Apple Speech Recognition on iOS, Google speech services on Android). Depending on your device and its settings, your voice audio may be sent to and processed on Apple's or Google's servers, under their own privacy policies (Apple, Google). The app itself never sends your audio anywhere else. You can revoke the permission in your device settings; the rest of the app keeps working.
- Writing check. When you tap "Check" on a writing exercise, the app sends only the Dutch text you typed and the language code ("nl") over an encrypted connection to api.languagetool.org, run by LanguageTooler GmbH (Germany), which returns grammar and spelling corrections. No name, email or device identifier is sent. LanguageTool processes the text under its own privacy policy. Please do not put personal details in exercise texts.
- AI writing feedback (Plus). The app's AI feedback uses the same feature and the same processing as the website, described in section "Writing feedback": your text and the task go to Nebius Token Factory via our server. The app explains this in a one-time notice before first use. The app has no share checkbox, so texts from the app are never stored in our writing samples.
- Reminders. The daily study reminder is a local notification, scheduled on your device. No push service or server is involved. It is opt-in and can be turned off at any time.
The app links to official sites (inburgeren.nl, duo.nl, rijksoverheid.nl) and the app stores. When you open a link, that site's own policy applies.
Your account
On the website you create an account to save progress online and to subscribe. In the app an account is optional and only needed for Plus. Both use the same sign-in: your email address and a password, handled by Firebase Authentication (Google), which stores your email address and a securely hashed password and sends the verification and password-reset emails. There is no other sign-in method.
Progress and access rights are stored in Cloud Firestore (eur3 region, in the EU): your lesson and exam scores with their dates (users/…/progress), and which courses are unlocked for you and until when (entitlements), including Plus access from an app-store purchase and its linked store transaction (storeTransactions).
Payments: Stripe
Subscriptions are paid through Stripe. Checkout and the customer portal run on stripe.com, so your card details go only to Stripe; we never see or store full card numbers. Stripe is an independent controller for the payment data and sets its own cookies on stripe.com for fraud prevention.
On our side we store your Stripe customer ID and email address (customers) and your subscription status (entitlements) in Firestore. Stripe emails you the invoices. We keep payment records for 7 years, as Dutch tax law requires.
Writing feedback
AI feedback, logged in. When you press "Get feedback", your text and the writing task (scenario and requirements, not your name) are sent from our server (a Cloud Function in europe-west1) to Nebius Token Factory, an AI service of Nebius B.V. (Amsterdam). The model used is zai-org/GLM-5.3, with deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash as a fallback. The GLM-5.3 endpoint is processed in a US region (us-central1), so your text is transferred outside the EU for this. That transfer is covered by the EU standard contractual clauses in Nebius's data processing agreement. Nebius's terms for this service say that API requests are logged by default (no fixed retention period is stated) and that customer content is not used to train models, except for small auxiliary models used for speculative decoding. We ourselves do not store your text, unless you tick the share box.
The share checkbox. If you tick "Let Inburgering Mate keep this text without my name", we store that text and its feedback in Firestore (writingSamples), without your account details, to improve the feedback with teacher-checked examples. It is opt-in, per text. Withdraw at any time: email us with roughly when you shared the text and what it was about, and we delete it. Shared texts are kept until reviewed for the improvement dataset, at most 2 years.
Daily limits. We count how many feedback checks you use per day (5 for free accounts, 25 for subscribers) in Firestore (usage), to keep the service affordable. The counters are deleted when you delete your account.
Checking without an account. The "Check my text" button sends your text straight from your browser to LanguageTool, exactly as in the app.
Speaking practice online. Recordings are made by your browser and played back only to you; the audio never leaves your browser. Spoken examples use your browser's built-in speech synthesis.
Hosting, logs and cookies
The site is served by Firebase Hosting (Google), which keeps standard web server logs (such as IP address and browser type) under Google's own terms.
Our pages do not set cookies. Logging in stores your session in your browser's local storage (IndexedDB), and the site saves two small settings there (a test flag and the page to return to after login). When you pay, Stripe sets its own cookies on stripe.com. The fonts (Imbue, Albert Sans) are loaded from Google Fonts, so your browser contacts Google's servers for the font files and Google's privacy policy applies to that request.
Which ad or link brought you. If you arrive through an advertisement or a campaign link (the address holds a gclid or utm_source), we record that source, the campaign, the page you landed on and the time, and keep it in your browser's local storage (the first source is kept for 30 days). If you then create an account, this record is stored with your account (field acquisition) so we can measure our advertising. There are no advertising cookies and nothing from our site is sent to Google for this.
What we never do: no advertising or tracking SDKs, no analytics, no sale or sharing of your data for others' own purposes, no profiling. This is easy to keep promising, because it is how the code is written.
Legal bases and retention
- Your account, progress and subscription: performing the contract you asked for (art. 6(1)(b) GDPR).
- Payment records: legal obligation, 7 years under Dutch tax law (art. 6(1)(c)).
- Writing feedback you request (your text to Nebius, or to LanguageTool for the free check): performing the service you asked for (art. 6(1)(b)).
- The share checkbox: consent (art. 6(1)(a)); withdraw any time by email.
- Daily usage counters and server logs: legitimate interest in a secure and affordable service (art. 6(1)(f)).
- Which ad or link brought you: legitimate interest in measuring our advertising (art. 6(1)(f)); stored cookie-free, never sent to the advertiser.
- Microphone and speech recognition in the app: consent via your device's permission prompt (art. 6(1)(a)); withdraw it in your device settings.
Retention in short. Account, progress, access and store-purchase data: until you delete your account. Payment records: 7 years. Daily usage counters: until you delete your account. Shared writing texts: until reviewed, at most 2 years, stored without a link to your account. The ad-source record: 30 days in your browser, or with your account until you delete it. Texts sent to Nebius and LanguageTool: see their policies above; we do not keep a copy. App data: on your device, until you reset it or delete the app.
Delete your account
This section explains how to delete your account with the Inburgering Mate app and website, developed by Tae Yong Kwon (trading as Sura Steel, trade name Inburgering Mate).
In the app: open Settings, then Plus, then "Delete account" and confirm. The app first deletes your data on our server, then deletes the sign-in itself. On-device progress and recordings stay on your device until you reset them in Settings or delete the app; they were never sent to us.
On the website: inburgeringmate.nl/leren has no delete button yet. Email rnjsxodyd@gmail.com from your account's email address with the subject "Delete my account"; we handle it within 30 days.
What is deleted: the sign-in and its email address, your access rights and Plus entitlements, the progress synced to the website, the daily usage counters, and the links between your account and store purchases. In the app this happens immediately on confirmation; by email within 30 days.
What is kept: Stripe invoices and payment records for 7 years, as Dutch tax law requires; writing texts you chose to share, which are stored without any link to your account and stay anonymous; and purchase records kept by Apple or Google under their own policies.
Note: deleting your account does not cancel a subscription billed by a store. Cancel Inburgering Mate Plus first in your App Store or Google Play subscriptions settings, and any website subscription from your account page.
Your rights
You have the right to see, correct, delete, restrict and object to the processing of your personal data, and the right to a portable copy. Email rnjsxodyd@gmail.com and we answer within 30 days. You can also complain to the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl).
Deleting your account. See the previous section: in the app via Settings → Plus → Delete account; on the website by email. See Delete your account for what is removed and what is kept.
Children. Inburgering Mate is made for adults preparing for the civic integration exams and is not directed at children under 16. If you are under 16, do not create an account. If you believe a child has sent us personal data, email us and we will delete it.
Changes. We may update this policy when the app or site changes. The current version is always on this page with its date. If a change matters for account holders, we also tell you by email.
