BabelPrivacy Policy
The short version. Babel's AI features do not run on your device: your speech, the photos you choose, what you type, and the Hebrew words in your decks are sent through Babel's server to Google so the AI can answer. Babel asks before sending anything, and you can withdraw that permission at any time in Settings › Privacy; flashcards and study work without it. Babel shows no ads and does not sell your data. Babel does not track you. To measure its own ads on Facebook and Instagram, it tells Meta when the app is installed and opened, when an account is made and when a free trial starts, without your device's advertising identifier.
1. Who we are
Babel is made by Meridian Studios Ltd (Israeli company number 517352225), 6 Yitzhak Sadeh Street, Tel Aviv–Yafo 6777506, Israel ("we", "us"). We are the controller of the personal data described here. Contact us at privacy@meridianide.com.
2. What Babel collects, and how
You give it to us
| Data | How it is collected | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Email address and password | You type them when you create your account, at the end of the setup. Until then, while you answer the setup questions, Babel holds your answers under an anonymous ID with no email, password or other personal details | To sign you in. The password is stored only as an Argon2 hash, never in readable form. |
| Sign in with Apple or Google | If you choose either instead of a password: Apple or Google tells Babel your account’s email address (Apple’s private relay address, if you choose to hide yours) and an ID for that account. Babel asks for nothing else and never sees your Apple or Google password | To sign you in. |
| Decks and cards | You create them, or Babel drafts them for you | They are the app's content. |
| Review history | Recorded when you rate a card during study | To schedule your next review and show your statistics. |
| Voice recordings | Streamed only while a live translation is running or you are talking to Babel | To transcribe, translate, answer your questions and assess pronunciation. |
| Photos | Only the individual images you choose or take | To read Hebrew text from them and turn it into cards. |
| Messages you type | In chat, translate and the card builder | To answer you. |
Babel does not collect your contacts, location, health data or browsing history, and does not access your photo library beyond the images you pick. It never reads your device's advertising identifier.
Collected automatically
Babel's server keeps ordinary request logs (timestamps, endpoint, error information) to operate and debug the service, and counts the AI usage on your account so you can see it.
The app includes Meta's software development kit (the Facebook SDK) so we can tell which of our ads on Facebook and Instagram bring people to Babel. It sends Meta the events listed below, along with technical details of your device (model, iOS version, language, time zone and app version). It does not send your device's advertising identifier, your email, your decks, your recordings or anything you type.
- the app was installed or opened;
- an account was created (a sign-up, including finishing the setup);
- a free trial was started.
Babel does not track you across other companies' apps and websites, which is why it never asks for that permission. Meta uses these events only in aggregated form, through Apple's privacy-preserving ad measurement (SKAdNetwork) and Meta's Aggregated Event Measurement, to report how many installs and trials each ad produced.
3. Who receives it
Your data is stored in Babel's database, hosted by Railway (Railway Corporation). When you use an AI feature, the relevant data is sent to Google through the Gemini API:
- What Google receives: microphone audio during live translation and voice practice; photos you choose for card creation; text you type in AI features; and the Hebrew words in your decks, sent as context so answers use the vocabulary you are learning, and, when you play a word game, so the game knows each word's spelling, meaning and root and can give you hints and explanations.
- What it is used for: transcription, translation, conversation, pronunciation feedback, card generation, word games and study summaries.
- How it is protected: Google processes this data under its Gemini API terms, which provide the same or equal protection to this policy. Google states that data submitted through the paid Gemini API is not used to train its models. See Google's API terms and privacy policy.
The ad-measurement events described in section 2 are sent to Meta Platforms (Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd for users in Europe), which processes them under its Business Tools terms and privacy policy. Meta uses them to measure and improve our ads.
Apart from Google and Meta as described here, we share your data with no one else: no data brokers or analytics vendors, and we never sell it. We may disclose data where the law requires it.
4. Your permission
Before Babel sends anything to Google, it shows you a screen listing exactly what is sent and who receives it, and asks you to agree. Nothing AI-related is transmitted until you do. If you decline, or later withdraw permission in Settings › Privacy, the AI features stop and everything else keeps working.
5. How long we keep it
Your account, decks, cards, review history and conversations are kept until you delete them or delete your account. Deleting a deck, card or conversation removes it from our database; voice recordings are stored with their conversation and deleted with it. Request logs are kept only as long as needed to operate and secure the service.
6. Deleting your account
You can delete your account and everything in it. Until in-app deletion is available in Settings, email privacy@meridianide.com from the address you signed up with and we will permanently delete your account, decks, cards, media, conversations and study history.
7. Your rights
You can ask for a copy of your data, its correction or its deletion at privacy@meridianide.com. If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, our legal bases are performance of a contract (running the app you asked for), your consent (for the AI features) and our legitimate interest in measuring our own advertising (for the ad-measurement events). You may complain to your local data protection authority. Israeli users may contact the Israeli Privacy Protection Authority.
8. Where your data is processed
We operate from Israel, which the European Commission recognises as providing adequate protection. Our hosting and AI providers may process data in other countries, including the United States, under their own contractual safeguards.
9. Children
Babel is not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect their data.
10. Security
Traffic between the app and our server uses HTTPS. Passwords are stored as Argon2 hashes, and each account's data is isolated at the database level so one account cannot read another's.
11. Changes
We will post changes here and update the date above. If a change affects what is sent or who receives it, Babel will ask for your permission again inside the app.