Privacy.

Messages are stored, because a chat room that forgets them is not a chat room. Each one is also sent to a translation provider and comes back in the languages the room needs. Corrections, pronunciations and word lookups work the same way.

Anyone in a room without an owner can delete its conversation, and doing so removes the messages and their translations. A room somebody keeps can only be cleared by them.

One thing outlives that. A line you had read aloud is kept as audio so that playing it again is instant and costs nothing, and it is stored under a fingerprint of the words rather than against the room, so deleting the conversation does not reach it. Nothing in it says who said it, which room it was in, or when. It is held until the space is needed and the oldest are dropped, so it goes on its own eventually rather than on the day you delete the room.

Joining a room needs a name and a reading language. Nothing else. The name is whatever you type, it is not checked, and it is stored with the room. In a room that asks before letting people in, it is also what its owner is shown when you knock.

Without an account, that identity lives in your browser and nowhere else. Clearing your browser storage ends it.

With an account, we store your email address. There is no password to leak, because signing in is a link sent to that address, and sign-in credentials are never stored in a form that could be reused.

If you subscribe, we also store the id our payment provider gives your customer record, so a renewal can be matched to your account. That and your address are the whole of what we hold about you as a person.

Words you save while learning, and the corrections made to your writing. Both are yours and both are deleted with your account. Outside a lesson they are shown to nobody but you.

A count of how much each account uses, so a plan can be enforced and a bill can be worked out. It holds numbers, not text: nothing about what was said.

If you turn notifications on, the subscription your browser issues, so a message can reach you when the tab is closed. Turning them off deletes it.

A room can be set to ask before letting anybody in. If it is, the name and reading language you give are shown to whoever runs that room before you are in it, so they can decide. Nothing else about you is sent, and you see nothing of the room until they say yes.

Whether they say yes or no, that you asked is stored, in the same row that would have been your place in the room. It goes when the room does, and when its conversation is cleared.

A knock nobody answers stops on its own, after a length the room sets, and you are told rather than left waiting.

A lesson is a room a tutor made, and what happens in it is visible to them. They can correct a line you wrote, put a word into your review, read back what the lesson covered, and see what you keep getting wrong in it.

Only that lesson. A tutor sees the room they are teaching in and nothing else: not your other rooms, not your saved words from elsewhere, and not the report on your own review screen, which is drawn from everything you have written.

A room you started yourself is not a lesson and none of this applies to it.

A profile page is the one thing here you can make public on purpose. The name, the line under it, what you wrote about yourself and the languages you teach are all readable by anybody with the link once you publish it, and listed in our tutor directory while your plan includes one.

Nothing is public until you publish it, and you can unpublish or delete the page at any time, on any plan. Deleting it frees the link for somebody else.

A translation provider receives message text, to translate it, correct it, read it aloud, look up words, explain what a correction changed, name what somebody keeps getting wrong, and read a lesson back for the tutor who taught it. This is the one place your writing leaves us. It is not used to train anything.

An email provider receives your address, to send sign-in links and the occasional message about your account, such as a change to these terms. There is no marketing email and never will be.

A payment provider receives your address and takes your card details directly, if you subscribe. Card numbers never reach us and are never stored here: all we keep is their id for your customer record, so a renewal can be matched to your account.

Hosting and database providers run the service and hold what it stores.

Each is bound by a contract to process what it receives only on our instructions. We will name the current ones to you on request; write to us and ask.

Nothing is sold, and there is no advertising, so there is nobody else. There are no analytics or tracking scripts on any page.

One, and only after you sign in: a session cookie so the site knows it is still you. There are no others, which is why you have never seen a cookie banner here.

Your browser also stores your name, your languages, the rooms this device has been in, which of those cards you have dismissed, and your light or dark preference. That is browser storage rather than cookies, it never reaches us, and clearing site data removes it.

Delete a conversation from inside its room, and the messages go, for everyone in it. Delete a profile page from your account page, and it stops existing.

For an account and everything attached to it, email hi@crossconvo.com from the address you signed up with and it will be deleted, along with your rooms, saved words, corrections and tutor page.

Cross Convo is not intended for children under 13, and accounts are not knowingly created for them.