VocLock

Privacy Policy

Effective October 16, 2026 · applies to VocLock for Android and iPhone and this website

In short

  • An account is optional. If you create one, your progress is saved in it, so you get it back on a new phone. You can delete it in the app at any time.
  • Without an account, your words, answers, streak and settings stay on your phone only.
  • The free version shows ads from Google (never on your lock screen). VocLock Pro has no ads.
  • Besides your account, the AI chat partner (Pro) and the ads, VocLock only loads today's news from Wikipedia, once you've unlocked the News tab.
  • The accessibility service is optional. It only notices which app you open and can't read your screen.

1Who we are

VocLock is a vocabulary app that asks you words when you unlock your phone. It's developed by Said Erzhapov, who is responsible for the processing of your data (the controller under the GDPR): Said Erzhapov, Dr.-Moritz-Mitzenheim-Straße 24, 98646 Hildburghausen, Germany. Questions about this policy: voclock.app@gmail.com. More contact details are in the Impressum.

2What's stored on your phone

To work, VocLock keeps this data on your device, in the app's own storage:

  • Your learning progress: which words you've had, your answers, streak, achievements and when each word is due for review.
  • Words you add yourself.
  • Your settings: language pack, words per day, theme, app language, reminder time, news interests and the apps you picked for the quiz.
  • Your emergency PIN for the lock screen.
  • What you tell VocLock about yourself, if you choose to: your first name or nickname, the languages you speak, how much of the language you already know and why you're learning it. VocLock uses this to greet you by name and to pick fitting words. It stays on your phone and is not copied to your account; only your name is shown to friends you connect with (section 3).
  • Your rank and the results of your rank exams.
  • Your year of birth, if you give it (Android). Under 16, or without a year, the ads in the free version are never personalized (section 4). It stays on your phone.

Without an account this data never leaves your phone (apart from phone backups, section 6). It's deleted from your phone when you uninstall VocLock or clear its data.

3Your account (optional)

You can use VocLock without an account. If you create one (with your email address and a password, or with your Google account), your progress is copied to it so you can sign in on another phone and continue where you left off.

What the account holds

  • Your email address and a random user ID. With "Continue with Google" also the name and profile picture link of your Google account. Your password is stored only in encrypted (hashed) form; we can't see it.
  • A copy of your learning progress: the words you've studied and how well you know them, when each is due for review, your streak and its history, your statistics and achievements.
  • Words you added yourself, and your settings (including the apps you picked for the quiz).

Your emergency PIN is never uploaded. VocLock copies your progress to the account when you leave the app and fetches it when you open it or sign in.

Friends and partner (optional)

With an account you can connect with friends or your partner by exchanging friend codes. Entering someone's code sends them a request with your name, which they can accept or decline. Once connected, you can also send each other a reminder to learn ("nudge"), which shows your name. Connected, each of you sees the other's first name or nickname, rank, streak, number of known words, the language being learned and on which days you learned, so VocLock can show your duo streak. Nobody else can see this. Your account gets a friend code (stored with your user ID so others can find you by it). Removing someone under Friends & partner ends the connection and deletes what you shared with each other; deleting your account does the same for all your connections.

Who stores it

Accounts and the copy of your progress are stored with Google Firebase (Firebase Authentication and Cloud Firestore), which processes the data on our behalf under its data processing terms. Only you can read or change your data after signing in (apart from what you share with people you connect with, see above). Google may process it on servers outside the EU; it uses the EU standard contractual clauses for that. We use the data only to run your account and sync your progress, never for advertising, and don't sell or share it.

Deleting your account

In the app, go to Settings → Account → Delete account. That deletes your account and the copy of your progress right away (your phone keeps its own data until you uninstall VocLock). You can also ask us to delete it by writing to voclock.app@gmail.com from the account's email address. Signing out keeps the account; it only stops syncing on that phone.

4What else connects to the internet

News from Wikipedia

After you've learned enough words to unlock the News tab, opening it loads today's featured articles from Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org or de.wikipedia.org, depending on your language pack). The request contains the date and the language, and VocLock names itself as the app making it. Like every web request, it also reaches Wikipedia's servers with your IP address and basic device information. The Wikimedia Foundation handles that under its privacy policy.

Mixing the words you know into the articles happens on your phone. Your vocabulary is never sent to Wikipedia. "Read on Wikipedia" opens the article in your browser.

Ads (free version)

The free version shows ads from Google AdMob: a short video you can choose to watch (for example to save your streak or to read one more article) and a short full-screen ad after the daily challenge. Ads never appear on the lock screen, and VocLock Pro has none.

To show and measure ads, Google receives information from your device, such as your advertising ID, IP address, device type and how you interact with ads. If you're under 16, or haven't given your year of birth, VocLock tells Google so: you then only get non-personalized ads suitable for teens, and no consent form. Otherwise, in the EU and the UK, VocLock asks for your consent first with Google's consent form; you can change your choice any time under Settings → Ad privacy choices. Without consent, Google shows non-personalized ads. Google explains how it uses this data in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services. VocLock never passes your words or progress to Google.

Chat partner (Pro)

If you use the AI chat partner, the messages of that chat (the last 20), the language you're learning and your level go to VocLock's server on Cloudflare Workers, which checks your sign-in and counts your messages for the day (it keeps only that count, by your user ID). The server passes the chat through OpenRouter to an AI model (currently Google Gemini), only through providers that don't store the messages or use them for training. The answer comes back to your phone. VocLock doesn't store your chats; they're gone when you leave the chat. Please don't write personal details in it.

Pronunciation

The speaker buttons use your phone's built-in text-to-speech: on Android the engine you've chosen (usually Speech Services by Google), on iPhone Apple's voices. VocLock hands the word to that engine and sends it nowhere itself. Some engines can use online voices; in that case the provider of the engine processes the word under its own privacy policy.

Reporting a bug

"Report a bug" in Settings opens your own email app with a draft to voclock.app@gmail.com. The draft contains the app version, your phone model and its system version, so we can find the problem. Nothing is sent until you send the email yourself; then we receive your email address and whatever you write. We use it only to answer you and fix the bug.

Nothing else

Apart from your account, the chat partner, Wikipedia and Google's ads, VocLock contains no analytics, crash reporting or other third-party code that collects data.

This website

This website is hosted on GitHub Pages. When you open it, GitHub receives your IP address and basic browser information, like any web server, and keeps them in its logs for security (GitHub's privacy statement). The website sets no cookies, has no analytics or tracking and loads nothing from other servers, not even fonts.

5Permissions and why VocLock asks for them

  • Display over other apps (Android): to show the word quiz on your lock screen and the quick quiz over other apps.
  • Accessibility service (Android, optional, off until you turn it on): only to notice when you open an app, so VocLock can ask a word before you continue, or show the quiz over the social media apps you picked. It receives just the name of the app that comes to the front. It is set up without access to screen content, so it can't see what's on your screen or what you type. VocLock doesn't store or share which apps you use. You can turn it off at any time in your phone's accessibility settings.
  • Notifications: for the daily reminder with your words, and on Android for the small ongoing notification that keeps the lock screen running.
  • Run at startup, foreground service, keep awake, dismiss the lock screen (Android): so the word quiz appears when you turn on your screen, also after a restart.
  • Do Not Disturb (Android): VocLock checks whether Do Not Disturb is on, so it can hold back questions and reminders while it is. It only reads that one setting, stores nothing about it, and you can switch the check off in Settings.
  • Internet: for your account, the News tab and the ads in the free version (sections 3 and 4).
  • Advertising ID (Android, free version): lets Google show and measure ads. You can reset or delete it in your phone's settings.

6Backups

Export and import. In Settings you can save a backup file and load it again. You choose where the file goes; it doesn't pass through us. It contains your progress, settings, your own words and your emergency PIN, so keep it private.

Phone backups. If backups are turned on for your phone (for example Google backup on Android or iCloud on iPhone), your phone may include VocLock's data in them. Those backups are managed by Google or Apple under their policies.

7Children

VocLock isn't directed at children under 13, and children under 13 shouldn't create an account. If the year of birth you give shows you're under 13, VocLock doesn't offer an account at all. Apart from the optional account (section 3), VocLock doesn't collect personal data; the ads in the free version are handled by Google as described in section 4.

8Legal bases and how long data is kept

Data that stays on your phone (section 2) isn't processed by us. For everything else (GDPR article numbers in brackets):

  • Account, sync, friends and partner, chat partner, News: to provide the features you choose to use (Art. 6(1)(b)). Your account and its copy of your progress are kept until you delete the account. Friend requests are deleted once they're accepted or declined, nudges once they're opened or dismissed in the app, connections when one of you removes the other or deletes the account. Chats aren't stored; the chat server keeps only today's message count, which deletes itself two days after your last message.
  • Personalized ads: only with your consent (Art. 6(1)(a), and § 25(1) TDDDG for reading and storing information on your device). Without consent, Google shows only limited ads: they don't use personalization and don't read or store anything on your device for ads; to serve them, Google still processes data like your IP address, based on our legitimate interest in financing the free version (Art. 6(1)(f)). How long Google keeps ad data is set out in Google's policies (section 4).
  • Bug reports and emails to us: to answer you (Art. 6(1)(f)). We keep them as long as needed to answer you and fix the problem.
  • This website: GitHub's server logs, to deliver the pages securely (Art. 6(1)(f)); GitHub decides how long it keeps them.

Using VocLock doesn't require giving any personal data. If you use neither an account nor the chat partner, VocLock sends nothing about you except what Google's ads need. The News tab works without an account too, but opening it contacts Wikipedia, which receives your IP address and basic device information like from any website (section 4).

Ideas and bug reports: whichever way you send us suggestions, ideas or bug reports, we may use them to improve VocLock without paying or crediting you, also if we build what you suggested (Terms of Use, section 7). Thank you for helping!

9Your choices and rights

You're in control: use VocLock without an account, sign out or delete your account under Settings → Account, delete the data on your phone by clearing VocLock's data or uninstalling it, withdraw any permission in your phone's settings, and change your ad choices under Settings → Ad privacy choices.

Under the GDPR you have the right to access your data, to have it corrected or deleted, to restrict its processing and to receive it in a portable format (Art. 15–20). You can withdraw a consent at any time, with effect for the future (Art. 7(3)), for ads under Settings → Ad privacy choices. You can object to processing based on our legitimate interests (Art. 21). For any of this, write to voclock.app@gmail.com. You can also complain to a data protection authority, for example the one where you live.

10Changes

If VocLock starts handling data differently, we'll update this page and the date at the top before the change ships.