Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

DictArena ("we", "us", or "our") operates the competitive dictation platform available at dictarena.com. We are committed to protecting your personal data and respecting your privacy.

This policy explains what data we collect when you use DictArena, why we collect it, and how we keep it safe.

2. Data We Collect

We collect the minimum data necessary to operate the platform:

• Anonymous identifier — a random ID stored in your browser to track session limits without requiring an account.
• Display name & username — the name you choose when joining a room and your unique account handle (if registered).
• Country — the country you choose when you set up your player (suggested from your IP address, e.g. "FR"), shown as a flag on leaderboards. We do not store your IP address.
• Game scores & answers — your dictation answers and scores, stored to display leaderboards and game history.
• Email address (optional) — only if you add one to your account, join the paid-plan waitlist or claim the beta bonus (with an optional price preference). Used for account recovery and product updates.
• Handwriting photos — when you photograph your answers, the image is sent for text recognition and is not stored.

3. How We Use Your Data

Your data is used exclusively to:

• Run and display real-time leaderboards during games
• Enforce fair-play session limits for anonymous players
• Show your game history if you have a registered account
• Process Pro plan and Weekend Pass purchases through the Apple App Store / Google Play (mobile), once paid plans are on sale
• Detect your country for flag display (no location tracking)

We do not sell your data. We do not use it for advertising. We do not build profiles beyond what is needed to run the game.

4. Third-Party Services

We use the following trusted third parties to operate DictArena:

• Supabase — database and authentication hosting (EU servers).
• Vercel — application hosting and edge network.
• Google Cloud Vision — processes photos of your handwritten answers to extract text (OCR). Your handwriting images are sent to Google's API for this purpose.
• Google Cloud Text-to-Speech — converts dictation text to audio. Dictation content is sent to Google's API.
• Anthropic Claude — analyses your submitted answers to generate grammar explanations (your answers are sent to Anthropic's API), and gives the meaning of Ortho words (only the word is sent).
• Apple App Store / Google Play — processes in-app purchases on mobile. Their respective billing and privacy policies apply.

Each of these providers is contractually bound to protect your data and process it only as instructed by us.

5. Data Retention

Registered account data is retained as long as your account is active. You may request deletion at any time by emailing dictarena@gmail.com. We will action deletion requests within 30 days.

6. Your Rights (GDPR)

If you are based in the European Union, you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you
• Correct inaccurate data
• Request erasure of your data ("right to be forgotten")
• Object to processing or request restriction
• Data portability
• Lodge a complaint with your national data protection authority

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at dictarena@gmail.com.

7. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as the platform evolves. When we do, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. Continued use of DictArena after changes are posted constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.