Legal
Privacy Policy
Hello Word (helloword.kr) is a service operated by Tech In Life.
We process personal information as described below,
in accordance with Korea's Personal Information Protection Act.
This English version is provided for reference only. If it differs from the Korean original, the Korean version governs.
What We Collect
- At sign-up: username, password (stored as a one-way hash — the Company itself cannot recover the original), email address
- If you sign in with Google: email address, Google account identifier, the name from your Google profile
- While using the Service: vocabulary content (term, meaning, pronunciation) extracted from images you upload, and your learning history
- If you use the Service as a guest: a randomly generated identifier stored in your browser to count your daily usage — this is not device or browser fingerprinting, just a random value generated on your first visit and stored locally
- If you subscribe to Pro: subscription status and billing dates for managing your subscription — sensitive payment details such as card numbers are handled by our payment processor and are never stored by the Company directly
- Login security: IP-based records of failed login attempts, used to defend against brute-force attacks
Why We Collect It
- Member identification, authentication, and keeping you signed in
- Providing the Service — saving vocabulary sets, generating quizzes, tracking learning history
- Managing daily usage limits and preventing abuse
- Processing and managing Pro subscription payments
- Serving and measuring ads, where ads are displayed
How Long We Keep It
- Account data, vocabulary sets, and learning history: deleted immediately when you close your account
- Subscription data: deleted immediately along with your account data upon withdrawal
- Uploaded images: not retained at all — processed in memory and discarded immediately; never written to disk
- Failed login records: no longer referenced once the lockout window has passed
How We Destroy It
Personal information is destroyed without delay once its retention period ends or its purpose is fulfilled.
- When you withdraw your account, we immediately delete your account record, vocabulary sets, learning history, and subscription data from the database, using methods that make recovery impossible.
- Uploaded images are never stored in the first place, so no separate destruction procedure is needed — they are discarded from memory immediately after processing.
Sharing and Outsourcing
We do not share or sell your personal information to outside parties without your consent.
To operate the Service smoothly, we outsource the following personal information processing tasks to external providers. This constitutes "outsourcing of processing," not "provision to a third party," under Korea's Personal Information Protection Act.
- Resend — sending emails (verification codes and notices)
- Google LLC (Google OAuth) — identity verification for Google sign-in
- Toss Payments Corp. — processing recurring Pro subscription payments
- (Where ads are displayed) Google LLC (Google AdSense) — serving and measuring ads
Cookies and Other Automatic Collection
We use a session cookie to keep you signed in. This cookie cannot be accessed by JavaScript (HttpOnly), and if you choose to stay signed in, it lasts up to 30 days.
- Purpose: keeping you signed in (we do not use it for anything else)
- Browser local storage: used to store a random identifier for tracking a guest user's daily usage, and to save display settings such as your language preference.
- Where ads are displayed, Google may use its own cookies for ad serving and measurement.
- How to refuse: you can block cookies and local storage in your browser settings, but some features, such as staying signed in, may be limited as a result.
Your Rights
You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information at any time.
- You can close your own account directly from account settings, and the request is processed immediately.
- You can download your vocabulary data directly at any time using the CSV/JSON export feature.
- Because we do not collect personal information from children under 14, no separate procedure applies for legal representatives to exercise rights on a child's behalf.
Privacy Officer and Contact
Privacy officer: Tech In Life
Send any question about how we handle your data, or any access/correction/deletion request, through the contact link at the bottom of this page.
This policy may be revised when necessary; changes will be posted on this page.