Privacy Policy
Effective 1 September 2026. Last updated 16 October 2026.
Ganba is made by Kyle Le, a sole proprietor in Alberta, Canada. This policy explains what Ganba collects and what happens to it. Ganba collects very little.
Questions: support@ganba.ca
The short version
Ganba has no accounts and no server of its own. Your study history, your streak, and your settings live in a database on your device. We cannot read it, because it is never sent to us.
We do not sell your data. We do not share it with advertisers. There is no advertising in Ganba.
A few things do leave your device, and each is listed in full below: anonymous counts of what happens in the app, which you can switch off in Settings; crash reports; your purchases, so Premium unlocks; and a check for app updates. None of them carries the words you study.
What stays on your device
Ganba stores the following locally, and only locally:
- Which words you have studied, how you graded them, and when each is next due
- Your daily study log and streak
- Your settings: daily new-word cap, widget rotation interval, and onboarding answers (the name you gave, your goal, and your level)
One of those answers also goes into one anonymous count when you finish onboarding: your level. That count is described under PostHog below. Your name and your goal are never sent.
A small subset of this, the words currently scheduled to appear, is shared with the Ganba lock-screen widget through a private Apple App Group. That data does not leave your device either.
Deleting the app deletes all of it. We keep no copy and cannot restore it for you. If your iPhone backs up to iCloud or to a computer, that backup includes Ganba’s data, as it does for any app, and restoring the backup brings it back. Those backups belong to you and Apple, not to us.
What third parties receive
Ganba uses a small number of services. Each is listed here with what it receives.
Apple
Purchases and subscriptions are handled entirely by Apple. We never see your payment details, card number, or Apple ID. Apple provides us with anonymous transaction records and aggregate sales reports. Apple’s handling of your data is governed by Apple’s own privacy policy.
RevenueCat
RevenueCat Inc. validates purchase receipts and tells the app whether a subscription is active. It receives an anonymous, randomly generated identifier for your installation, your purchase and subscription events, and technical details such as your country, platform, and app version. It does not receive your name, email address, or payment details, and it does not receive anything about what you study.
RevenueCat is a data processor acting on our behalf and is based in the United States, so this information is processed outside Canada.
PostHog (product analytics)
PostHog Inc. records anonymous counts of what happens in the app. It also receives a randomly generated identifier for your installation, plus your device model, operating system version, app version, language setting, time zone and screen size.
It does not receive your location, not even your country. PostHog would normally work out an approximate country from the network address a request arrives on, and keep that address. The app switches the country lookup off on every event it sends, and our PostHog project is set to discard network addresses, so no country is worked out and no address is kept.
This is the complete list of what the app sends:
- That the app was opened
- Which screen you are on, by name: Home, Practice, Packs, Profile, Settings, Credits, the widget words list, your streak, a streak day, the reminder screen, the paywall, the share card, a lesson, the kana table, kana learning, kana review, the needs-work list, flashcards, a word screen, or a pack screen. A word screen and a pack screen are reported as just that. Which word or pack is never sent
- Which onboarding question you reached, by step number and by the question’s name, and that onboarding finished, with the level you chose and whether a widget was on your lock screen at the end
- The widget setup steps: that you declined it, that the how-to was opened and from where, and that the how-to was left, with whether a widget was detected
- The kana steps: that a learning session started, that a chunk of five was finished, how many characters have been introduced so far, which script (hiragana or katakana), that a script was completed, and that a review deck was started or cleared, with how many cards it held. The characters themselves are never sent
- That a lesson was started, finished, or left partway, which of the three kinds it was, and how many cards, how many answers, and how many seconds it held
- That the paywall was shown or dismissed, and what opened it
- That a purchase completed, was cancelled, failed, or is waiting for a parent’s approval, and which plan; and separately, that a free trial started
- That a restore was attempted, and whether anything was restored
- That a setting was changed, which setting, and its new value
- That a share card was made, in which style, and from which screen
- Which step of the first-day card on Home you tapped: the lesson, the widget, or the reminder
It never receives the words you study. The list above is the whole of it, and the properties each event may carry are restricted in code so that no word, reading, example sentence, or item identifier can be attached to one. Session recording is off, and so is any automatic capture of screens or taps.
You can turn this off in Ganba’s Settings, under Privacy: switch off Share anonymous usage data. Nothing further is sent from that moment.
PostHog is a data processor acting on our behalf and is hosted in the United States, so this information is processed outside Canada.
Sentry (crash reporting)
Functional Software Inc., trading as Sentry, receives a report when the app crashes or hits an error: the error itself, a stack trace, your device model, operating system version, and app version. The report also shows the state of the device at that moment, such as free memory, battery level and screen size. Each time the app opens it also tells Sentry that a session started, with a randomly generated identifier for your installation, so we can count how many sessions end in a crash.
Crash reports contain no study data and no personal information. They are not covered by the analytics switch above, because knowing the app crashed is how it gets fixed, and a crash report says nothing about you.
Sentry is a data processor acting on our behalf and is hosted in the United States.
Expo (app updates)
650 Industries Inc., trading as Expo, delivers small updates to the app without a trip through the App Store. Each time the app opens it asks Expo whether an update is waiting. That request carries a randomly generated identifier for your installation, your platform, and the app’s version and release channel, and it arrives from your network address. It carries nothing about you or what you study.
Expo is a data processor acting on our behalf and is based in the United States, so this information is processed outside Canada.
What Ganba does not do
- No accounts. There is nothing to sign up for and no password to lose.
- No advertising, and no advertising identifiers.
- No selling or sharing of personal information, in the sense used by the California Consumer Privacy Act or otherwise.
- No artificial intelligence at runtime. Nothing you do in the app is sent to a language model or any other AI service. The Japanese content in Ganba comes from vetted dictionary and sentence sources, and a person checks every item.
- No tracking across apps or websites, so Ganba does not ask for App Tracking Transparency permission.
This website
ganba.ca sets no cookies and runs no analytics, and serves its own fonts. Like any website, it is delivered by a host, Vercel Inc., whose servers see your network address when you visit. The App Store badge is loaded from Apple, which sees your network address too. For the length of one visit, the site remembers in your browser that its opening animation has played, so it plays only once. That note never leaves your browser.
Notifications
If you allow notifications, Ganba schedules them locally on your device. This includes any reminder that a free trial is about to end. No notification is sent from a server, and enabling them does not transmit anything to us.
You can turn notifications off in iOS Settings at any time.
Children
Ganba is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Because Ganba has no accounts and collects no personal information, there is in practice nothing about a child for us to hold. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, contact support@ganba.ca.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or export your personal information, and to complain to a regulator.
For Ganba these are unusually simple to exercise: the information about you is on your device and under your control. Deleting the app erases it. Analytics can be switched off in Ganba’s Settings, under Privacy, at any time. For the limited purchase, usage and crash data held by Apple, RevenueCat, PostHog, Sentry and Expo, contact support@ganba.ca and we will help you with what is within our control.
Canadian users may also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
Security
Study data never leaves your device, so it is protected by your device’s own security, including your passcode and iOS encryption. We hold no database of user information that could be breached, because we hold no database at all.
Changes
If this policy changes, the “last updated” date above changes with it. Material changes will be announced in the app before taking effect. Continuing to use Ganba after a change means you accept the updated policy.
Contact
Kyle Le, sole proprietor. Alberta, Canada.