Pensar
Privacy policy
Last updated: October 31, 2026
The short version
- You don't have to tell us who you are. Pensar starts with an anonymous account. Saving it with Apple or Google is optional.
- Your progress, words and journal live in your account, in Google's Firebase database in Belgium.
- Paco is AI. To write your lessons and read your answers, Pensar sends what it needs to Google's Gemini models, mostly through a service called OpenRouter. Your journal goes to Google only.
- We watch how the app is used so we can fix it, with PostHog analytics, crash reports and screen recordings that hide what you type.
- No ads, no selling your data, and no tracking you across other apps or websites.
- Delete everything whenever you like: You › Settings › Delete account.
- Who we are
- What we collect, and why
- Your voice, camera and location
- How Pensar uses AI
- Analytics, recordings and crash reports
- What stays on your iPhone
- Why we're allowed to use it
- Who processes it for us
- Data outside the EU
- How long we keep it
- Deleting your account
- Your rights
- Children
- Security
- This website
- Changes and contact
1. Who we are
Pensar is made by Shirish Kadam, an independent developer in Valencia, Spain. He is the data controller for the personal data described here. Questions or requests: mail@5hirish.com.
This policy covers the Pensar app for iPhone and iPad and its pages on this website, nomadtools.in.
2. What we collect, and why
| What | Examples | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Your account | A random account ID. If you save your account with Apple: the email address Apple shares (or a Hide My Email address) and, the first time only, the name you choose to share. With Google: your name, email address and profile picture link. | To keep your progress and let you sign in on another device. |
| Your setup answers | Why you're learning, how much Spanish you know, whether you'd rather speak or type, your reminder time, which Spanish you want, your Spanish city and the city you're in. In Settings, the name you'd like Paco to call you. | To set your level, your lessons, Paco's voice and your reminder. |
| Your learning | The sentences you build and your answers, mistakes included. Words you save, stories you read, points and rewards, and Paco's notes on how you're doing. | To teach you: what to practice next, which words to bring back, when to move your level. |
| Your journal | The pages you write or say, and Paco's reading of each one. | To show you what worked and what to fix. |
| Usage and diagnostics | What you open and finish, screen recordings, crash and error reports, how fast the app runs, device model, iOS and app version, country. | To find what confuses people and fix what breaks. |
Paco's notes. About once a day, Pensar asks the AI to sum up your recent activity: what you're good at, words to bring back, slips you repeat, and whether your level should move. Paco moves your level one step at most, and you can set it yourself in Settings.
We don't collect your contacts, your precise (GPS) location, health data, payment details or your device's advertising identifier.
3. Your voice, camera and location
Microphone
- Spoken answers are turned into text by Apple's speech recognition. Depending on your device and language, Apple may process the audio on its own servers, under Apple's privacy policy. Pensar only gets the text.
- Spoken journal pages (up to 3 minutes) are sent through our server to Google's Gemini to be written down. We don't keep the recording on any server. It stays on your iPhone so you can play it back, until you delete the page or your account.
Camera and photos
Lens reads the words in a menu, sign or photo, and Mira names the things you point at. Both run on your iPhone, and the picture isn't uploaded. Only the word you tap is sent, to look up what it means.
Location
Pensar never asks for your location and doesn't use GPS. During setup, the app asks our small server (run on Cloudflare) which city your internet connection is in. It answers with a city, region, country and time zone, and keeps no record of the request. You can accept the city or change it.
After that, at most once a day (or sooner when your time zone changes, but never more than once an hour), the app checks again so it can follow you when you travel. A new city is saved to your account quietly.
Notifications
Your daily reminder is scheduled on your iPhone. We don't send push notifications.
4. How Pensar uses AI
Paco runs on Google's Gemini models. The app never talks to the AI directly: our server, on Google Cloud in the US, sends each request and checks the answer.
| What Paco does | What's sent | Who receives it |
|---|---|---|
| Lessons, feedback on your sentences, the daily challenge | Your sentence or answer, your level, which Spanish, your Spanish city and the city you're in, your local date and time, recent lesson titles and Paco's notes. | OpenRouter, then Google |
| Stories, Listen rounds, today's scene, word meanings | The question and your answer, your level, interests, Spanish city and the words you're working on, or the word you look up. | OpenRouter, then Google |
| Paco's notes | A summary of your recent activity: counts, words you missed or saved, and up to six short corrections from your journal. | Google only |
| Reading your journal, writing down a spoken page | The page's text, or the recording. | Google only |
- OpenRouter (OpenRouter, Inc., US) passes each request on to Google (Google AI Studio or Vertex AI). If it fails, our server sends it to Google directly.
- Your name, email address and account ID are not sent to the AI. Anything you write in an answer or a journal page is, so leave out what you'd rather not share.
- Not used for training. We use these providers' paid services, under which your requests aren't used to train their models. They may keep requests for a short time to prevent abuse.
- We keep a record of each AI request in PostHog, linked to your account ID: what was sent and what came back, so we can check Paco's quality and cost. For journal readings, spoken pages and Paco's notes, we keep only the timing and cost, never your words, and the same goes for our error logs.
- Shared content. Stories, Listen rounds, daily scenes and dictionary entries are written once and shared with every learner they fit. They contain nothing about you. A word you look up that's new to our dictionary is added to it, with no record of who asked.
5. Analytics, recordings and crash reports
We use PostHog (PostHog, Inc., servers in the US) to see how Pensar is used and to fix problems.
- Events say what you opened or finished, like "lesson completed", with counts and kinds. Never the words of your journal.
- Your PostHog profile holds your account ID, whether and how your account is saved, your level, why you're learning, the Spanish you knew before, speak or type, whether a reminder is set, which Spanish and Spanish city, and your country. Never your name or email address.
- Screen recordings. While you use the app, it records a picture of the screen every few seconds, with your taps and technical logs. Text you type is hidden, and so are your journal, the camera and photos in Lens, and your name and email address in Settings. Recordings are deleted after 30 days.
- Crash and error reports record what went wrong, the app version, the device model and the steps just before.
- Your IP address reaches PostHog with every request, and PostHog throws it away without storing it. We've also turned off its location lookup, so it doesn't work out where you are. Your country comes from the city you chose.
Firebase Performance Monitoring (Google) measures how fast the app starts and how long requests take, with your device model, iOS and app version, country and a random installation ID.
Our server's logs (Google Cloud) record each request with its IP address and app version, and errors with your account ID.
App Check uses Apple's App Attest to confirm requests come from the real Pensar app on a real device. It doesn't identify you.
None of this is used for advertising, and Pensar doesn't track you across other companies' apps or websites.
6. What stays on your iPhone
These never leave your device:
- Your journal recordings.
- A journal page you've started but not saved.
- The Adult words setting.
- Your scheduled reminders.
- The places the travel check has seen, so it can tell a trip from a guess.
Your sign-in is kept in your iPhone's keychain, so reinstalling Pensar brings your account back.
7. Why we're allowed to use it
Under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we rely on:
- Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)): your account, your progress, lessons, Paco's feedback and journal reading are the service you asked for.
- Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)): analytics, screen recordings, crash reports, performance data, security checks, daily limits and the city suggestion keep Pensar working and help us improve it. The app has no cookies or consent banner, so these start with the app. You can object at any time by emailing us.
- Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)): iOS asks you before Pensar uses the microphone, speech recognition, camera or notifications. Turn any of them off in iOS Settings › Pensar, and you can still type.
8. Who processes it for us
| Company | What it does for Pensar | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Sign-in, the database, our server, the Gemini AI, Performance Monitoring, App Check | Database in Belgium; server and AI in the US and elsewhere | |
| OpenRouter | Passes most AI requests to Google | US |
| PostHog | Analytics, screen recordings, crash reports, AI request records | US |
| Cloudflare | The city suggestion and this website | Its global network |
| Apple | Sign in with Apple, App Attest, speech recognition | US and elsewhere |
If you sign in with Google, Google also handles that sign-in under its own privacy policy.
We don't sell or rent your data, and we don't share it with advertisers or data brokers. We would disclose it only if the law required us to.
9. Data outside the EU
Your account data is stored in the EU (Belgium). Our server runs in the US, and the AI, analytics and network providers above are US companies, so some data is processed there. These transfers rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, or on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
10. How long we keep it
| Data | Kept |
|---|---|
| Account, progress, words, journal | Until you delete your account |
| Today's AI-use counter | Deleted the next day |
| Listen rounds you've heard | 3 days |
| Stories you've read (so you don't get one twice) | 400 days |
| Screen recordings | 30 days |
| Server logs | 30 days |
| Analytics events, crash reports, AI request records | While they help us improve Pensar. Yours are deleted when you ask. |
| Data on your iPhone | Until you delete it, your account or the app |
If you stop using Pensar without deleting your account, your data stays so you can pick up where you left off.
11. Deleting your account
In the app: You › Settings (the gear) › Delete account. It works before you've saved your account too. There's no undo. It removes, right away:
- Your profile, progress, saved words, journal pages and points history from our database.
- The journal recordings on that iPhone.
- Your sign-in, and Pensar's access to your Apple ID if you used Sign in with Apple.
Records already sent to PostHog are linked to a random ID, not your name or email address, and aren't removed by this. Recordings expire after 30 days; email us and we'll delete the rest. Shared content holds nothing about you, so it stays.
Can't open the app? Email mail@5hirish.com and we'll help you find and delete your account.
12. Your rights
You can ask us to:
- See the data we hold about you, and get a copy in a machine-readable format.
- Correct it, or delete it.
- Limit how we use it, or object to uses based on our legitimate interests.
- Withdraw consent you gave, at any time.
Email mail@5hirish.com. We'll reply within one month. You can also complain to Spain's data protection authority, the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD), or to the authority where you live.
13. Children
Pensar isn't directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their data. In Spain, anyone under 14 needs a parent's consent. If you think a child has used Pensar without it, email us and we'll delete the account.
14. Security
Data is encrypted in transit and stored encrypted by Google. Database rules let only your account read your data, App Check blocks requests that don't come from the real app, and our server runs under its own restricted account. No system is perfect: if a breach put your data at risk, we would tell you and the authorities as the law requires.
15. This website
This site (nomadtools.in) sets no cookies and runs no scripts, analytics or trackers. Its fonts and images are served from here too. Cloudflare delivers the pages and so sees your IP address; we've turned its request logs off.
16. Changes and contact
When this policy changes, we'll update the date at the top. For changes that matter, we'll tell you in the app before they take effect.
Shirish Kadam, Valencia, Spain · mail@5hirish.com