Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Vocany is an independent studio that builds vocabulary tools for language learners. We publish seven Chrome extensions and operate the website at vocany.com. For anything in this policy, the contact is [email protected].

This policy covers two separate things that people often assume are one: the browser extensions, and the website. They collect very different amounts of data, so they are described separately.

2. The Chrome extensions

This section applies to all of our extensions:

• All-in-One Cambridge Dictionary
• Cambridge Dictionary Quick-Lookup
• Collocation Dictionary Lookup
• YouGlish Lookup
• Tratu-Soha Lookup
• 570 Academic Word List
• Từ vựng theo chủ đề — Beginner

2.1 What they are for

Each extension does one thing: it takes a word or phrase you select on a page and shows you its meaning, usage or pronunciation without making you leave that page. That single purpose is the whole product. There is no account to create, nothing to sign in to, and no profile attached to you.

2.2 What we collect ourselves: nothing

We operate no server that receives data from the extensions. The words you look up, the pages you read them on, and your browsing history are never transmitted to Vocany, because there is nowhere for them to be transmitted to. We cannot produce a list of your lookups if asked, including by ourselves.

The extensions contain no advertising identifier, no session recording and no fingerprinting. Some of them do include Google Analytics, which is a measurement service and is described on its own in §2.3 — we would rather name it plainly than let "we collect nothing" do work it has not earned.

2.3 Analytics in some extensions

Some of our extensions include Google Analytics; others do not. Where it is present, it is enabled in the extension itself and reports usage events — which feature was opened, that the extension was used — so we can see which parts of a tool people actually reach and which are dead weight.

Those events go to Google, not to a Vocany server; we have no database of them and read them only as aggregate counts in Google's reporting interface. Along with the event, Google Analytics collects what it collects by default: your IP address, the approximate location it derives from that address, your device and browser, and a randomly generated identifier that lets it recognise the same browser again. Google processes this under its own privacy policy.

It is not used to build a profile of you, it is not linked to any identity — there is no account to link it to — and it is not shared with advertisers or data brokers.

You can block it at the source: Google publishes a browser opt-out add-on that stops Google Analytics anywhere, including inside an extension, and an extension still works normally with it blocked. You can also simply remove the extension, which ends the measurement completely.

2.4 Where a lookup does go

Being accurate about this matters more than sounding reassuring. An extension that looks a word up in a dictionary has to send that word to the dictionary. When you request a lookup, the word travels from your browser directly to the provider that answers it:

• Cambridge Dictionary (dictionary.cambridge.org) — definitions, collocations, audio pronunciation
• YouGlish (youglish.com) — real-world pronunciation clips
• Tra Từ — Soha (tratu.soha.vn) — Vietnamese–English lookups

That request goes from your browser to them, not through us. From their side it looks like an ordinary visit, which means they may see the word, your IP address and your user agent, and they handle that under their own privacy policies — not this one. If you would rather a particular word not reach a particular provider, do not look it up with the extension for that provider.

The two word-list extensions (570 Academic Word List, Từ vựng theo chủ đề — Beginner) carry their word lists inside the extension, so ordinary browsing of those lists involves no outside request at all.

2.5 Your settings

If an extension lets you change something — a preferred dictionary, a hotkey, whether the floating icon appears — that preference is kept in your browser's own local extension storage, on the device you set it on. It is not sent to us and we cannot read it.

None of our extensions use Chrome's synchronised storage, so your settings are not copied to your other devices or to your Google account — they stay on the machine where you chose them. Reinstalling or switching computers means setting them again, which is the trade we made on purpose.

2.6 Permissions

To show a result on the page you are reading, an extension needs permission to run on the page you are reading. That is what the install prompt is warning you about, and it is a real permission worth taking seriously. We use it only to read the text you selected and to draw the result near it. We do not use it to scan page contents for any other purpose, to inject advertising, or to modify pages you have not asked us to act on.

3. This website (vocany.com)

The website collects more than the extensions do, because a form has to keep what you typed in order to be answered.

3.1 Newsletter signups

When you submit the signup form we store:

• your email address;
• your IP address and browser user agent, kept to block automated abuse;
• the time of signup and which form on the page you used.

We use it for one thing: emailing you occasionally about what we have shipped. Every such email carries an unsubscribe route, and you can also simply reply asking to be removed. We do not pass the list to advertisers, and we do not use it to build a profile of you.

3.2 The contact form

We store the name, email address and message you submit, plus your IP address, user agent and the time, for the same anti-abuse reason. The message is emailed to us so we can answer it. We keep it while the conversation is useful and delete it on request.

3.3 Analytics and cookies

The website can use Google Analytics 4 to count visits and understand which parts of the page people use. It sets cookies in your browser and sends Google your IP address (which Google truncates), approximate location, device and browser details, and which pages you viewed. We see aggregate reports, not individuals.

It is off until you turn it on. We ask on your first visit, and the Google Analytics script is not loaded at all until you accept — so if you decline, no request reaches Google and no analytics cookie is written. Declining is a single click, the same as accepting. You can change your mind at any time with the Cookie settings link in the site footer.

We also record a conversion event when a form is submitted successfully, so we know how many people completed it. The event records that a submission happened and from which form — not what you typed.

You can opt out with Google's browser add-on, or by blocking the script with any content blocker. The site is built to work normally when analytics is blocked, and you are always entitled to ask us to delete anything tied to you.

One piece of storage is used regardless of your choice: we remember the choice itself, in your browser's local storage under the key vocany-consent-v1. It holds a single word — whether you accepted or declined — and exists so we do not have to ask again on every page. It is never sent anywhere.

This consent banner governs the website only. Analytics inside the extensions is a separate matter with a separate opt-out, described in §2.3 — accepting or declining here changes nothing there, and vice versa.

3.4 Server logs and our hosting

Our web server and our network provider (Cloudflare, which sits in front of the site) keep ordinary request logs containing IP addresses and requested URLs. These exist for security and for diagnosing faults. Form submissions are stored on our own server, in a database kept outside the publicly reachable part of the site. Email is delivered through our mail provider, Tino.

4. What we never do

• We never sell or rent personal data. There is no circumstance in which we would.
• We never share it with advertisers, data brokers or ad networks.
• We never use the extensions' page access to collect browsing history.
• We never use your data to train machine-learning models.
• We never ask for payment details; nothing we publish is paid.

The exceptions to "we do not share" are the ones already described above, and they are described because they are real: a lookup reaches the dictionary that answers it (§2.4), Google receives analytics events from the extensions that include Google Analytics (§2.3) and from this site once you accept (§3.3), and the service providers named in §3.4 handle data on our behalf in order to run the site. None of that is a sale, and none of it goes to a data broker.

5. How long we keep things

• Newsletter addresses — until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete them.
• Contact messages — while the conversation is still useful, and deleted on request.
• Anti-abuse records (the short-term record of recent form attempts) — one hour, then discarded automatically.
• Analytics — for both the site and the extensions, according to the retention period set in Google Analytics. We hold no copy of it ourselves.
• Extension data on our servers — not applicable; there is none to keep.

6. Your rights

Depending on where you live you may have the right to see what we hold about you, have it corrected, have it deleted, or object to our using it. We honour these requests regardless of where you live, because keeping data nobody wants us to keep is not worth the trouble to anybody.

Email [email protected] from the address concerned and say what you want done. We will act on it and confirm when it is finished. We do not charge for this and we will not ask you why.

7. Children

Our tools are for language learners of any age, but they are not directed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child has sent us personal data, email us and we will delete it.

8. Changes to this policy

If we change what we collect, we will update this page and change the date at the top. Material changes affecting newsletter subscribers will be announced by email. We will not quietly broaden what we collect and leave this page as it was.

9. Contact

Questions, corrections, or a deletion request: [email protected], or use the contact form. We read everything that arrives there.