HanziPress (“HanziPress”, “we”, “us”, or “our”) provides free tools for learning, practicing, and printing Chinese characters and vocabulary, including printable worksheets, flashcards, character practice tools, and related learning features.
This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have when using HanziPress.
1. Information We Collect
Information You Provide
You may use many HanziPress features without creating an account.
Creating an account is optional, and Google Sign-In is currently the only way to do it — HanziPress has no password of its own. When you sign in with Google, Google sends us the basic profile information covered by the standard openid, email and profile scopes. We store:
- Your Google account identifier (Google's
subclaim) — used to recognise your account on later sign-ins. It does not change when a Google account is renamed. - Your email address, and whether Google has verified it — the address identifies your account, and the verification flag decides whether it is safe to link this sign-in to an existing account with the same address.
- Your name — shown next to your account in the site header.
- Your Google profile picture URL — shown as your avatar in the site header. The image itself stays on Google's servers and is loaded by your browser from there.
- Your account locale, when Google provides it — stored with your account; it does not currently change what the site shows you.
- The raw profile information Google returns for the sign-in — kept as the record of what Google told us. It contains the fields above and, for Google Workspace accounts, your hosted domain.
We use this information to create and manage your HanziPress account, to sign you in, to show which account is signed in, and to provide account-based features such as saved review progress. We do not request any other Google data, we do not use Google user data for advertising, and we do not sell it.
Learning and Account Data
If you use account-based features, we store the following in our own MySQL database, on the server that runs HanziPress:
- Account record — your email address, whether it is verified, display name, avatar URL, account locale, account status, and the dates the account was created, last updated and last used.
- Sign-in identity — the provider (
google), the provider account id, the address the provider reported, and the raw Google profile information described above. - Review progress — for each flashcard you review: the deck, the review mode, the card, its character, pinyin and gloss, the spaced-repetition state (due date, stability, difficulty, counts) and when you last reviewed it.
- Daily review counters — how many new and review cards you studied on a given day, which is what the streak and the daily limits are computed from.
- Account preferences — the review settings you change (for example retention or daily caps), stored against your account so they follow you between devices.
One thing is deliberately kept in your browser only: the site caches your display name and avatar URL in your browser's local storage (under the key hanzipress:auth-user) so the header can paint your account before the session check finishes. It holds no token and no user id, it authorizes nothing, and signing out or clearing your browser data removes it. Everything that decides what you may see is read from your session on the server, never from that cache.
Content You Enter
HanziPress lets you enter Chinese characters, words, sentences, poems and other text to generate worksheets, flashcards and other learning materials. That text is processed in memory to build the file you asked for and is not saved to your account. Our generation log records only the shape of the request (mode, sizes, output size) together with the requesting IP address and user agent — never the text itself.
The one place entered text is stored is online review: the cards you review (their character, pinyin and gloss) are kept with your account so your progress can be saved, as described under Learning and Account Data above.
2. How We Use Information
We use information we collect to:
- Provide and operate HanziPress
- Create and manage user accounts
- Save learning and review progress
- Provide personalized learning features
- Generate worksheets, PDFs, and flashcards
- Improve the reliability, performance, and usability of the service
- Prevent abuse, fraud, and unauthorized access
- Respond to support requests
- Comply with applicable legal obligations
We do not sell your personal information, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not use it to train or fine-tune machine-learning models or to generate AI content.
3. Google Sign-In
HanziPress uses Google Sign-In as its only sign-in method. We request the basic scopes openid, email and profile — the data listed in section 1 — and no other Google API, and we ask for it only when you choose to sign in. If you never sign in, we receive nothing from Google.
Our use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. In particular, we do not use Google user data for advertising, we do not sell it, and we do not use it to train or fine-tune machine-learning models or to generate AI content.
You can review and revoke HanziPress's access to your Google account at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Revoking access stops future sign-ins; the HanziPress account and its saved progress remain until you ask us to delete them.
Your use of Google Sign-In is also subject to Google's own privacy policy and terms of service. You can use HanziPress without signing in for many features.
4. Cookies and Local Storage
When you sign in, our authentication library sets the cookies it needs to keep you signed in on this device: an essential, HTTP-only session cookie (signed, and not readable by page scripts) and a short-lived CSRF token cookie that protects the sign-in request. We set no advertising or tracking cookies, and a signed-out visitor gets no cookie from us.
In your browser's local storage we keep one entry, hanzipress:auth-user, holding the display name and avatar URL described in section 1 so the header can render your account before the session check returns. Signing out removes it, and clearing your browser's site data removes everything we keep locally.
5. Analytics and Technical Information
When you access HanziPress, our servers record standard technical information for each request, including:
- IP address
- Browser and device information (user agent)
- Requested pages and resources
- The referring page, when your browser sends it
- Timestamps, response status and duration
- Error and diagnostic information
We use this to serve and secure the site, to troubleshoot errors, to understand which pages are used, and to rate-limit abuse. The logs stay on our server and are not used to build a profile of you.
We do not currently run any third-party analytics or advertising script on HanziPress. If we add analytics later, this policy will name the service before it is enabled.
Services that do process data on our behalf: Google (sign-in, and hosting your Google profile picture), Cloudflare (DNS, content delivery and edge security in front of the site), and our VPS hosting provider (which runs the server and the MySQL database). Each handles data under its own privacy policy.
6. Data Retention
We keep your account record and its review data for as long as your account exists. We do not currently delete accounts automatically for inactivity.
You can ask us to delete your account at any time using the contact method in section 13. We will delete or anonymise the account and the review progress, settings and daily counters stored with it. We may keep the minimum needed to meet a legal, security or fraud-prevention obligation, and we will say so if that applies.
The display name and avatar URL cached in your browser are not on our servers, and they go away when you sign out or clear your browser's site data.
7. Your Choices
You may:
- Use most of HanziPress without creating an account
- Choose whether to sign in with Google
- Revoke HanziPress's access from your Google account at any time
- Clear the display name and avatar URL cached in your browser by signing out or clearing your browser's site data
- Ask us to delete your HanziPress account and the personal information stored with it, using the contact method in section 13
- Contact us with any question about your personal information
If you ask us to delete your account, we will delete or anonymise it and its saved progress. Some information may be kept where the law, security or fraud prevention requires it.
8. Children's Privacy
HanziPress provides educational tools that may be useful to children, students, parents, and teachers.
HanziPress does not knowingly collect personal information from children in violation of applicable law.
If you are a parent or guardian and believe that a child has provided personal information to HanziPress without appropriate authorization, please contact us so that we can review and take appropriate action.
9. Third-Party Services
HanziPress relies on these third parties:
- Google — Sign-In (the only way to create an account) and the host of your profile picture. See Google's privacy policy.
- Cloudflare — DNS, content delivery and the edge security layer in front of the site, which necessarily sees request metadata such as your IP address. See Cloudflare's privacy policy.
- Our VPS hosting provider — hosts the server and the MySQL database in which your account and review data are stored.
We do not share your personal information with anyone else, and we do not sell it.
10. Security
We use reasonable technical and organizational measures designed to protect information against unauthorized access, loss, misuse, or alteration.
However, no website or Internet transmission can be guaranteed to be completely secure.
11. International Users
HanziPress may be accessed by users around the world. Depending on where you are located and where our service providers operate, your information may be processed in countries other than your own.
By using HanziPress, you understand that information may be processed in jurisdictions with different data protection laws.
12. Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes to HanziPress, applicable laws, or our practices.
When we make changes, we will update the “Last updated” date at the top of this page.
13. Contact Us
For any question about this Privacy Policy or your personal information — including asking us to delete your account — email [email protected], or use the feedback form on our About page at hanzipress.com/about#feedback.
HanziPress