Privacy
Words Atlas is operated by Journey Pal, a New Zealand company. This page says what the site collects, where it is kept, and who else sees it. Last updated 11 August 2026.
What you give us
Nothing, if you are only listening. You can look a word up and hear it without an account.
- If you create an account: your email address and a password. The password is stored only as a bcrypt hash, which cannot be turned back into the password you chose.
- Your preferred language, so the site comes back in it.
- If you subscribe: Stripe runs the payment on its own checkout page. Card numbers never reach our servers. We keep the Stripe customer and subscription references so we know which plan you are on.
What the site records as you use it
- Signed in, every lookup is saved. That is what gives you a history to return to.
- Each request is logged as an event: what kind it was (a lookup, a listen, a translation, a pronunciation score), which entry it related to, whether it went to a paid API, how many characters were involved, and when it happened.
- Signed out, those events are attached to a random identifier your browser generates and keeps locally. It is not linked to you, and its only job is to stop one visitor using up the free allowance.
- We do not store IP addresses against those events.
Speaking practice
When you record yourself, the audio goes to Microsoft Azure Speech, which scores it and returns the score. An ordinary practice recording is not retained. It is not written to storage and no copy remains once the request finishes.
Recruitment speaking assessments
A recruiting organisation can send you a unique assessment link without asking you to create an account. The organisation supplies an internal candidate reference. Before starting, you are told that submitted spoken answers will be retained and must consent to that use. Those recordings, your scores, the text recognised by the scoring provider, and your progress are available only to owners and administrators of that organisation. Recordings are kept for the period shown in the assessment, 90 days by default, so an interviewer can listen to the voice that completed it. This includes submitted answers whether or not they received a passing score.
Cookies
There are none. Words Atlas sets no cookies at all, for analytics, advertising or anything else. Your sign-in token and the anonymous identifier are held in your browser’s local storage, which stays on your device and is sent only to us.
Who else handles your data
- OpenAI, for translation. It receives the text you submit.
- ElevenLabs, for speech. It receives the text you want spoken.
- Microsoft Azure Speech, for pronunciation scoring, as described above.
- Stripe, for payments.
- Resend, for verification and account emails. It receives your email address.
- Google Cloud, for hosting, the database, and storage of generated audio.
- Cloudflare, which traffic to the site passes through.
We do not sell your data, pass it to advertisers, or use it to train models of our own.
Where it is kept
On Google Cloud servers in Frankfurt, Germany. The company that operates the site is in New Zealand and can reach the data from there. The processors listed above run in their own regions under their own terms.
How long it is kept
- Account details and lookup history: until you ask us to delete them.
- Usage events: kept while they are useful for understanding demand and cost. We may introduce a retention limit and prune older ones.
- Ordinary speaking-practice recordings: not kept at all.
- Recruitment assessment recordings: 90 days by default.
Your rights
You can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, or object to how we are using it. Write to [email protected] and we will act on it.
There is no delete-my-account button on the site yet. Until there is, deletion is by email and we do it by hand, which means it may take a few days rather than being instant. Ask and it will be done.
Changes
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. Questions about any of it go to [email protected].