Privacy Policy

Mandarin Steps is built to be used without giving up any personal information. We do not run accounts, we do not ask for your email, and we do not set tracking cookies. This policy describes exactly what happens to data when you use the site, and it only describes things we actually do.

Who we are

Mandarin Steps is an independent study resource operated by Urban Algorithm LLC. We are the publisher and the data controller for this site. You can reach us through the Urban Algorithm contact page.

What we do not collect

We want to be plain about this because most privacy policies bury it. On Mandarin Steps there are:

• No user accounts, logins, or profiles.
• No email sign-up, newsletter, or contact form that stores your address.
• No advertising cookies, tracking pixels, or third-party ad networks.
• No sale or sharing of personal information, because we do not hold any.

Analytics and anonymous aggregate statistics

We measure aggregate traffic with Umami, a privacy-focused analytics tool we host ourselves at umami-analytics-puce.vercel.app. It is cookieless and collects anonymized data only: it does not set cookies, does not fingerprint you, and does not build a cross-site profile.

Alongside page views, we record anonymous aggregate statistics about how the tools are used, for example the distribution of estimated HSK levels the placement check returns, how much vocabulary learners already recognize, and, when you finish a word-list self-test, which HSK level you drilled and a coarse band of how many of that deck you already knew. Everything sent is banded or bucketed, an estimated-level band rather than your exact answers, and carries no account and no identifier, so a single visit can never be traced back to you. We use it to see what is working and, over time, to publish plain aggregate study benchmarks, never to identify individual visitors. No analytics data is sold or handed to an advertising network.

Your placement and drill progress stays on your device

When you take the placement check or work through a vocabulary list, your answers, results, and settings stay in your browser's own localStorage. That full record stays on your device: we never receive it, there is no account to delete, and there is no server-side copy of your progress. The words you mark as known while self-testing a level are likewise kept only in this browser's localStorage. When the placement check or a word-list self-test finishes, we do receive the anonymous aggregate summary described above (a banded estimated level, or the drilled level plus a coarse know-rate band, and never an identifier or the words themselves). Clearing your browser storage erases the on-device record.

Links to our app

We publish Mandarin Steps and also make Wordbrush, an iOS vocabulary app, and we disclose that relationship openly. Links to Wordbrush point to the Apple App Store, which applies its own privacy policy that we do not control. These are ordinary outbound links; we do not pass any personal information to Apple or embed tracking in them, and the free tools on this site work whether or not you ever install anything.

Third-party hosting

Like any website, our host and content-delivery network process the standard server request data (such as your IP address) needed to deliver the page to you. This is ordinary web infrastructure, is not used by us to profile you, and is not combined with any other data about you.

Children

We do not knowingly collect information from children, and in fact we do not collect personal information from anyone.

Changes to this policy

If our data practices change, we will update this page and move the effective date above. Because we start from collecting no personal data, any change would only ever be described here in the same plain terms.

Contact

Questions about privacy? Reach the publisher through the Urban Algorithm contact page. Mandarin Steps is a project of Urban Algorithm LLC.