Arirang Talk Privacy Policy (English)

Last updated 2026-09-21 (overseas transfer notice added; notification delivery description corrected; 2026-09-20: open chat and room cover photos added, AI provider notice corrected; first published 2026-09-05). This is a demo-stage draft; legal review is required before launch. Signing up requires agreeing to the Terms of Service and this policy.

What we collect

• Username and password (password stored only as a scrypt hash).
• E-mail for account recovery and, optionally, a phone number — both stored encrypted (AES-256-GCM) with a keyed lookup hash.
• Contacts you choose to add (names and numbers, encrypted); numbers are matched to registered users by hash only.
• Profile (name, photo, ID, language) shown to other users; messages stored on the server (no end-to-end encryption, because translation happens server-side).
• Photos you send in a chat: resized on your device and stored on the server; only members of that chat can view them, and they are deleted automatically after 7 days (or immediately when the chat is deleted).
• Source text, translations and feedback of server-side translation requests (not collected with on-device translation): used to improve translation quality — building and reviewing the phrase dictionary, domain glossaries and the translation cache — as agreed in the Terms of Service; personally identifying information is minimised.
• Marketplace posts (title, price, description, meeting area, photos): shown to every signed-in member; deleted with their photos when you remove the post.
• Open chat: the nickname and picture you choose per room (shown only inside that room; your real name and ID stay hidden from other participants; deleted when you delete your account, after which your earlier lines read "Deleted user"); room details a host sets (name, description, rules, category, region, language), visible to anyone who can search or open the room; an optional entry password, stored only as a scrypt hash.
• Room cover photo (optional, uploaded by a room host): cropped to 4:5 and shrunk on your device, then stripped of location and other embedded metadata (EXIF) on the server before it is stored. It is visible to everyone, including people who are not signed in (search list, room preview and shared-link preview). Every upload passes an automated check for inappropriate images (see Third parties); an upload that is never attached to a room is deleted after about an hour. Replacing or removing the photo deletes the old file; a photo taken down after a report is quarantined for moderator review for at most 30 days and then deleted; it is also deleted when the host deletes their account.
• Reports you submit (visible to moderators only). IP addresses are used in memory for abuse rate limiting and are not stored.

How we use it

Accounts and recovery, finding friends by phone hash, 1:1 and group chat, translating messages into your language (server engine or on-device), running open chat (room search and cover display), checking cover photos and handling reports, preventing spam, and improving translation quality.

Deletion

Deleting your account removes your account data, contacts and friendships immediately; messages you sent remain attributed to "Deleted user". Your per-room nicknames and pictures in open chats, and cover photos you uploaded to rooms you host, are deleted too, and each such room passes to its longest-standing remaining member.

Third parties

Message text may be sent to an AI translation engine for translation and quality checks. We currently use OpenAI's services; depending on operations we may switch to, or also use, other AI providers such as Google (Gemini) or Anthropic (Claude). On-device translation never leaves your device. When you upload a room cover photo, that one photo (with location and other embedded metadata already removed) is sent to OpenAI's content moderation service to check whether it is inappropriate; if it does not pass, or the check cannot be run, the photo is not accepted. If you enable notifications, an encrypted alert (sender name and the start of the message) is delivered through your browser's push service (Google, Apple, Mozilla, Microsoft) or, in the iPhone app, Apple Push Notification service (that alert passes through Apple's servers); the device's push subscription or APNs token is stored on the server and deleted when you turn notifications off, log out, or delete your account. No other sharing (server hosting and the overseas recipients are listed under "Overseas transfers" below).

Overseas transfers (entrusted processing and storage)

The service runs on the overseas servers and services below, so your personal data is transferred to and stored outside Korea while you use it. If you do not want this, do not sign up, or delete your account (More → Delete account); the servers and translation run abroad, so the service cannot be provided without these transfers. On devices that support on-device translation you can use it so that message text is not sent to an AI provider (server storage is unchanged).

• Oracle Corporation (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) - Japan (Tokyo) - server hosting: everything the service processes (account and profile, encrypted phone/email/contacts, messages, photos, friend/block/report records) is sent over TLS and stored there while you use the service, for the periods described under "Deletion" above. Contact: oracle.com/legal/privacy
• OpenAI, L.L.C. - United States - message translation and verification, name transliteration, cover photo checks: each time a translation is requested, the message text (and its translation), a name to be transliterated, or one room cover photo (location and other embedded metadata removed) is sent over TLS. Retention by the recipient follows OpenAI's policy: openai.com/policies/privacy-policy
• Google LLC - United States - backup translation engine (only when used): message text to be translated may be sent for the same purposes. Policy: policies.google.com/privacy
• Push notification providers (Apple Inc., Google LLC, Mozilla Corporation, Microsoft Corporation) - United States and elsewhere - delivering new-message alerts: the push subscription (token) of a device with notifications on and the alert content (sender name and the start of the message) are sent each time an alert is delivered. Web push alerts are encrypted so the provider cannot read them; iPhone app alerts pass through Apple's servers. Retention follows each provider's policy.

Transfers happen whenever the functions above run while you use the service; if recipients, data items or purposes change, we will update this policy.