Privacy Policy — Verbigem

mini.verbigem.com

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Last updated: September 28, 2026

Verbigem is a translator that runs an artificial-intelligence model directly on your phone. This policy explains in plain language what stays on your device, what we store in the cloud, and what we never collect.

1. Who we are and who is responsible for your data

Verbigem (“we”, “us”) is the developer of the Verbigem Android application and of the mini.verbigem.com website. For anything concerning this policy or your data, write to us at [email protected].

2. Data processed on your device by default

In the default, free mode, this data does not leave your phone on its own:

• the text you type or speak into the translator, and its translation,
• text recognised from photos (OCR),
• voice recordings and speech recognition results,
• text read aloud by the built-in speech synthesiser.
• The exceptions are the online features described in the next section — until you turn them on, nothing leaves your device.

You download the translation model (Hy-MT2, in GGUF format) once, from Hugging Face, and store it on your device. From then on translation works with no internet connection.

If you have an account, you can turn on synchronisation of your translation history and OCR history so that they are available on your other devices too (the newer version wins). Synchronisation is off by default — until you turn it on with the switch in Profile, the history stays only on this device and does not go to the cloud. What exactly goes to the cloud once it is on is described in the section Data stored in the cloud. You can delete entries, and the deletion propagates to your other devices.

3. Online features (online translator, “Read Aloud Pro”, “Photo Translate Pro”)

Besides the free on-device mode, Verbigem offers online features: the online translator and two Pro features. You can use the online translator in a free variant — with your own OpenRouter key — or in a paid variant that uses Verbigem's models and is billed from the API wallet. The Pro features are paid. All of them need an internet connection. Without them, nothing leaves your device.

• The online translator sends the text over the internet to OpenRouter (openrouter.ai) and to the provider of the chosen model to translate it. In the free variant you use your own OpenRouter key and it costs us nothing; in the paid variant the translation is done by Verbigem's models and is billed from the API wallet.
• “Read Aloud Pro” sends the translated text over the internet to OpenRouter (openrouter.ai) and to the speech-model provider (Google) to generate the audio.
• “Photo Translate Pro” sends your photo over the internet to OpenRouter and to the OCR provider (the Qwen model by Alibaba, served through OpenRouter by one of these hosts: Alibaba, DeepInfra, Novita, SiliconFlow) to read the text from it.
• The data goes to those providers only to generate the result. It is not used to train AI models and it is not sold.
• You can simply not use these features — then nothing leaves your device.

4. Data stored in the cloud

When you create an account, we store:

• your account identifier and sign-in method (e-mail address or Google account),
• your nickname, interface language and default language pair,
• your Pro status and wallet credits, if you use paid features,
• your translation history and OCR history — only if you turn synchronisation on yourself in Profile,
• the chat messages you send, together with metadata (time, language, sender, read status),
• your list of contacts inside Verbigem and pending invitations,
• notification tokens, so that we can deliver push notifications.

For storage we use Google Firebase (Authentication, Firestore, Cloud Storage, Cloud Messaging, Hosting) in Google data centres.

5. Chat messages

To deliver a message to another person it has to pass through our server. That is why the content is always end-to-end encrypted (see the section below): the server stores and forwards only the ciphertext, and only the sender and the recipient can read the content.

• the ciphertext of the content and the language it was written in,
• the translation, computed on the recipient’s device — it never travels inside the message,
• attachments (photos, voice notes) if you send them — encrypted when encryption is on,
• technical metadata: sender, time and read status (always visible).

The connection is encrypted (TLS). We do not read the content for advertising, we do not train AI models on it, and we do not share it with third parties. You can delete any message on your side at any time.

6. End-to-end encryption in chat

Encryption is always on, and the private key is created on the device you first sign in from. We keep no copy of it — we have nothing to read your chat history with, even if someone asked us to. You can save a copy to your own Google account (an option in the app), and add a second device with a QR code.

• Protected: message content, translation and attachments.
• Not protected: who talked to whom, when, and how much (metadata stays visible, as in Telegram and WhatsApp).
• We do not verify your contact’s identity — if the server swaps their key on first contact, we cannot detect it (as in WhatsApp: we warn when the key changes later).
• You can add a second device with a QR code — then it reads the whole history. Without that, the history stays unreadable on a new phone.
• Losing the device that holds the key means losing the history, unless you saved a copy to your own Google account. There is no “reset”: a new key is a new identity, and old messages stay unreadable for good.

7. Phone numbers and contacts

Importing contacts is optional. If you give your consent:

• the app reads your phone's contact list on the device, to show you which of your acquaintances already use Verbigem,
• for matching, the device sends only SHA-256 hashes of phone numbers in E.164 format, and our server adds HMAC-SHA256 with a key that never leaves it,
• we never receive, store or see phone numbers, names, or the rest of your address book,
• only a hash remains in the directory, and a phone number cannot be reconstructed from it,
• contacts of people who do not have Verbigem stay on your device only.

You can withdraw your consent at any time in Android settings. Contact matching then stops working, while the rest of the app keeps working.

8. App permissions

• Internet — downloading models, chat, updates and optional history synchronisation.
• Camera — photos for OCR. By default they are processed on the device and are not uploaded, unless you send them in a chat yourself or use the paid “Photo Translate Pro” feature.
• Microphone — speech recognition and voice notes.
• Notifications — telling you about new chat messages.
• Contacts (optional) — finding friends; see the section on phone numbers.
• Install unknown apps — installing an update downloaded from our website, only when the app does not come from Google Play.

Android asks for each permission at the moment it is needed, and you can revoke any of them in system settings.

9. Third parties

The free version shows Google ads. Google and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to tailor ads to your interests — you can turn this off in the privacy settings inside the app or at google.com/settings/ads. What you translate never reaches the ad network: translation happens on your device. We do not sell or rent your personal data. Accounts with the “Remove ads” package do not see ads.

10. How long we keep data

• translation and OCR history — up to 200 most recent entries on each device; the copy in your account only with synchronisation on, until you delete it,
• chat messages — until you or the recipient delete them, or until you ask us to delete your account,
• account data — until you delete your account,
• server backups — deleted data disappears from them within 30 days,
• notification tokens — until you sign out or the token expires.

11. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you can:

• get a copy of the data linked to your account,
• correct it — most of it you edit directly in the app,
• delete your account and data — write to [email protected],
• withdraw consent (Android settings) or turn notifications off,
• object to processing and lodge a complaint with a data protection authority (in the EU/EEA — with the supervisory authority in your country).

We respond to requests within 30 days.

12. Security

• all network traffic is encrypted with TLS,
• access to cloud data is restricted by Firebase security rules — you can read and write only your own documents,
• calls to our server-side functions are protected by Firebase App Check (Play Integrity), which blocks requests from unauthorised apps,
• data stored on the device is protected by the Android app sandbox.

13. Children

Verbigem is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect data from such children. In the EEA the app is intended for people aged 16 and over. If you believe a child has given us their data, write to [email protected] and we will delete it.

14. Changes to this policy

If we make a material change to the policy, we will update the date at the top of the page and inform you in the app. Previous versions are available on request.

15. Contact

Privacy matters: [email protected]. We reply within 30 days.