Privacy and data handling

High-level guidance on what you should assume about story text, uploads, and usage information.

For the full legal privacy policy (including the Chrome extension), see Privacy Policy.

Your stories

Imported story content is treated as your private data. Valo Reader stores it in your personal library and processes it for the features you use, such as tokenization, dictionary lookups, audio alignment, quiz generation, and stats tracking. Some features send the text or media needed for the request to a configured third-party provider. Your content is not shared with other users by default.

Treat imported content as you would any personal document. Avoid exporting or sharing story text if you do not have permission to redistribute it. The shared library stories are curated and licensed for use within the app, but your personal imports are your responsibility.

How data is used

The data Valo Reader processes falls into these categories:

  • Story content (text, audio, video references) — used to power your reading session and study features. App usage measurements are designed not to include full story text, but external providers may process content when you use their feature.
  • Study activity (words read, time spent, quiz answers, familiarity levels) — used to generate your stats dashboard and personalize your experience. Summary information may be used to improve the product.
  • Account information (language preferences, settings, streak state) — used to maintain your session continuity across devices.

Usage information

When usage information is collected, the system is designed to use summary information rather than raw story text. This means:

  • Events may record that a story was opened, how long it was read, and what features were used
  • Events are not designed to include the text content of the story
  • If you file a bug, reproducing with minimal excerpts is appreciated

AI features and data

AI-assisted features, including translations, grammar breakdowns, and some definitions or quiz content, send the current sentence or selected content to an AI provider. These requests are:

  • Scoped to the sentence or selection needed for the feature, not your entire library
  • Dependent on the AI provider configured for your instance
  • Subject to that provider's own retention and data-use policies; do not assume every provider has the same storage or training policy

If your story content is highly sensitive, be aware that using AI features involves sending sentence text to an external service.

Speech-to-text is a paid feature for audio and video imports. When you use it, the uploaded media is sent to the configured speech-to-text provider to create subtitles and story text. Speech-to-text supports media up to 60 minutes per import.