Privacy policy

Draft: not yet approved. This page is being reviewed and may change before Kampass is released.

Last updated: draft of 20 October 2026

Kampass helps international students in China understand Chinese notices. This page explains, in plain English, what happens to your information when you use the Kampass app or website.

The short version

• Screenshots and notice text you send are used only to answer you. Our server never stores them or writes them to a log. The AI that reads them is run by Alibaba Cloud, under its own terms (below).
• What you save (notices, your calendar, reminders, Study progress, phrases, your profile) stays on your device.
• Our server keeps only anonymous usage counts, the “Was this right?” answers you choose to send, and, if you use them, your account and what you post in Community (which is public, under a display name you choose).
• An account is optional. Kampass works fully without one. If you make one, we keep your email address and two dates, and, if you post in Community, the display name and colour you choose.
• No ads. We never sell or share your data.

What you send to be decoded or translated

When you decode a notice, translate your screen with the 译 bubble, ask a follow-up question, use the phrasebook or import your timetable from a screenshot, your screenshot or text goes over an encrypted (https) connection to our server in Hong Kong (hosted on Alibaba Cloud), at kampass.app. Our server passes it to Alibaba Cloud Model Studio (its international service, Singapore region), whose AI models read it and write the answer. The answer comes back to you.

Our server handles all of this in memory only. It never stores your screenshot, notice text, question or answer, and never writes them to a log. With a follow-up question, the app sends the decoded notice again with your question, because our server doesn't remember it.

Alibaba Cloud processes this content under its terms as our AI provider. Its published terms and documentation say, as of October 2026:

• It will not use the content to develop or improve its models unless we separately agree to that. We haven’t.
• Request data is stored in the region we use (Singapore), and Model Studio stores data generated by model calls to comply with laws and regulations. They don’t say for how long.
• Content may be transferred to and processed in countries where Alibaba Cloud, its affiliates or its sub-contractors run facilities for Model Studio.
• Data is encrypted while it is sent.

Read them yourself: Model Studio security and privacy, Model Studio regions and data storage, Product Terms of Service (section 4.48, Model Studio) and the Alibaba Cloud International privacy policy. Anything they don’t state is handled by Alibaba Cloud under its terms.

We send Alibaba Cloud only the content needed for the answer, never your name, our random device ID or anything else that identifies you. A screenshot can show other things that are on your screen, such as names in a chat: crop it, or paste only the text, if you’d rather not send them.

The 译 bubble captures your screen only when you tap 译, and Android asks your permission every time. It takes one picture, and that picture is never saved on your phone or on our server.

Your account (optional)

You can use every part of Kampass without an account. If you choose to sign in (Settings > Account), this is what happens:

• How you sign in: you type your email address and we email you a 6-digit code, valid for 10 minutes. There is no password. We keep the code only as a scrambled (hashed) value, for those 10 minutes, and it works once. After 5 wrong tries it stops working. We limit how many codes can be asked for per email address and per device.
• What we keep: your email address, the date you made the account, the date you last signed in, and a plan field (everyone is “free”; it is only there for a possible paid version in the future, and no payments exist). If you use Community, also what is described under Community below (your display name and colour, what you post, and your votes). Nothing else about you. Your saved notices, calendar, Study progress, phrases and profile are not uploaded; they stay on your device.
• Who sends the email: the code email goes through Alibaba Cloud DirectMail, so Alibaba Cloud handles your email address for that, under its terms. We suggest an email address you can open in China (QQ, 163 or Outlook), because Gmail needs a VPN there.
• Staying signed in: on the website, a secure cookie that scripts on the page can’t read. In the Android app, a sign-in key kept in the phone’s encrypted storage, which the 译 bubble also uses. A sign-in lasts 90 days, or until you sign out.
• Usage counts and daily limits are counted per account while you are signed in, otherwise per device, in the same anonymous way as above: only a scrambled ID for the current day, never your email address.
• Deleting it: Settings > Account > “Delete my account”, or without the app on the page Delete your account. Your email address and sign-ins are removed at once, and in Community what is described under “How to delete your data” below. You can also sign out on this device, or on all devices.

What stays on your device

These are kept only in the app’s own storage on your phone (or, on the website, in your browser), and are never sent to our server:

• Saved notices, including an optional screenshot if you choose to keep one. Saved notices you haven’t marked “Keep” delete themselves 30 days after their deadline (or 90 days after saving if there is no deadline).
• Your calendar: each item's type, title, date or weekly day and teaching weeks, times or class periods, place, notes, reminder choice and repeat rule (and which days you ticked off or removed), the link to a saved notice it came from or the repeat a changed day came from, and your calendar settings (view, whether classes show, your semester's first week and length, and your class times: the start and end of each class period, with winter times if you set them).
• Reminders (Android app only). They are set on your phone and work without internet: for each reminder of the next 30 days, its time, the item’s title, one short line (the day, time and place) and which item it opens; and for saved notices not in your calendar, their deadline. Notifications on the lock screen don’t show what the reminder is about.
• Study progress: your words, when to review them, your level and your streak.
• Saved phrases.
• Your profile: the university you chose (if you post in Community, it is shown on your comments, and on a post if you leave it in the post form), the dates your residence permit, passport and health insurance expire (if you add them in My papers; they also become reminders in your calendar), and Nuzzel the study dog: how many bones he has earned, the days he earned and ate the last one, what he is wearing, and whether Quiet Nuzzel is on.
• Settings, such as your explanation language.
• A copy of the app’s own files, of the public holiday schedule (China’s official public holidays and make-up workdays) and of any class-time presets for universities, so the app opens and your calendar shows holidays without internet. Asking for them sends nothing about you.

Study’s Listen button uses your phone’s built-in text-to-speech voice, so we never receive the words. Some phones may process the text through the phone maker’s own speech service. A backup file you export is yours: it goes only where you send it.

What our server stores

• “Was this right?” answers: if you choose to send one, we store the time, what it was about (decode or translation), yes or no, and your optional note (up to 500 characters). Please don’t put personal details in the note. We don’t store your IP address or any ID with it.
• Anonymous usage counts: how many times per day features were used (for example decodes, screen translations, follow-up questions, timetable imports, Study sessions, reminders set, and which explanation languages are used), and how many devices used Kampass that day. To count devices and apply fair daily limits, the app creates a random ID on your device when it is first opened. It isn’t linked to your name, phone number, account, phone hardware or IP address. Our server keeps the ID only for the current day; after that only the daily totals remain. Daily totals are deleted after 12 months. “Delete all my data” keeps the random ID, so daily limits still apply; clearing the app’s data (or this site’s data) replaces it with a new one. Counts never include your screenshots, notice text, questions or answers.
• Daily credits: with the same scrambled ID, for the current day only, the server keeps how many credits you have used today and whether today’s free notice decode is used. These are numbers only, and they are deleted at midnight China time with the rest of the day’s per-device counts. The daily totals keep only how many credits were used for each feature, how many devices ran out, and the estimated AI cost of each feature.
• Community (only if you post, with an account): what you post there is public: anyone can read it, in the app or on the website, without signing in. We store each post’s title, text, topic, the university and month you add, when it was posted or edited, your comments (with the university from your Profile, if you set one), the display name and colour you choose, and which posts and comments you voted on, marked “still true” or reported (with the reason you picked). These are kept with your account so you can edit and delete what you wrote; your email address isn’t stored with them and is never shown to anyone. A new account’s first two posts or comments are read by the Kampass team before they appear. Posts and comments are kept until you or the team delete them; if you delete your account they stay without your name (see below), and your votes still count but can no longer be linked to you. Our server keeps one backup copy of the Community data, replaced each day and straight after anything is deleted, so what you delete doesn’t stay in it. We also keep the text of searches that found nothing, with how often they were made, but not who made them, so the team knows what to write about. If the team stops an account from posting (for spam or breaking the rules), that is noted with the account, with a short reason only the team can see; it is deleted with the account.

Like every website, our server sees your device’s IP address while it answers you. It keeps it in memory for about a minute to stop abuse (too many requests at once), and never writes it to disk or a log.

Scholarship posts are public content we publish, and Community posts are public content written by students and the Kampass team. Reading either doesn’t send us anything about you (apart from the search words described above, when a Community search finds nothing).

What we don’t do

• We never require an account or a sign-in.
• No ads, no advertising IDs, no tracking across apps or websites.
• No analytics companies, no Google services, no third-party scripts. Fonts and all other files come from our own server.
• We never sell, rent or share your information.

How to delete your data

• One saved notice: open it and delete it (you can undo).
• All saved notices: Profile > Saved notices > “Delete all saved notices”.
• All your data: Settings > “Delete all my data” deletes your saved notices, calendar items, reminders, Study progress, saved phrases and your profile from this device, after asking you to confirm. Your explanation language stays. (In the Android app it is also in the app’s own Settings screen.)
• Your account: Settings > Account > “Delete my account”, or the web page Delete your account. This removes your email address and every sign-in from our server. It doesn’t remove what is saved on your devices: use “Delete all my data” for that. In Community, your display name and colour and any posts or comments still waiting for approval are deleted. Your published posts and comments stay, without your name: they show “Student” as the author, with nothing that links them to you. Delete them first if you want them gone.
• A Community post or comment: open it and choose Delete (you can also edit it). A post that already has comments is replaced by “[deleted]” so the answers below it stay; one without comments is removed completely. Or write to us and the team removes it.
• Everything, including settings: in the Android app, phone Settings > Apps > Kampass > Storage > Clear data, or uninstall the app; on the website, clear this site’s data in your browser settings.

“Was this right?” answers and usage counts can’t be linked back to you (not even to your account), so we can’t find or delete one person’s. If you sent a note you’d like removed, write to us with roughly when you sent it and what it said.

Permissions the Android app asks for

• Display over other apps: to show the 译 bubble and the translation.
• Screen capture: asked every time you tap 译, for one picture.
• Notifications: for the bubble and for reminders.
• Run after restart and battery settings: so reminders and the bubble keep working.

Changes

If we change how Kampass handles information, we’ll update this page and the date at the top before the change takes effect.

Contact

Questions or requests: [contact email]

See also the terms and disclaimer and credits and licenses.