Privacy
An account is optional: only the word list and the lookup history need one. This page lists what leaves your browser and what is kept.
Searches
Most words are matched in your browser. For a word outside that list, the search text is sent to our server to look it up and is not stored.
Two things are counted, with the date and nothing that identifies you: the word you choose from the search list, and a search that found nothing. A search that found nothing is cut to letters, digits and Chinese characters, at most 24 of them.
Recent searches are kept in this browser only.
Visits
Page views are counted per page and per day. Playing audio, playing stroke order and practising writing are counted the same way.
To count visitors per day, your IP address and browser name are turned into a short one-way code that changes every day. The IP address itself is not stored. The country, worked out from the IP address at the time of the visit, and the device type (phone, tablet or computer) are kept with that code. This site includes GeoLite Data created by MaxMind, available from https://www.maxmind.com.
Google Analytics also counts visits and pages viewed.
Accounts
An account is created the first time you sign in with a code sent to your email, or when ChineseDict Plus is bought. It holds the email address, the word list, the lookup history and, with Plus, the purchase records (date, amount, refunds).
Deleting the account on the Account page deletes the word list, the lookup history and all sign-in sessions at once. Purchase records are kept for accounting, no longer linked to the email address.
- Email address: used to send sign-in codes and to find your account. This site sends nothing else to it; with Plus, Link sends the payment receipt.
- Word list and lookup history: kept so they show in every browser you sign in to. A free account keeps up to 20 words and the newest 10 lookups.
- Sign-in cookie (
cd_sid): keeps this browser signed in for up to 180 days after you sign in. It cannot be read by scripts and is sent only over HTTPS. Signing out removes it. - Last used: the date (not the time) your account was last used while signed in, kept to count how many accounts are active. Deleting the account removes it.
- IP address: not stored. To limit sign-in attempts it is turned into a one-way code, deleted after an hour.
- Sign-in codes: sent through an email delivery service, which receives the email address and the code. A code that is never entered creates no account and expires after 10 minutes.
- Bot check: asking for a code or sending a message passes your IP address to a bot-check service, for that one check.
- Payments: handled by Link, Stripe's payment service. Card numbers never reach this site.
- Protection: sign-in, the account and payments go over HTTPS. Sign-in codes and sessions are stored only as one-way codes (hashes).
- Deletion: the Account page deletes the account, word list, history and sessions at once.
Messages
A message sent from the contact form is stored with the page it is about, your browser language, country and device type, and your email address if you give one.
In this browser
Pronunciation settings, the light or dark theme, recent searches, and the text and the view and print settings in the Chinese Text Analyzer are stored in this browser and are not sent anywhere. Opening a less common word in the Chinese Text Analyzer sends that one word to our server to look up its meaning, the same way a search does. Pages you open are kept in the browser's cache so they open without a connection. Clearing site data in the browser removes all of it.
Browser extension
The ChineseDict extension for Chrome, Edge and Firefox looks words up in a dictionary stored inside the extension. It needs no account.
- What you read: the extension reads the text under the pointer only to look up the word. It is not collected and not sent anywhere.
- Settings: kept in your browser only (on or off, sites where it is off, activation, delay, theme, text size).
- Pronunciation: pressing a play button loads that recording from cdn.chinesedict.com. Nothing else is requested.
- Counting: the extension sends no statistics, page views or usage data.