TastePad privacy policy

This policy explains what information the TastePad iOS app (“TastePad”, “the app”) collects, why, who it is shared with, and what you can do about it. It is written to be read, not skimmed past. If anything is unclear, contact us using the details in section 16.

TastePad is made by Nils Anton Viktor Larsson, Malmö, Sweden (“we”, “us”). We are the data controller for the personal data described here.

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1. What TastePad does

TastePad lets you save recipes, plan meals, keep a shopping list and a pantry list, and rate the meals you cook on taste, texture and feeling. You can use it alone or share a “kitchen” (household) with other people, who then see and edit the same recipes, plans and lists, and see each other’s ratings and notes.

To make this work across devices and between people, your content is stored on our servers, not only on your phone. You need an account to use the app.

2. Information we collect

2.1 Account information

When you sign in, we receive and store:

Sign-in method	What we receive
Sign in with Apple	A user identifier from Apple, your email address (or an Apple “Hide My Email” relay address if you choose it), and your name if you choose to share it the first time you sign in.
Sign in with Google	A user identifier from Google, your email address, your name and, where your Google account has one, a link to your Google profile picture.
Email sign-in link / code	Your email address.

We use this to create and secure your account. We do not receive your Apple or Google password.

2.2 Profile

• Display name – taken from your sign-in provider and editable in the app.
• Avatar emoji – an emoji you pick to represent you.
• Email address – shown to you in Settings. You can change it; we send confirmation links to both the old and the new address.
• Whether you have finished the first-run introduction.

2.3 Content you create

Everything you add to the app is stored on our servers so it is available on your devices and to the members of your kitchen:

• Recipes: title, description, ingredients, steps, servings, time, difficulty, courses, tags, and the web address a recipe was imported from.
• Photos of dishes that you take with the camera or choose from your photo library.
• Meals and ratings: the dates you cooked a dish, your taste/texture/feeling scores, and any notes you write (optionally linked to a recipe step).
• Meal plans, shopping list items and pantry items.
• Kitchens (households): the kitchen’s name, its members and their roles, invite codes, and your sharing choices for plans and shopping lists.

Please don’t put sensitive personal information (for example about health) in recipe text or notes. Anything you write in a shared kitchen is visible to its other members.

Photo location is removed. Photos are resized and compressed on your device, and any location (GPS) information embedded in the image is removed on your device before upload. Other technical image information, such as orientation and the date taken, is kept.

2.4 Notification settings and device token

• Your notification preferences (which reminders and alerts you want, and at what time).
• If you allow notifications, an Apple push notification token for each device, and whether it is a test or production device. This lets us send alerts such as “Sara rated your Lasagna” or “Cleo joined your kitchen”. Tokens are deleted when you sign out on that device or when Apple reports them as no longer valid.

2.5 Reports

If you report a photo or a person, we store your report (the reason, any details you write, the reported photo or person, and who made it) and email it to our moderator.

2.6 Usage analytics

If you agree, we use PostHog to understand how the app is used, so we can fix problems and improve features. We ask during setup (or once, if you joined before we asked), and nothing is sent unless you say yes.

With your consent the app sends:

• events such as which screens are opened, how long you stay and which features are used (for example “recipe imported” or “meal rated”), including the scores you give a meal;
• counts and categories, never content: how many recipes you have and how many are rated, how a recipe was added (written, pasted link or shared from another app) and the website it came from, how many people are in your kitchen and whether you are its head chef or sous chef;
• basic device and app information: device model, iOS version, app version, language, your text size, appearance and unit settings, and a random identifier generated by the app;
• your country, which PostHog works out from your IP address before discarding the address;
• crash and error reports, so we can fix them;
• your answer, if you choose to answer an occasional in-app question about the app.

Analytics events do not include your name, email address, recipe text, notes or photos, and they are not linked to your TastePad account. PostHog is set up so it does not store your IP address, and the data is hosted in the EU. We don’t use analytics for advertising or to track you across other apps.

You can turn analytics off at any time in Settings → Share usage data. Turning it off stops sending and replaces the random identifier, so earlier events can no longer be tied to your phone.

2.7 Technical information

Like any internet service, our hosting provider (Supabase, see section 5) processes technical data needed to run and secure the service, such as IP addresses, request logs and authentication events. We don’t use this data to profile you. We don’t use advertising tools.

We also store when you last opened the app, with your account. We use it only to count how many accounts are active, as totals, and never to look at what one person does. Other kitchen members can’t see it.

2.8 Information stored only on your device

Some things never leave your phone: your appearance and unit preferences, the “keep screen on” setting, cook-along timers and progress, and the scheduling of local reminders (such as “How was it?” after you cook). Your sign-in session is also stored on the device, as is your answer to “Share usage data?”.

3. Information we do not collect

TastePad does not:

• include advertising or attribution SDKs (crash reports are only sent as part of usage analytics, if you agree to them);
• track you across other companies’ apps or websites, or use the Apple advertising identifier;
• access your location, contacts, microphone, calendar or health data;
• sell your personal data;
• use AI or machine-learning services on your recipes, ratings or notes.

Photos you upload are automatically checked for inappropriate content (see section 6).

4. How we use your information

Purpose	Information used	Legal basis (GDPR)
Provide the app: your account, recipes, photos, ratings, plans and lists, and syncing them across your devices	Account, profile, content	Performance of our contract with you (Art. 6(1)(b))
Share your content with the kitchens you belong to	Profile, content	Contract (Art. 6(1)(b))
Send notifications you have turned on	Device token, notification settings, names and dish titles needed for the message	Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)); iOS also asks for your permission
Send account emails: sign-in links and codes, email-change confirmations, a one-time welcome email shortly after you sign up, and a receipt when you delete your account	Email address, name	Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)); for the welcome email, our legitimate interest in helping you get started (Art. 6(1)(f))
Keep the community safe: check uploaded photos for inappropriate content, handle reports, enforce upload limits	Photos, reports, account identifier	Legitimate interest in a safe service and compliance with App Store rules (Art. 6(1)(f))
Understand how the app is used and improve it	Usage analytics (section 2.6)	Your consent, which you can withdraw in Settings (Art. 6(1)(a))
Count how the service is used, as totals only (number of accounts, active accounts, recipes, kitchens, how recipes were added)	Data we already store to run the app, and when you last opened it	Legitimate interest in understanding and improving the service (Art. 6(1)(f)); never used to study one person
Keep the service secure and working	Technical logs	Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f))

We do not use your data for advertising, and we don’t make decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects based solely on automated processing.

5. Third-party services

We use these providers to run TastePad. Each processes data on our behalf, only as needed for the service it provides, under a data processing agreement.

Provider	What it does	Where	Data involved
Supabase	Database, file storage, sign-in and server functions	EU: AWS eu-north-1 (Stockholm, Sweden)	All account data and content in section 2, technical logs
Brevo (Sendinblue SAS, France)	Sends our emails: sign-in links and codes, email-change confirmations, the welcome email, the account-deletion receipt and moderation reports	EU	Email address, name, email content; for reports, the reporter’s and reported person’s name, email and a link to the reported photo
Sightengine (France)	Automated check of uploaded photos for nudity, violence and offensive symbols	EU	The uploaded photo
PostHog	Usage analytics	EU: Frankfurt, Germany	Analytics events in section 2.6
Apple	Sign in with Apple; push notifications (Apple Push Notification service)	Global	Sign-in identifiers; device token and notification text
Google	Sign in with Google	Global	Sign-in identifiers, email, name, profile picture link

Apple and Google also act as independent controllers for your Apple ID and Google account. Their own privacy policies apply to those accounts.

Importing recipes from a link. When you import a recipe from a web page or video link (or share a link to TastePad), your phone downloads that page, and its photo, directly from the site you chose. That site receives the usual information any web request includes, such as your IP address. Its own privacy policy applies. We don’t send the link to any other service.

Opening links. When you open a recipe’s source link, our website or the App Store from the app, that site’s own privacy policy applies.

6. Automated photo checks

Each photo uploaded to TastePad is sent automatically to Sightengine to check for sexual content, gore and hateful or offensive symbols. If a photo scores above our threshold, it is removed automatically, and we keep a short record of the removal (file path, uploader’s account identifier, reason and scores; see section 9). No other decision is made about you based on this check. If you think a photo was removed by mistake, contact us.

7. Who can see your information

• Members of your kitchen can see your display name, avatar emoji, the recipes and photos in that kitchen, the meals logged, your ratings and notes, and (depending on the kitchen’s sharing settings) plans and shopping lists. They do not see your email address.
• People you send an invite code to can join your kitchen with it. You can make a new code at any time.
• Our moderator sees reports you make or that are made about you, including the names and email addresses involved.
• Service providers listed in section 5, to the extent needed.
• Authorities, if we are legally required to disclose information.

We do not sell or rent your personal data, and we don’t share it with advertisers or data brokers.

8. Data storage and security

Your account data and content are stored with Supabase in the EU (Stockholm). The app talks to our servers over encrypted (HTTPS) connections. Access to data is controlled by database rules, so you can only read content from kitchens you are a member of. Photos are stored privately and are shown through short-lived links. On your phone, your sign-in session is kept by the app.

No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and to limit who can access it.

9. Data retention

• While your account exists, we keep your account and content so the app works.
• When you delete your account (Settings → You → Delete account):
  • your account, profile, ratings and notes, notification settings and device tokens are deleted;
  • kitchens where you are the only member are deleted, with all their recipes, photos, meals, plans, shopping and pantry items;
  • photos you uploaded to kitchens you share with others are deleted;
  • recipes, meals, plans and list items you added to a shared kitchen stay with the other members, no longer linked to you;
  • your account identifier is removed from any photo moderation records;
  • we send a receipt to your email address.
• When you leave a kitchen, you can choose to take copies of the recipes you added there with you. The originals stay with the remaining members.
• Reports: reports you made are deleted with your account. Reports made about you are kept, without the link to your account, until they are handled, and are deleted 12 months after they were made once handled.
• Photo moderation records are deleted after 12 months.
• Notification and welcome-email queues on our servers are deleted after 30 days.
• Usage analytics are kept by PostHog for 12 months and then deleted.
• When you last opened the app is kept until you delete your account.
• Server logs are kept by Supabase for up to 7 days. Where our hosting plan includes database backups, they are kept for up to 7 days, so deleted data disappears from backups within that time.

10. Device permissions

TastePad asks iOS for these permissions only when you use the feature that needs them. You can change them at any time in iOS Settings → TastePad.

Permission	Why
Camera	To photograph a dish and add it to a recipe.
Photo library	To add food photos you already have to a recipe. The app only receives the photos you pick.
Notifications	Cook-along timers that ring when the app is closed, reminders to rate what you cooked, and alerts from your kitchen.

TastePad does not ask for location, contacts, microphone or tracking permission.

11. Cookies and tracking

The app does not use cookies. The analytics described in section 2.6 store a random identifier on your device; you can turn them off in Settings. TastePad does not track you across apps and websites owned by other companies. To show “Open” instead of “Get” for our other apps under Settings → More apps, the app checks on your device whether they are installed. That result is not sent anywhere.

12. International data transfers

We keep your data in the EU where we can: Supabase (Stockholm), PostHog (Frankfurt), Brevo and Sightengine all store and process it in the EU. Some providers, or their own subcontractors, may still process data outside the EU/EEA, including in the United States; Apple and Google operate globally. Where that happens, transfers are protected by the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses in our providers’ data processing agreements, or by the EU–US Data Privacy Framework for providers certified under it.

13. Your rights

If you are in the EU/EEA, the UK or another region with similar laws, you have the right to:

• Access your personal data and get a copy of it. Settings → Export lets you download all your data as JSON or CSV at any time.
• Rectify it. You can edit your name, emoji, email and all your content in the app.
• Erase it. Delete individual items in the app, or delete your whole account in Settings.
• Data portability, through the same export.
• Object to processing based on legitimate interest, and restrict processing in some cases.
• Withdraw consent where we rely on it, by turning off usage analytics or notifications.
• Complain to a data protection authority. In Sweden this is the Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection (IMY, imy.se); you can also contact the authority where you live.

To exercise a right that you can’t use directly in the app, email info@navl.dev. We will reply within one month.

14. Children

TastePad is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child has given us personal data, contact us and we will delete it.

15. Changes to this policy

We will update this policy when the app or our providers change. The date at the top shows the latest version. If a change materially affects how we use your data, we will let you know before it takes effect, for example by email or in the app.

16. Contact

Nils Anton Viktor Larsson Malmö, Sweden Email: info@navl.dev

This policy is published at navl.dev/tastepad/privacy.