Privacy Policy

• We don't sell personal information, and PlateMatch has no ads.
• You can host or join a swiping session without an account.
• We keep what the app needs to work. Screenshots you upload to read a recipe are never stored.
• Email [email protected] to delete your account or ask what we hold about you.

In a swiping session, with or without an account:

• the display name you enter;
• the session's code, settings and timing, and your votes;
• which of your cookbooks you add to the session, if you have an account;
• for a restaurant session, the location the search is made from: your device's location, if you allow it, or the city you type.

If you create an account: your name and email address, and either a password (stored only in hashed form) or, if you sign in with Google, your Google account ID and profile picture link. We also keep your settings, such as light or dark mode, and a history of the sessions you took part in while signed in.

What you save: your cookbooks and the recipes in them, the links you save recipes from, your meal plans and grocery lists, and who you have shared them with.

When you read a recipe from a link, text or screenshots, the page, caption, text or images are sent to be read, and only the recipe that comes out is kept. Screenshots and pasted text are not stored. We count how many recipes each account reads each week, for the weekly allowance.

Technical information: like any website, our servers see your IP address and basic details of each request, which we use to keep the service running and to limit abuse. When something breaks, an error report is sent to our monitoring service; it is set up not to attach personal information such as IP addresses. When you send a list or recipe to Instacart, we record that it happened and whether it worked.

To run PlateMatch: to hold sessions and find matches, keep what you save, let you share it, keep you signed in, and fix problems. We also look at overall counts, such as how many sessions end in a match each day, to understand how the app is used. We don't use your data for advertising.

Other people you use PlateMatch with. Everyone in a session sees the display names of the people in it. People you share a cookbook or grocery list with see what is in it and that you are a member.

Services that run parts of PlateMatch for us, each only for its part:

• Hosting providers run the app and store its data.
• An AI model reads recipes from the links, text and screenshots you give it.
• Spoonacular provides recipe search results. It receives your search settings, not who you are.
• Google provides restaurant results, which means it receives the location or city of a restaurant search, reads YouTube video descriptions when you save a recipe from YouTube, and handles Google sign-in.
• Instacart receives the ingredients when you press an Instacart button. What you do on Instacart is covered by Instacart's own privacy policy.
• An error-monitoring service receives error reports.
• An email delivery service sends password-reset emails.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect PlateMatch and the people who use it.

PlateMatch keeps a few items in your browser's local storage so it works between visits:

• participantName: the display name you last used.
• participantId, participantToken and participantSessionCode: which session you are in and your place in it.
• plate-match-theme: light or dark mode.
• authToken: keeps you signed in. It is removed when you sign out.

PlateMatch doesn't use cookies for advertising or analytics. Google sets its own cookies if you use Google sign-in.

A session closes on its own after about 30 minutes of inactivity in the lobby, or about 15 minutes once swiping has started. Session records, including display names and votes, are kept after a session closes.

Account data, and everything you have saved, is kept while your account exists. You can delete cookbooks, recipes, meal plan entries and grocery lists yourself at any time. Signing out deletes that sign-in from our servers straight away.

To delete your account and the data tied to it, to get a copy of your data, or to correct it, email [email protected] from the address on your account. You can use PlateMatch's swiping sessions without giving us an email address at all.

Data is encrypted in transit, and passwords are stored only in hashed form. No system is completely secure, so we can't guarantee that data will never be exposed.

PlateMatch is not intended for children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them. If you think a child has given us personal information, email us and we will delete it.

We may update this policy as PlateMatch changes. The date at the top says when it last changed.

Questions about your data go to [email protected].