Privacy Policy

AnnaChef ("we", "us") is an iOS app that identifies ingredients from photos of your fridge or pantry, suggests recipes, and lets you tailor any recipe or ask cooking questions about it in a chat with Anna, our AI assistant. This policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have. Questions: annachefapp@gmail.com.

What we collect

• Account information. When you create an account we collect your email address, display name, and a user identifier. Sign-in is handled by Firebase Authentication (Google LLC), including Sign in with Apple and Google Sign-In if you choose them. If you use Sign in with Apple we also keep the sign-in token Apple issues to us, solely so we can revoke it with Apple when you delete your account. Guest mode creates an anonymous identifier and nothing else; guest activity is not linked to a name or email.
• Photos you submit. Photos of your fridge, pantry, or dishes that you take or select are sent to our servers to detect ingredients or to attach to recipes you save. We never access your photo library beyond the photos you explicitly choose.
• Content you create. Recipes, ingredient lists, preferences (dietary choices, household size, skill level), bookmarks, cooking activity, and the private tailored versions you save. When you import a link, our server fetches that page on your behalf and keeps a copy of the extracted recipe for up to 48 hours so the same page is not fetched twice.
• Conversations with Anna. When you tailor a recipe or ask Anna a cooking question, the text you type, the recipe it concerns, and Anna's reply are sent to our servers and kept in a conversation log linked to your account. We use this log to review how the feature performs, improve Anna's answers, and enforce fair-use limits; members of our team may read these conversations. Please don't put personal or health information in them — Anna does not give medical, allergy, or dietary advice, and declines such questions.
• Usage and diagnostics. Basic product interaction events (e.g., a recipe was viewed, cooked, shared, or tailored), technical request logs (timing, error codes, the type of request, and the country the request came from, worked out from the network address at the time and stored without the address itself), and crash/error logs, used to keep the app working and improve it. Each installation of the app gets a random install identifier, created by the app, that ties these events together; it is not an advertising identifier.
• Apple Ads attribution. When you first open the app, it asks Apple's AdServices framework for a one-time attribution token and sends it to our servers. We give that token to Apple, and Apple tells us whether the install came from one of our Apple Ads campaigns and, if so, which campaign, ad group, and search keyword. Apple does not tell us who you are, and no tracking permission is involved. We store this with the install identifier to learn which of our ads bring people who actually cook.

We do not collect your precise location, contacts, or browsing history, we show no third-party advertising, and we do not track you across other companies' apps or websites.

How we use your information

• To detect ingredients in your photos, generate recipe suggestions, and tailor recipes or answer cooking questions when you ask Anna.
• To sync your recipes, bookmarks, and preferences across your devices.
• To operate community features (public and shared recipes, catalog listings, reporting, blocking).
• To monitor reliability, prevent abuse, and enforce fair-use limits.

AI processing

Ingredient detection, recipe generation, recipe tailoring, and Anna's answers to cooking questions use OpenAI's API. The photos, ingredient lists, recipes, and messages needed for these features are transmitted to OpenAI as our data processor; your name and email are not. Per OpenAI's API data-usage policy, this data is not used to train their models. Recipes Anna generates from your ingredients may be kept in our recipe catalog and suggested to other cooks — they carry no information about you. Tailored versions are different: they are private to you unless you share them.

Where your data lives

Our servers and database are hosted by DigitalOcean. Recipe photos are stored in DigitalOcean Spaces. Authentication data is held by Firebase (Google).

Retention

• Account data and saved recipes: kept while your account exists.
• Cooking activity events: deleted after 180 days.
• Conversations with Anna (tailoring requests, questions, and replies): deleted after 90 days.
• Cached AI-generated recipes: kept up to 365 days.
• Server request logs, AI-call records, and error diagnostics: deleted after 90 days.
• Apple Ads attribution records: deleted after 90 days.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time in the app under Account → Delete Account. This permanently removes your account, recipes, photos, bookmarks, activity, and conversations with Anna from our systems, turns off any share links you created, withdraws your recipes from the catalog, and revokes your Sign in with Apple authorisation with Apple. You can also email us and we will delete your data for you.

Sharing

We do not sell your personal information. We share data only with the service providers named above (Firebase, OpenAI, DigitalOcean) to run the app, or if required by law. Recipes you share by link are viewable by anyone who has the link, in the app and on annachef.com, with your display name, until you turn the link off. Recipes you ask us to list appear in Explore, in search, and on an indexable page at annachef.com; other cooks may make private tailored versions of them, which credit your display name.

Children

AnnaChef is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export, or delete your personal data. The in-app deletion covers most of this; for anything else, contact annachefapp@gmail.com and we will respond within 30 days.

Changes

If we make material changes to this policy, we will update this page and the effective date above.