Privacy Policy
ate is a food collection app. It needs your photos, your account and, if you choose to add it, the place you ate. Nothing else. This page says plainly what happens to each of those.
1. Who is responsible
ate is an independent app built and operated by Noko Labs. For the purposes of the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR, Noko Labs is the data controller. There is no company behind it and no advertising business attached to it.
You can reach the controller at nokolabs.dev@gmail.com.
2. What we collect
| Data | Where it comes from | Is it optional? |
|---|---|---|
| Google account identifier, email address and display name | Google Sign-In, when you create an account | No. It is how your collection stays yours |
| Photos of dishes, and the cut-out sticker made from them | Your camera or photo library, when you save a dish | Yes. No photo, no entry |
| Dish name, cuisine, restaurant or place name, date, star rating and your notes | Entered or confirmed by you | Yes, apart from the dish name |
| Approximate coordinates of a meal | Your device location, only if you grant the permission and only at the moment you attach a place | Yes. The app works fully without it |
| Technical records: crash reports, error logs, request timestamps | The app and its servers, automatically | No, but they carry no photo or note content |
ate does not collect contacts, calendar entries, browsing history, advertising identifiers, health data or continuous background location. There is no third-party analytics SDK and no advertising SDK in the app.
3. Why we collect it
- To run your account, so your collection follows you to a new phone. Lawful basis: performance of a contract with you.
- To identify the dish in a photo: the core feature you asked for. Lawful basis: performance of a contract.
- To store and show your collection, map and journeys: the product itself. Lawful basis: performance of a contract.
- To keep the service working and secure: diagnosing crashes, preventing abuse. Lawful basis: legitimate interests.
- To improve dish recognition: we record when a suggestion was wrong, in aggregate, without your photo attached. Lawful basis: legitimate interests.
We never sell personal data, and we do not use it for advertising or profiling.
4. Photos and AI recognition
Read this bit before you photograph anything sensitive. When you save a dish, the photo is sent to Google’s Gemini API so the dish can be named. Under Google’s terms for the free tier, content you submit may be used to improve Google’s products and may be reviewed by human reviewers. Your photo therefore leaves your device and leaves our control at that moment.
Your collection, notes, places, ratings and the stickers themselves stay private to your account and are not shared with Google beyond that single recognition call.
A photo is sent once, at the moment of recognition. It is not sent again when you browse your collection. If you would rather not send a photo at all, you can decline recognition and type the dish name yourself.
5. Who else sees your data
Your collection is private. There is no public profile, no feed and no follower list. Data is shared only with the processors that make the app run:
| Processor | What it handles | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Account records, dish metadata, notes, coordinates | Managed Postgres, EU/US regions |
| Cloudflare R2 | Your photos and stickers, in a private bucket | Cloudflare’s object storage |
| Google (Gemini API) | One dish photo per recognition, as described above | Google Cloud |
| Google (Sign-In) | Authenticating you; we receive an identifier and email | |
| Google Maps | Rendering the map. Map tiles are requested for the area you view | |
| Vercel | Serving this website. No app data passes through it | Vercel’s edge network |
We would also disclose data if legally required to, and we would tell you unless we were forbidden from doing so.
6. How long it is kept
- Your memories and photos: until you delete them, or until you delete your account.
- Your account record: until you delete your account.
- Deleted items: removed from the live database immediately and purged from backups within 30 days.
- Technical logs: up to 90 days, then discarded.
- Anonymous recognition-accuracy records: kept indefinitely, because they contain no personal data and no photo.
7. Your rights and choices
If you are in the UK, EU, or a jurisdiction with comparable law, you have the right to access your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to processing, and receive a copy in a portable format. Exercising any of these is free and we will respond within one month.
- Access, correct or delete individual entries: do it in the app, on any dish or memory.
- Delete everything: see Delete your data.
- Withdraw location permission: Android Settings → Apps → ate → Permissions. Meals already saved keep their pin until you edit them.
- Export a copy: email nokolabs.dev@gmail.com and we will send you a machine-readable export.
If you are in the UK you may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office; in the EU, to your national supervisory authority. We would appreciate the chance to fix it first.
California residents: we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined by the CCPA/CPRA, and we do not offer financial incentives in exchange for personal information. The rights above cover the access and deletion rights you hold.
8. Security
Everything travels over TLS. Photos live in a private object store that is never publicly listable and is reached only through short-lived signed URLs. Database rows are protected by row-level security, so one account’s query cannot return another account’s rows. Server credentials for Gemini and storage exist only on the server and are never shipped inside the app.
No system is perfect. If a breach affects your rights, we will notify you and the relevant authority without undue delay.
9. Children
ate is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has created an account, write to us and we will delete it.
10. International transfers
Our processors operate globally, so your data may be processed outside your country, including in the United States. Where that happens, transfers rely on the processors’ Standard Contractual Clauses or an adequacy decision.
11. This website
This site sets no cookies, runs no analytics and embeds no third-party trackers. The only figures it displays are aggregate counts: how many people use ate, how many dishes are in the catalogue. Those identify nobody. Vercel keeps standard server request logs, as any web host does.
12. Changes
If this policy changes materially, the date at the top changes and the app will tell you the next time you open it. Continuing to use ate after a change means you accept the updated policy.
13. Contact
Questions, requests or complaints: nokolabs.dev@gmail.com. A real person reads it.