MealSelfPrivacy Policy
This policy explains what MealSelf (the iPhone app and its online service) collects, why, how it is protected, and the choices you have. We wrote it to be read, not skimmed. If anything is unclear, email info@mealself.com.
What we collect
Only what the app needs to do its job:
- Account: your email address and a password hash (never the password itself), or the identifier Apple or Google gives us when you sign in with them. Your name, if you give one.
- Body data you enter: age or birth year, sex, height, weight entries, activity level, goal and, if you set one, a goal weight. These set your calorie and macro targets.
- Food preferences: the meals you usually eat, foods you love or dislike, allergies and intolerances, and the kitchen appliances you own.
- Plans and activity: the plans generated for you, swaps, grocery check-offs, meals marked eaten or cooked, favourite recipes.
- Optional: a profile photo, a postal or ZIP code for the store search, and, if you allow notifications, a push token for your phone with the kinds of notification it should receive.
- Purchases: which plan credits you hold and the App Store transaction identifiers needed to honour them. We never see your card details; Apple handles payment.
- Technical: the usual server logs (request time, path, status, a device identifier for the session) kept for security and debugging.
What we do not collect
No advertising identifiers, no tracking across other apps or websites, no contacts, no precise location history. The store search uses your location only while that screen is open, on your phone, and never sends it to our servers unless you type a postal code yourself. Stores you mark as favourites are kept on your phone only.
Progress photos are optional and off unless you turn them on. They are kept in the app on your phone: they are never uploaded to our servers, never shared and never sent to the AI. Each photo is deleted from the app automatically 60 days after you take it, and turning progress photos off deletes them all. Like other app files, they can be included in your own iPhone or iCloud backup if you use one; we have no access to those backups. We only store whether the feature is on.
How plans are generated
MealSelf uses an AI model run by OpenAI to write plans and recipes. Only with your permission, which you give on the consent screen after sign-up, MealSelf sends OpenAI your calorie and macro targets, meal times, the foods you love and dislike, allergies, eating habits you type in and kitchen appliances, each time you create a plan, swap an ingredient or rewrite a meal. Your name, email, age, weight, photo and account identifiers are never included. OpenAI processes the data under terms that prohibit using it to train its models. You can withdraw this permission at any time in Account, AI data sharing; plans cannot be written without it, and plans you already have stay in your account. Calories and macros come from the USDA FoodData Central database on our server, not from the model.
How your data is protected
- Everything travels over HTTPS.
- Weight entries, food habits and allergies are encrypted at rest with a key that is not stored in the database.
- Passwords are hashed with Argon2id. Sessions use short-lived tokens that can be revoked at any time.
- Every record is tied to your account; our software cannot read one person's data on behalf of another.
- Servers are in a Hostinger data centre; backups are encrypted.
Who else sees it
We do not sell or rent personal data, ever. We share only what a service needs to work for you: Apple (sign-in, purchases and delivering notifications), Google (sign-in, if you choose it), OpenAI (plan answers, as above, only with your permission), Expo (relays notifications such as "your plan is ready" to Apple, using your phone's push token), our email provider (to send verification and password emails to you), and our hosting provider. Each is bound by its own privacy terms and our contract.
Your choices
- Access: to get a copy of the personal data we hold about you, email info@mealself.com from your account's email address.
- Delete: Account, Delete account removes your account and every record immediately. If you use Sign in with Apple, MealSelf's access is revoked at Apple at the same time.
- AI data sharing: Account, AI data sharing turns sending plan answers to OpenAI off or back on.
- Edit: name, body data, preferences, appliances, postal code and photo can be changed in the app at any time.
- Notifications are only sent once you allow them in iOS. Meal reminders, the weekly weigh-in, cooking timers, "plan ready" and "plans renewed" can each be turned off in Account, Notifications. We never send marketing notifications.
Retention
Your data is kept while your account exists. When you delete the account it is removed within minutes, and from backups within 30 days. Server logs are kept for 30 days.
Children
MealSelf is for adults 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone younger; if you believe we have, email us and we will delete it.
Where it lives
BragDeal Inc. is a Canadian company and this policy follows Canada's PIPEDA and British Columbia's PIPA. Data may be processed in Canada, the United States and the European Union by the providers named above.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters to you, the app will tell you before the change takes effect. The date at the top always shows the current version.
Contact
BragDeal Inc., Vancouver, BC, Canada · info@mealself.com