Privacy Policy
Pixel Plate · Last updated: October 29, 2026
The short version
- You don't need to give us your name, email or phone number. The app creates an anonymous account for you.
- We store your body details, weight and food diary so the app can work out your calories. We only do this after you agree.
- When you scan a meal, the photo is sent to an AI service to find the food. We do not keep the photo unless you turn on "Help improve food recognition".
- We never sell your health information. The app is free because it shows ads.
- You can delete everything at any time in the app: Me → Privacy → Delete my account and data.
1. Who we are
Pixel Plate ("the app") is made by Pixel Plate Labs, the studio name of Derek Jia-Ching Lian, 1301 3rd Street, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA ("we", "us"). We decide how your personal information is used, which makes us the "data controller" under laws such as the EU and UK GDPR.
Contact for any privacy question or request: [email protected].
2. What we collect and why
| Information | Why we use it |
|---|---|
| Anonymous account ID, created automatically when you open the app | To keep your diary and settings linked to you without asking for your name or email. |
| Body and goal details: sex, birth year, height, weight, activity level, goal and pace, unit preference | To calculate your daily calorie and nutrient targets. |
| Food diary and weigh-ins: the foods and amounts you log, with calories and nutrients, and the weights you enter | To show your diary and progress, and to adjust your calorie target to your real weight trend. |
| Meal photos you take or choose for a scan | To recognise the food and estimate the amount. Your phone first shrinks the photo and re-saves it, which removes hidden data such as your location. The photo is then sent to our server and to our AI provider (see section 4). If "Help improve food recognition" is off (the default), the photo is not stored: it is processed and then discarded. If it is on, we store the photo to teach the app to recognise food better. |
| Scan results and your corrections: what the AI found, what you saved, and changes you made | To make scans more accurate for you (for example, remembering your usual portion sizes) and, combined with other people's corrections, for everyone (see section 3). |
| Barcodes you scan | To look up the product. Only the barcode number is sent to Open Food Facts, nothing about you. |
| Your choices: which consents you gave or refused, and when | To respect your choices and to ask again if our wording changes. |
| A daily scan count | To protect the service from abuse. There is a high daily safety limit that normal use does not reach. |
| Advertising data: device advertising ID (only if you allow it), IP address, device type, and how you interact with ads | To show ads, measure them and prevent ad fraud. Ads are personalised only if you agree in the consent message. Your health information is never shared with advertisers. |
| App usage and crash data: screens used, simple events such as "scan saved" (never your body details, weight, goal or foods), app version, device model and system version, and crash reports linked to your anonymous account ID | To find and fix bugs and understand which features are useful. Usage statistics start after the ad consent step; in the EU, UK and Switzerland they are collected only if you agree in the consent message. |
| App integrity check | Apple App Attest and Google Play Integrity confirm that requests come from the real app, which protects our servers from abuse. |
Legal bases (for people in the EU, UK and similar places)
- Your explicit consent for your body details, weight and food diary (health-related information), for keeping your meal photos, and for personalised ads. You can withdraw consent at any time; this does not affect what we did before.
- Providing the service you asked for (contract) for your account and for processing a scan you start.
- Our legitimate interests in keeping the app secure, preventing abuse, fixing crashes and improving the app, where these are not outweighed by your rights.
3. How the app learns
When you fix a scan result, the app remembers it for you, for example your usual portion of a food. It also counts corrections across many people to find patterns, such as "this dish is usually logged as that food" or "this food is usually a bigger portion than the AI guesses". These shared statistics only count how often something happened. They contain no account IDs, photos or personal details, and a pattern is only used after many different people have made the same correction.
4. Who we share information with
We do not sell your personal information, and we never share your health information with advertisers. We use these service providers, who process information for us under their data-processing terms:
- Google (Firebase): stores your account, diary and settings (Firebase Authentication, Cloud Firestore), runs our server code (Cloud Functions), stores meal photos if you allowed it (Cloud Storage), and provides usage statistics and crash reports (Google Analytics for Firebase, Crashlytics). Firebase privacy information.
- Google (AdMob): shows the ads and the ad consent message. How Google uses information from apps that use its services.
- Anthropic: its Claude AI looks at your meal photo and tells us what food it sees and how much. Anthropic receives the photo but not your account details. Under its commercial terms, Anthropic does not use this data to train its models. Anthropic privacy policy.
- Open Food Facts: receives only the barcode number when you scan a barcode. Open Food Facts privacy policy.
- Apple and Google: the app integrity checks described above.
We may also share information if the law requires it, or to protect the rights and safety of our users or others.
Advertising and US state privacy laws
Some US state laws treat sharing data with ad partners for personalised ads as a "sale" or "sharing" of personal information. You can opt out at any time in the app: Me → Privacy → Ad privacy choices (shown where the law requires it). On iPhone, you can also turn off tracking in Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking.
5. Where your information is stored
Our servers are in the United States (Google Cloud). If you live elsewhere, your information is transferred to the US. We rely on the safeguards in our providers' data-processing terms, such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
6. How long we keep it
- Your account, profile, diary, weigh-ins, scan results and corrections: until you delete your account.
- Meal photos: not kept at all if "Help improve food recognition" is off. If it is on, kept until you turn it off or delete your account; both delete the photos straight away.
- Server logs (for example, errors): about 30 days.
- Crash reports and usage statistics: as long as Google keeps them under our settings (crash reports about 90 days; usage statistics 2 months).
- Shared learning statistics (section 3): kept, because they contain nothing that identifies you.
7. Your rights and choices
- Delete everything: in the app, go to Me → Privacy → Delete my account and data. This deletes your account, profile, diary, weigh-ins, scan records and photos straight away. If you no longer have the app, see Delete your account.
- Stop keeping photos: turn off Me → Privacy → Help improve food recognition. Your stored photos are deleted straight away.
- Correct your information: change your details and diary in the app at any time.
- Get a copy of your information or ask any other question: email us with your Account ID (shown in Me → About).
- Ad choices: Me → Privacy → Ad privacy choices, and your phone's tracking and ad settings.
- Complain: if you are in the EU or UK, you can contact your local data protection authority. We would like the chance to fix the problem first.
Depending on where you live, you may have more rights, such as to object to or restrict some uses. Email us and we will reply within 30 days. Because accounts are anonymous, we may ask for your Account ID to find your data.
8. Health information
We treat your body details, weight, food diary and meal photos as sensitive health-related information. We collect it only to provide the app's features, only after you agree, never sell it and never use it for advertising. Some US states (for example, Washington, under its My Health My Data Act) give you extra rights over "consumer health data": the rights in section 7 apply to you, and you can withdraw consent by deleting your account.
9. Children
The app is not for children under 13, and it does not let people under 13 sign up. If you are under 18, the app shows only non-personalised ads and does not offer weight-loss goals. If you believe a child under 13 has used the app, email us and we will delete their data.
10. Security
Information is encrypted when it travels between the app and our servers (HTTPS) and is stored by Google Cloud, which encrypts it at rest. Only your own app can read your diary. Our AI key and other secrets stay on the server, never in the app. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and will tell you and the authorities about a breach where the law requires it.
11. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top. If a change affects how we use photos or health information, the app will ask for your consent again.
12. Contact
[email protected]
Pixel Plate Labs · Derek Jia-Ching Lian · 1301 3rd Street, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA