Privacy Policy

What we collect

To use NoshWise without an account

Scanning a limited number of labels a day, and using the avoid list, both work without signing up (Compare and the Kidney Balance planner need an account). In that case we hold your scans and avoid-list entries against an anonymous browser session (a random id in a cookie) rather than against your name or email. We have no way to connect that activity to you as a person unless you later create an account.

If you create an account

• Name, email address, and a password, stored as a one-way hash we cannot read back.
• Anything optional you add: date of birth, sex, country, body weight, your display language, and whether you want Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) food-combination guidance.
• Health details you choose to record: allergy, diet, and health profiles you select; kidney disease stage, dialysis or diabetes status, and protein/phosphorus/potassium/sodium targets for the Kidney Balance tool; and medications, herbs or supplements you want checked for interactions.
• The same categories above for any family member you add (a partner, a parent, a child) under your account, entered by you on their behalf.
• Your scan history, saved product comparisons, avoid-list entries, and any feedback you send us.
• If you subscribe: that you have a paid plan, and which one. Payment itself is handled entirely by Stripe (see “Who we share information with” below).

Photos you scan

When you photograph an ingredient label, what happens to that photo depends on which reading engine you pick. The Standard engine runs on our own server, and the image is discarded once the text is read; it is never sent anywhere else. The Pro engine sends the photo to Google's Cloud Vision service to be read, since that is what makes it more accurate on difficult photos, and Google's own privacy policy governs what happens to it there. Either way, we keep the resulting text as part of your scan history, not the photo itself.

How we use it

To do the thing you asked: match an ingredient list against your allergies, diet, and health profiles and tell you what matters; plan or total up meals against your kidney nutrition targets; check medications and herbs for known interactions; remember your profiles and language so you do not have to re-enter them; process a subscription payment; and read and respond to feedback you send. We also look at scan patterns in aggregate (which ingredients come up unmatched most often, say) to decide what to add to the database next. That does not involve looking at any one person's activity individually.

Who we share information with

We do not sell personal data. It is shared only where the app genuinely needs a third party to work:

• Stripe, for payment processing. Your card details go directly to Stripe and never reach our servers at all; we only ever see that a payment succeeded and which plan it was for.
• Google Cloud Vision, only if you choose the Pro reading engine for a photo scan, as described above.
• Open Food Facts, an open product database, when you scan or enter a barcode: we send the barcode number to look up the product, not anything that identifies you.
• Our hosting provider, which stores the database and runs the app on our behalf, under its own security and confidentiality obligations to us.
• Google AdSense. Ads themselves are not yet active; described here so this section is complete before they are. A consent step is in place ahead of that: if you are in the UK, the European Economic Area, or a US state with its own privacy law, you may already see a message asking for your consent to personalised advertising, run through Google's own consent tool and put there before any ad runs rather than after. Once ads are turned on, accounts on the Free plan will be shown ads served by Google, which uses cookies and similar technology to choose and measure them; this can include showing ads based on your activity on this and other sites (“personalised advertising”). Wherever you are, you can opt out of personalised advertising generally through Google's Ads Settings. Accounts on Standard or Premium do not see ads at all, regardless of this setting.

Cookies

• A session cookie that keeps you signed in, if you have an account.
• An anonymous session cookie, so scans and the avoid list persist between visits without an account.
• A cookie remembering your chosen display language.
• A cookie or similar local storage set by Google's consent tool, recording your choice about personalised advertising if you were shown that prompt. This runs ahead of any ad actually being served, as described above.
• Not yet active: once Google AdSense ads themselves are turned on for the Free plan, Google's own advertising cookies join this list separately from the consent cookie above. See “Who we share information with” above for what those do.

None of the cookies above are used to track you across other websites. The one exception, once it is active, is Google's own advertising cookies, which by design are shared with other sites that also use Google's ad products. That is Google acting as an independent data controller for its own advertising service, not something we do with the data ourselves.

How long we keep it, and deleting your data

We keep account and scan data for as long as your account is active, so your history and profiles stay useful to you. You can delete your account yourself at any time from your account page; this removes your profile, family members, avoid list, and saved comparisons outright. Your scan history and any feedback you have sent are kept, since they still have standalone value (an unmatched ingredient is still worth knowing about; a report is still worth acting on), but are disconnected from your identity rather than deleted along with it. If you would rather those were removed too, contact us (see “Contact” below) and we will take care of it by hand. Aggregate, de-identified information (like “this ingredient goes unmatched often”) was never tied to you in the first place and is not affected either way.

Security

Passwords are never stored in plain text; only a salted, one-way hash is kept. The operator area used to manage the ingredient database sits behind its own separate password. That said, no system is perfectly secure, and this is an ordinary web application, not one that has been through a formal, independent security audit.

Children and family members

NoshWise is intended for use by an adult managing their own dietary and health information and, optionally, that of their family, including infants and children, added and managed by a parent or guardian. It is not intended for a child to create or manage their own account independently.

Your rights

Wherever you are, you can ask us what personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it, by contacting us (see “Contact” below). Most of this is also already editable directly from your account page. NoshWise is operated from Singapore and this is written with Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) in mind; if data protection law where you live gives you additional or different rights, those apply too.

Changes to this policy

NoshWise is still being actively built, and this policy will change as features do, most notably once Google AdSense ads themselves go live, at which point the remaining “not yet active” note above becomes simply active. The date at the top says when it was last updated; check back if you want to know what has changed.

Contact

Questions about this policy, your data, or anything else are welcome at admin@noshwise.app, or through the feedback form. Both reach the people who run NoshWise directly.