Privacy Policy

1. What this covers

This policy explains what MyKitchenDex ("we", "the Service") stores about you, how it's kept separate and secure, who processes it, and how long we keep it. It applies to everyone who uses the Service: the people in an account, the account's owner, and anyone who calls our API.

2. What we store

• Your login: username, email address, first and last name, your password (only as a one-way hash — nobody can read it back), and, if you turn it on, your multi-factor authentication secret.
• What you add: recipes, recipe photos, tags, groups, your dinner list and shopping list, and the API keys you create (stored only as a one-way hash; you see the full key once).
• The Account Owner's private details: street address and phone number. These are encrypted before they're stored, with keys kept separately from the database, and are visible only to the Account Owner — not to the account's admins, and not to MyKitchenDex staff through any screen or API.
• Activity records: see "Audit log" and "Technical logs" below.

3. Your account is kept separate

Each account's data is walled off from every other account's. Every record carries the account it belongs to, and that separation is enforced twice — by the application, and independently by the database itself (row-level security), so a mistake in one layer can't expose another account's data. Search only ever looks inside your own account. Files (recipe photos, backups of recipe data, exports) are stored in your account's own private area of storage and are never public: they're served only through links that expire within minutes.

4. AI processing

When you add a recipe from a web page, pasted text or photos, that content is sent to Amazon Bedrock (Amazon Web Services) to extract the recipe:

• Amazon Nova reads recipes and checks uploaded recipe photos for inappropriate content.
• Anthropic Claude (running on Amazon Bedrock) is used when you choose Try again on a recipe that couldn't be read, and to combine your shopping list.

Requests may be processed in any AWS region in the United States. Amazon Bedrock doesn't use this content to train models, and doesn't share it with the model providers. Photos sent only for reading a recipe are processed in memory and never stored; photos you attach to a recipe are stored with it.

5. Audit log

Each account has an audit log of who did what: logins and failed logins (with the IP address), changes to users, roles and API keys, account changes, and deletion and export requests — and, if the account turns them on, everyday changes such as recipes and tags. It never records passwords, keys or the owner's private details (only which fields were changed). The account's admins can view and download it, and choose how long it's kept (30 days to 10 years; one year unless they change it). MyKitchenDex keeps a separate log of actions taken on accounts (for example suspension, ownership changes and approvals) for two years.

6. Technical logs

Our servers log each request (time, address, IP, which account and user, and a short fingerprint of the login session) to keep the Service secure and working. Passwords, tokens, keys and the owner's private details are removed before anything is written. These logs stay on our server and are deleted after 14 days.

For each browser you log in on, we keep a device record: the browser and operating system, the IP address it last used, its approximate location (city, region and country, as provided by our network provider, Cloudflare) and when it was last active. You can see these, and sign a device out, under Profile & Security → Your devices. A device record is kept while you're logged in on that browser and for 30 days after it logs out or expires, then deleted.

7. Exporting your data

The Account Owner can request an archive of every recipe in the account (one document per recipe, plus a spreadsheet listing them). Once MyKitchenDex approves it, the archive can be downloaded through short-lived links for 7 days, after which it's deleted.

8. Deleting your data

• A whole account: the Account Owner can request deletion in Settings. Once MyKitchenDex approves it, nobody can use the account, and after a 30-day grace period (during which the deletion can still be cancelled) everything in it — users, recipes, photos, tags, groups, lists, keys and its audit log — is permanently deleted. We keep only a minimal record that the account existed (its identifier, status and dates, with its name removed), and our own log of the actions taken on it. MyKitchenDex can lock an account against deletion; Settings tells the owner if theirs is locked, and they can contact us to have it unlocked.
• A single user: an account admin can deactivate a user. Their files are deleted after 30 days and their records after a year; reactivating them within the 30 days restores everything.
• Copies: deleted files stay in storage history for up to 30 more days, and nightly database backups are kept for 30 days, so deleted data is fully gone within about 30 days of deletion.

9. Cookies

We use only the cookies the Service needs: one that keeps you logged in (and, unless you untick "Remember me", one that keeps you logged in after you close the browser, until you go 14 days without a visit) and one that protects forms against forgery. No advertising or tracking cookies.

10. Who else handles your data

We don't sell or share your personal data. We rely on Amazon Web Services (hosting, storage and the AI processing above) and Cloudflare (which delivers and protects the site, and so sees your IP address and requests). Once a week we check that our backups can be restored: a copy of the database is restored on a temporary server at GitHub (Microsoft) for a few minutes, checked, and deleted, and nothing from it is kept. The Service doesn't send you email.

11. Your choices

You can see and change your name, username, email and password on your profile, and turn multi-factor authentication on or off. For anything else — including exports and deleting the account — ask your Account Owner, who can do it in Settings.

12. Recipe attribution

Recipes belong to the people who create them. When you save a recipe, MyKitchenDex keeps its source link and, where one is credited, its author: read from the web page's published recipe data or byline, from a credit that's visible in your photos or pasted text, or typed in by you. We never guess an author. You can correct or remove an author at any time from the recipe's edit page. MyKitchenDex doesn't claim ownership of any recipe you save; please respect the original creator's rights when you share one.

13. Changes and contact

If this policy changes, we'll update the date above. Questions? Ask your Account Owner, or contact MyKitchenDex through them. See also our Terms of Service.