Privacy Policy

Nothing, by default. Matlaro has no analytics, no tracking, no advertising identifier and no third-party software development kit that reports on you. There is no account required to use it, and the Android app has no account at all.

The recipes you save, the notes you write, the photographs you add, your shopping list and the cookbooks you organise are stored on your device. When you add a recipe, its text passes through our server once to be put in order and is not kept there. See Adding a recipe.

On Android, the Google components that read text on your phone send Google technical data about how those components perform. What that is, and what it is not, is set out under Photographs and the camera.

Browsing the catalogue: when you open the Browse tab or search it, the app requests recipes from our catalogue service at api.matlaro.com. The request is anonymous and read-only. It carries what you asked to see, including any words you search for, and no identifier for you or your device.

Adding a recipe: when you save a recipe from a link, a photographed page, pasted text or by typing it, the app sends it to our server at api.matlaro.com, which sends it back in order. See Adding a recipe.

Saving from a link: when you paste or share a recipe link, the app sends the link to our server, which fetches that page from the website you chose, keeps only the recipe on it and discards the rest at once. That website sees a request from our server, not from your phone. The app loads the page itself only to find a picture for a saved recipe that has none and, on Android, when our server cannot be reached.

Shopping list: to recognise items, name them in your language and show what your shops sell, the app asks our server at api.matlaro.com. See The shopping list and your shops.

Finding a photograph for a dish: when a saved recipe has no picture, the app may look the dish up on Wikipedia to find one. Only the recipe's title, or the longest word in it, is sent.

Images: pictures in the catalogue, ingredient photos and shop logos are served from our content delivery network at cdn.matlaro.com. The picture of a recipe you saved from a link is downloaded from the address that recipe page gives for it, a picture found on Wikipedia is downloaded from Wikimedia, and product photos in the shopping list are downloaded from Open Food Facts at images.openfoodfacts.org.

Buying a subscription: the purchase goes through the App Store on iPhone and through Google Play on Android. See Subscriptions and payment.

That is the complete list. The app contacts no servers other than the ones named on this page.

What is sent: the recipe's title, its ingredient lines, its steps and the number of servings, or, for a link, only the link. A photograph is never sent, only the text read from it on your phone. Your app language and whether you use metric or US measures go with it.

Why: so the app can show every ingredient with its amount and unit, scale the recipe to the servings you want and convert its measures. This is the service you ask for when you add a recipe, so the legal basis is the performance of that service (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR).

What is kept: not the recipe. Our server puts it in order in memory, sends it back to your phone and discards it. It is not written to a database, a file or a log, and it is not sent to any other company. The server's own log notes only how large a request was, how long it took, how many lines it had and whether it worked.

Ingredient names we did not recognise: when our server cannot tell which ingredient a line means, it adds one to a daily count for that ingredient's name in that language, so that we can teach it the name. Only the bare name is kept, without the amount, the rest of the line or the recipe, and with nothing that links it to you, your device, your internet address or your request. The counts are deleted after 90 days. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in recognising ingredients better for everyone (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Limiting requests: to prevent misuse, the server counts requests from each internet address for one minute. The address is held in memory for that minute and is not written down.

Your shopping list, the shops you pick and the order in which you walk their aisles are stored on your device.

Your country: the shops on offer are those of the country set as your phone's region, or of the country you pick yourself when you choose your shops. Matlaro does not ask for your location and has no permission to read it.

What is sent: to list shops, the app sends our server the country and your app language. To name the items on your list in your language and to show what a shop sells, it sends the catalogue's codes for those ingredients and the shop you picked. An item you type yourself is recognised the way a recipe line is, and Adding a recipe applies to it. No request carries an identifier for you or your device.

Why: these requests are the service you ask for when you use the shopping list, so the legal basis is the performance of that service (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR).

Product information: products, pack photos and product names come from Open Food Facts (world.openfoodfacts.org), an open database built by its contributors. The product data is available under the Open Database License (ODbL) and the photos under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence (CC BY-SA 3.0). When you open a product's photos, the app credits Open Food Facts and the contributor of each photo. When a product photo is shown, your phone downloads it from images.openfoodfacts.org, so Open Food Facts receives your internet address as any website would. We send Open Food Facts nothing about you.

Our server at api.matlaro.com and its catalogue database run on Google Cloud in the Netherlands. Google processes the requests on our behalf as our processor.

We have switched off Google Cloud's standard request log for this server, so no record is kept of the internet address, the time or the web address of each request. The server's own log notes only technical events, such as errors, timings and request sizes, with no internet address and with search words masked.

The legal basis for running and protecting the server is our legitimate interest in a secure and reliable service (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).

When you photograph a cookbook page, the text is read on your device. The photograph is not uploaded to us. The text read from it is sent to our server to be put in order, as described under Adding a recipe.

On iPhone, Matlaro uses Apple's on-device text recognition. The photograph is not sent to any third party for processing.

On Android, Matlaro uses Google's ML Kit, which runs in Google Play services on your phone. It reads the text on a photographed page, and it works out which language a page or a piece of recipe text you paste or share is written in. If you use the page scanner, that is Google's too and also runs in Google Play services. Google states that the pictures, the text and the results are processed on the device and are not sent to Google. The text recognition model is downloaded to your phone by Google Play services rather than shipped inside the app.

Those Google components do send Google technical data about their own use: information about the device, the app's name and version, a device identifier, figures on speed and errors, and which language was identified. Google states that it uses this for diagnostics and usage analytics, encrypts it in transit, and does not pass it to third parties. We do not receive it. Google processes it under the ML Kit terms at developers.google.com/ml-kit/terms and its privacy policy at policies.google.com/privacy.

The Android app has no camera permission. Taking a picture is handed to your phone's camera app or to Google's page scanner, and choosing an existing picture uses the system picker, which gives the app only the picture you choose.

Photographs you add to a recipe are stored on your device.

Cook timers are set on the phone itself, using the phone's own alarm service. No notification is ever sent to you from a server.

On Android, Matlaro asks to send notifications the first time you start a cook timer, so the timer can ring when you have walked away from the screen. If exact alarms are not allowed for Matlaro in your phone's settings, the app tells you so rather than letting a timer ring late.

Your recipes are not stored on our servers. The copies that exist are the one on your phone and any backup your phone makes for you.

On Android, your recipes, cookbooks, shopping list and the app's settings are included in your phone's backup to your Google Account if you have backup switched on, so a new phone can restore them. Pictures, including photographs you took yourself, are not included in that backup.

On iPhone, recipe data is part of your iCloud Backup if you have it switched on. Downloaded recipe pictures are excluded from it.

Those backups are held by Google or Apple in your own account. We cannot see them.

Signing in is available in the iPhone app only. It is optional and is only needed to share a cookbook with your household. Matlaro uses Sign in with Apple. The Android app has no sign-in.

If you sign in, we receive your name and an email address to reach you. Apple lets you hide your real address and forward mail instead, and that works normally with Matlaro. We do not receive your password or any other information from your Apple account.

We use that information only to identify your account and your household. We do not sell it, share it for advertising, or use it to profile you.

On iPhone, subscriptions are sold and processed by Apple through the App Store. On Android, they are sold and processed by Google through Google Play. Payment is handled entirely by Apple or Google.

We never see or store your card number, your billing address or any other payment detail.

On Android, the app confirms your purchase with Google Play on the phone itself. Your purchase is not sent to us.

Matlaro is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect information from them.

Because your recipes are stored on your device, deleting the app removes them from your phone. A copy may remain in your phone's own backup, described above, until you delete it there.

If you have signed in on iPhone and want your account and household data deleted, write to hello@matlaro.com and we will delete it. Beyond that we hold nothing that identifies you: the recipes and shopping list items the app sends us are not kept, and the counts of unrecognised ingredient names are not linked to anyone. The Android app has no account.

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, you have the right to access, correct, export and erase the personal data we hold, and to complain to your data protection authority.

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. Material changes will be announced in the app.

Laddro Digital UG (haftungsbeschränkt), Germany.

hello@matlaro.com