Privacy Policy

The data of your own recipe book, including recipes (dish name, notes, where they came from and that page's address), ingredients and amounts, screenshots, dish photos, cooking records, meal plans (how each day is decided, weekly rules, past menus) and the check state of the shopping list, is stored on your device using Apple's SwiftData (in the App Group area shared by the App, its widgets and its share menu). Settings such as the language and the day and time of the next week's dinners notification are also stored on your device (UserDefaults). When the App saves an image, it redraws it as a JPEG of at most 2048 pixels on the long side, so metadata of the original photo, such as its location, is not kept.

Widgets read only a summary the App writes to the App Group (the decided dinners from today to next week, this week's ingredients and small dish photos). The Apple Watch app receives the same summary (without photos) from your iPhone and sends shopping list checks back to it (device-to-device via Apple's WatchConnectivity, never through our server). Cooking checklist ticks are stored only on the Apple Watch.

The share menu (saving from Safari, Instagram, LINE and so on) receives the title and address of a shared page, and the images and text you share, and stores them on your device. The share menu never connects to the internet. It does not read the content of Instagram posts.

The App may use the camera to take a photo of a dish you made. When you choose a photo from your library, the App uses the iOS photo picker and receives only the photos you choose. The next week's dinners notification is a local notification scheduled on your device. The picture made when you share the menu is created on your device and handed only to the destination you choose in the share sheet (family names are never included).

This data is never sent to our server. If you only use your own recipe book, the App never contacts our server, and every feature works without an internet connection (apart from talking to the App Store, for example to buy Alcook Plus).

Depending on your settings, data on your device may be included in device backups such as iCloud Backup.

The first time you create or join a family recipe book, a random user ID is created on your device and stored in the iOS Keychain. There is no sign-in, and you never register a real name, email address or phone number. Only when you use a family recipe book, the information below is sent to and stored on our server:

• your user ID and the name you enter (your name for the family);
• an authentication token (our server stores only its hash, never the token itself);
• the content of your family recipe books: the book's name, members' names, the creator and the payer, recipes (dish name, notes, where they came from and that page's address), ingredients and amounts, the images of screenshots and dish photos, cooking records (date, the member who cooked and the photo), meal plans (how each day is decided and its dish, weekly rules, the dish names of past menus), the check state of the shopping list (the week and the ingredient's name) and invite codes;
• your device's push notification token (APNs), used only for silent notifications (which are not shown on screen) that bring other members' changes to your device;
• Alcook Plus purchase information: subscription status, App Store transaction identifiers (originalTransactionId), expiry date, whether it renews automatically, the end of a billing grace period, product and environment (production or test);
• technical information that comes with each request, such as IP address, time and the App's build number (used in server logs and to limit request rates).

Recipes you add to a family recipe book from your own recipe book are sent and stored as content of the family recipe book. The App also sends its display language when it creates your user ID; our server does not store it.

What members of a family recipe book can see

The content of a family recipe book and members' names are visible to every member of that book. So that members can be told before a family recipe book stops being usable, whether the payer's Alcook Plus has auto-renew turned off, and the date until which the book stays usable during a billing grace period, may be shown to its members (the payer's expiry date itself is not shown).

What we do not collect

• your real name, email address, phone number or postal address;
• your location or contacts;
• your photo library (apart from the photos you choose);
• the advertising identifier (IDFA);
• payment details such as card numbers (payments are processed by Apple);
• the data of your own recipe book.

We use this information only to:

• provide family recipe books (storage, syncing between members, storing and delivering images, invitations);
• send silent notifications that bring other members' changes to your device;
• verify Alcook Plus purchases, decide whether you can create family recipe books and whether family recipe books can be used, and process App Store notifications (renewals, cancellations, refunds, etc.);
• prevent abuse and excessive requests, handle incidents and keep the Service secure; and
• respond to your inquiries.

We do not use it for advertising, behavioral analysis or profiling.

We do not share your information with third parties without your consent, except where required by law, and we never sell it. We use the following services to run the Service:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS): the server infrastructure for family recipe books. Data is processed and stored in the Tokyo region (Japan) using API Gateway, AWS Lambda and Amazon DynamoDB, and logs are stored in Amazon CloudWatch Logs. The images of screenshots and dish photos are stored in Amazon S3, also in the Tokyo region. The invite page is also served from AWS.
• Apple: the App Store (purchases, payments and subscription management) and the Apple Push Notification service (delivery of silent notifications). A silent notification carries only the identifier of the family recipe book that changed, never its recipes or other content. Apple's handling of information is subject to Apple's privacy policy.
• Google Fonts: only the web pages at alcook.bluedoghub.com, such as the page shown when you open an invite link (https://alcook.bluedoghub.com/join/…), load fonts from Google Fonts. When they do, your browser sends information such as your IP address and user agent to Google. The App itself does not use Google Fonts.

• Family recipe book content (including images): kept while the book has members, and deleted from our server when the last member leaves. After a member leaves or is removed, the content they added and their name remain until the book is deleted.
• Images a family recipe book no longer uses (deleted screenshots, replaced or removed dish photos, etc.): deleted automatically once they have been unused for 7 days.
• Invite codes: expire 48 hours after they are issued and are then deleted automatically.
• Rate-limit counters (which may include IP addresses): expire after about 2 hours and are deleted automatically.
• Server logs (which include IP addresses): deleted after 30 days.
• User ID, name, token hash, device token and Alcook Plus purchase information: kept as long as needed to provide family recipe books, and deleted on request.
• For recovery from failures, we keep database backups for up to 35 days. Deleted data may remain in these backups during that period.

• Communication between the App and our server is encrypted with TLS.
• Authentication tokens are stored only as hashes.
• Data and images stored on our server are encrypted at rest.
• Images are stored in a private location, and only members of the family recipe book upload and download them, through signed addresses that expire shortly.
• Each part of our server has only the minimum permissions it needs, and access is restricted.
• Rate limits and similar measures protect against unauthorized access and guessing of invite codes.

No method of transmission or storage over the internet is completely secure, however.

• If you neither create nor join a family recipe book, no information is sent to our server.
• You can leave a family recipe book at any time in the App.
• You can delete recipes and photos in a family recipe book in the App. The images of what you delete are deleted from our server as described in Section 5.
• You can turn off the next week's dinners notification in the App, or turn off the App's notifications in iOS Settings.
• You can cancel Alcook Plus in iOS Settings. Your purchase history is managed by Apple.
• To request access to, correction of, suspension of use of, or deletion of your information that we hold, contact us below. Because there are no accounts, we may ask for details such as the names of your family recipe books and your name for the family to identify you and your data.

The App does not use any:

• analytics services;
• tracking technologies;
• advertising networks.

The App is not directed to children under the age of 13. Children under 13 should use family recipe books only under a parent's or guardian's supervision. If we learn that we handle information of a child under 13 without parental consent, we will delete it promptly.

We may update this Privacy Policy as needed. We will post the new policy on this page and update the "Last updated" date at the top. We will also announce significant changes in the App or on this website.

If you have any questions or requests about this Privacy Policy, please contact us:

See also: Terms of Use