Privacy Policy
This policy explains what personal data the cucinIA app for iPhone and Android handles, what we use it for, who we share it with, and how you can exercise your rights. It is governed by Chile's personal data protection law: Law No. 19,628 and, once in force, the amendments made by Law No. 21,719. The Spanish version is the official one; this English version is a translation.
In short
- We use your data to make the app work: your account, your pantry, your recipes and your meal plans.
- Your nutrition plan and your allergies are health data. We only store them if you enter them and give your consent, only you can see them, and they are never used for ads.
- We don't sell your data. Ads on the free plan are not personalized.
- Recipe videos load from TikTok, Instagram (Meta) and YouTube (Google), which receive data from your device when they do.
- Your data is stored on Google servers in Santiago, Chile.
- You can correct or delete your data in the app, and delete your whole account whenever you want.
1. Who is responsible
The party responsible for your data is Steady Labs SpA, RUT 78.544.915-0, of [ADDRESS] ("we"). For any privacy question, or to exercise your rights, write to privacidad@steadylabs.cl.
2. What data we handle and why
We only ask for what the app needs. The legal basis for each use is at the end of each item.
Your account
Your email address and password or, if you sign in with Google or Apple, the name and email they give us and, with Google, your Google account's photo too (Apple may give us an anonymous relay address). Your password is stored encrypted by Firebase Authentication, a Google service: we never see it. We use this data to create your account, sign you in, recover your password and protect your account.
Basis: providing the service you ask for when you create an account (performance of a contract).
Your profile
First and last name, username, profile photo (one you upload or, if you sign in with Google and agree to use it, your Google account's photo; you can remove it whenever you want), country and region, whether your account is public or private, and your Instagram, TikTok and YouTube usernames if you add them. We fill in your country from your phone's region setting, and you can change it. We don't use your exact location: the app never accesses GPS. We use these to show you to other people on cucinIA, to let your friends find you, and to tailor the app to your country.
Basis: performance of a contract. What other people see is in section 5.
Your kitchen
Your diet, your allergies and intolerances, rules such as halal, kosher, no pork or no alcohol, your cooking level, how many people eat at home, the cuisines you like and the equipment you have. We use them to create recipes and plans you can eat and cook, and to warn you when a recipe contains something you're allergic to.
Allergies are health data, and rules such as halal or kosher can reveal religious beliefs: the law treats them as sensitive data. We only store them if you choose them, only you can see them, and you can remove them at any time under Profile › Your kitchen.
Basis: your express consent when you choose them, for allergies and religious rules; performance of a contract, for the rest.
Your pantry, cart, plans and recipes
The items in your pantry (name, quantity and category), your shopping list, your weekly plans, the recipes you write, save or create with AI, and how many recipes you've created with AI each day or week, to apply your plan's limits.
You can have several pantries and share them. For each one we keep its name, who's in it, who added each item, requests to join and which one is your favorite. Invite codes last 10 minutes and work for one person.
Basis: performance of a contract.
Photos of your recipes
If you add a photo to a recipe you write, we shrink it on your phone, without the details your camera stores inside the photo (such as where you took it), and keep it with the recipe. Whoever can see the recipe sees it (section 5). We don't send it to the artificial intelligence. When you change or remove it, we delete the old one; when you delete the recipe or your account, we delete its photos. If you upload a photo and the recipe doesn't get saved, we delete it within a day. You can upload up to 20 recipe photos a day: our server counts them (only how many, each day).
Reporting a photo
If you report the photo on someone else's recipe, we keep your account, the reason you chose and your note with that photo, so the app's owner can review it. Its author never sees who reported it. We also remember which photos you reported, so we don't show them to you again. When three different people, with accounts made at least 3 days ago, report the same photo, we hide it from everyone except its author until it's reviewed. If it's removed, we delete the photo and tell its author in their activity, without saying who reported it; if it's fine, it shows again.
Basis: performance of a contract.
Photos you scan
When you scan your fridge, your pantry or a shopping list, the photo goes through our server to Gemini, Google's artificial intelligence, which reads which items appear in it. We don't keep the photo: we only keep the items you confirm. The thumbnails you see while reviewing a scan stay on your phone. We recommend not photographing people or documents.
The app only uses the camera, your photos and your files when you choose to scan, to change your profile photo, to add a photo to a recipe or to read your nutritionist's plan, and only with the permission you grant on your phone.
Basis: performance of a contract.
Your nutritionist's plan, from a PDF or a photo
If you choose to read your nutritionist's plan from the PDF they sent you or from photos of the paper, the file goes through our server to Gemini, which reads your daily targets, your portions per meal and their advice. We don't keep the file: we only keep what you check and save in your nutrition plan.
The plan may show your name, national ID number (RUT), weight, height or a diagnosis. Gemini sees the whole file, so it sees them too; we ask it not to copy them into its answer, and the app removes lines that look like your own details (a RUT, your weight, your BMI) before showing it to you. You check what's left before anything is saved. We still recommend covering them before you take the photo or choose the file.
Basis: your express consent (see section 3).
Features that use artificial intelligence
To read photos, create recipes and weekly plans, estimate calories, match ingredients against your pantry, see which scanned items are on your shopping list and translate product names, we send Gemini (Google's Vertex AI) only what each task needs: for example, the items in your pantry and on your shopping list, your diet, your allergies, your equipment, what you feel like eating and, if you have a nutrition plan, your calorie and protein targets and a few food rules ("low salt", "no alcohol"). We never send your name, email, weight, age, sex or the name of a health condition, except whatever appears on your nutritionist's plan if you choose to read it from a file (see above).
The first time you use one of these features on a phone, the app explains what goes to Gemini and asks for your permission. Nothing is sent until you accept, and you can keep using your pantry, the cart and your recipes without the AI. The permission stays on that phone until you sign out.
Google handles this data as our service provider and, under its Google Cloud terms, doesn't use it to train its models. What the AI produces is cooking suggestions, not medical advice.
Basis: performance of a contract; your express consent, for anything that comes from your nutrition plan or your allergies.
Your social activity
Who you follow and who follows you, follow requests, your notifications, the ratings and comments you post, and the video links you add to your recipes.
Blocking and reporting an account
If you block someone, we keep who you blocked in your account, so they can't follow you, ask to follow you, or comment on or rate your recipes, so we don't show you what they post, and so their app hides your profile and recipes from them. They get no notice; to hide you, their app knows which accounts blocked them, and there your profile and recipes show as not found. If you also report them, we keep your account, the reason you chose and your note with the reported account, so the app's owner can review them; the reported person never sees who reported them.
Basis: performance of a contract.
If we restrict or close your account
If your account breaks the Terms of Use, the app's owner can restrict it (for 7 days, 30 days or until further notice) or close it. We keep with your account what we did, the reason, the dates and your username at the time, and show it to you in the app. While it's restricted you can't post anything others see (comments, ratings, recipes for others, following someone, changing your name, username or photo), but you keep using your pantries, the cart, your plans and your private recipes; what you already posted stays up. If we close it, you're signed out, you can't sign in again and what you posted disappears: we take down your public profile and your recipes become private (we keep both as they were, in case we reopen it), the app stops showing your comments, and you leave the pantries you share and any you asked to join. The people who reported it get a notice in their activity with your username. If you think it's a mistake, write to us.
Basis: performance of a contract, and our legitimate interest in keeping cucinIA safe for everyone.
Premium and payments
Your plan (free or Premium), when it ends and whether it renews. Payments are processed by Apple (App Store) or Google (Google Play): we never receive your card details.
If you got Premium as a gift for trying the app before its launch, we also keep the date you got it, so each account gets it only once.
We also keep each period you paid for (when it started, when it ended, which plan it was and what it cost), to know how many people renew and how many leave. We only ever look at it as totals, never per person.
Discount codes. If you open a discount code someone sent you, it stays on your account (which code, its discount and until when it's valid) until you pay with it or it expires. Whoever runs cucinIA sees which account opened each code they made, its username, when it redeemed it and whether it paid with it: a code works for one account only or, if it is shared (for example, one a content creator hands out), once for each account that redeems it. To redeem a shared code, your email has to be confirmed: if you signed in with an email and password, we send you a link to confirm it (if you signed in with Google or Apple, it already is). With each redemption we keep a one-way fingerprint of your email (not the email itself), so each email redeems it only once, however it's written.
When you turn renewal off, or the first time you open the app after your Premium ended, we ask why. Answering is optional. The reason you pick is added to everyone else's for that month and kept only as a count, without your name; your account only keeps that we already asked, so we don't ask again.
Basis: performance of a contract.
Technical data
Logs from our servers (errors, and changes to who is in each pantry), which include your user ID (not your name or email) and which we keep for up to 30 days. Usage counters that prevent abuse: how many times you used the AI or the supermarket search in the last hour and, when you type an invite code, how many tries were made from your account in the last 10 minutes and from your IP address in the last 2 hours, so nobody can guess codes. We also keep the last day you opened the app, to know how many people use cucinIA; we only look at it added up, as a total. We don't use other companies' analytics or tracking tools.
When you open the app, your phone asks Expo, the service that delivers cucinIA's updates, whether there is a new version. Expo receives your IP address, whether you use an iPhone or Android, the app version and a random ID for that installation, which isn't linked to your account; if an update makes the app fail to open, it also receives that error. It does so under its privacy policy.
On your phone we keep your settings (language, theme and layouts) and a copy of your pantry, cart, plans and recipes, so the app is fast and works offline. That copy is deleted when you sign out.
Basis: our legitimate interest in keeping the service secure and working.
3. Your nutrition plan: health data
The nutrition plan is optional. If you use it, we ask about your goal and the pace you want, your year of birth, your sex (only for the calorie formula; you can choose not to say), your height, weight and goal weight, your body fat percentage (optional), whether you're pregnant or breastfeeding, your physical activity, health conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, kidney disease, GLP-1 medication, reflux, gout, low iron or a sensitive gut, limits your doctor gave you, your nutritionist's plan, which meals you eat in a day, your eating style and what you'd like to eat more or less of.
We use them only to calculate your calorie and protein targets per meal and to build your weekly plan.
- This is health data, sensitive data under the law. We only handle it with your express consent: the "Use my health info to plan my meals" box. Nothing is stored before you tick it.
- Only you can see it. It's stored apart from the rest of your profile, never appears on your public profile and is never shown to other users.
- It's never used for advertising and never given to third parties for their own purposes.
- The AI gets the minimum: your targets and food rules, never your weight, age, sex or the names of your conditions. The exception is your nutritionist's plan, if you choose to read it from a PDF or a photo: Gemini sees the whole file, only to read it, and it isn't kept.
- You can withdraw your consent at any time with "Delete my nutrition info" on the plan screen: everything is deleted at once. It's also deleted if you delete your account. Withdrawing consent doesn't affect what we did with it before.
- The nutrition plan is part of Premium. If your Premium ends, your plan stays saved and you can see it but not change it; you can delete it at any time, with or without Premium.
If you're under 16, you may only use the nutrition plan with the authorization of your mother, father or legal guardian. For anyone under 18, the app doesn't calculate calorie or weight targets.
cucinIA doesn't diagnose or treat any disease and is not a substitute for a health professional.
4. Recipe videos: TikTok, Meta and Google
Recipes can include a link to a video on TikTok, Instagram (owned by Meta) or YouTube (owned by Google).
- When you open a recipe with a video, your phone asks TikTok, Meta or YouTube directly for the video's cover image and the name of whoever posted it. To answer, that company receives your IP address, basic information about your device, and which video is being looked up. We don't keep what it sends back.
- When you play the video, that company's player loads inside cucinIA, and it may use cookies or similar identifiers and collect data about how you watch.
- When you tap "Open in TikTok" (or Instagram, or YouTube), you leave cucinIA for their app or website.
In all of these cases those companies act on their own account, under their own privacy policies: TikTok, Instagram (Meta) and Google. We don't send them your name, your email or any other account data.
If you add a video to your recipe, the link is shown with the recipe, to the same people who can see it.
5. What other people see
- Anyone with a cucinIA account can see your username, your first and last name, your photo, whether your account is private, your Instagram, TikTok and YouTube usernames, and who you follow and who follows you. That's how your friends find you.
- Your recipes, with their photo, are seen by whoever you choose: everyone (anyone you send its link to can open it in the app; without an account, they're asked to create one first), only your friends (people who follow each other with you) or only you. Someone who already copied the link to a recipe's photo can keep opening it even if you later make the recipe private, until you change or remove that photo. Comments are shown with your username to anyone who can see the recipe; ratings are shown as an average.
- The authors of the recipes you rate or save see it in their activity. When you rate a recipe, its author sees your username and the stars you gave. When you save one, its author sees your username only if you follow each other; otherwise they only see how many people saved it, never who.
- The people you share a pantry with see its items, its shopping list and who added each thing. Someone who types a valid invite code sees the pantry's name and picture, the first name of the person who made it and how many people are in it. Before letting them in, the people in the pantry see their profile (name, username and photo). In your own pantry only you let people in or take them out; in a pantry made to share, anyone in it can.
- Your photo and account reports are seen only by the app's owner, who reviews them; the photo's author, or the reported account, never sees who reported it. If three people with accounts at least 3 days old report a photo of yours, others stop seeing it until it's reviewed: you still see it, and can change it.
- If we restrict or close an account you reported, we tell you in your activity, with its username. If it's yours, that notice is all the people who reported it get. A closed account shows as not found to everyone.
- The accounts you blocked aren't shown to anyone else in the app. An account you blocked gets no notice, but its app knows you blocked it, to hide your profile and recipes from it (they show as not found), so it can tell.
- Never shown to others: your email, your country and region, your kitchen (diet, allergies and rules), the pantries and shopping lists you don't share, your plans or your nutrition plan.
6. Who we share data with
We don't sell or rent your personal data. We only share it with:
- Google, as our service provider: Firebase (sign-in, database, profile and recipe photos, and servers) and Vertex AI (Gemini). It handles the data only on our instructions, under contracts that require it to protect it.
- Google and Apple, if you sign in with them, under their own policies.
- Google AdMob, for ads on the free plan (see section 7).
- TikTok, Meta and Google, when you open or play a video (see section 4).
- Expo, which delivers the app's updates (see "Technical data" in section 2).
- Cloudflare, which hosts the Steady Labs website, where this policy lives. It receives your IP address when you visit those pages, and the content of what you write to contacto@steadylabs.cl or privacidad@steadylabs.cl, because it forwards those emails to our Google account.
- Supermarkets (Jumbo, Santa Isabel and Unimarc): to show you prices, our server searches their websites for the product's name, with no data about you. Product photos load on your phone from their servers, and if you tap a store link (Líder's too), you open their website.
- Apple and Google, when someone opens a recipe link without the app: our website, on Firebase Hosting, sends them to the App Store or Google Play. On Android, the link tells Google Play which recipe it was for, and Google Play passes only that to the app once it's installed, so the recipe can open after signing up.
- Authorities, only when the law requires us to.
The third parties we share data with are bound, by contract or by their own policies, to protect it at least to the level described in this policy.
7. Advertising
On the free plan, you'll see a Google AdMob ad before some features. We only request non-personalized ads: they aren't based on your history or your cucinIA data. Even so, Google receives data from your device (IP address, model and, when available, the advertising identifier) to show the ad, limit how often you see it, measure it and prevent fraud. You can read how it does this in Google's advertising policy.
We don't track you across other companies' apps or websites, which is why we don't ask for tracking permission on iPhone. We never give an advertiser your health data, your diet, your allergies or your pantry. Premium has no ads.
8. Where your data is stored
Our database, profile and recipe photos, and servers are on Google Cloud in Santiago, Chile.
Some services handle data outside Chile, mainly in the United States: Firebase Authentication (your email and sign-in data), Gemini (Google's global service may process each request in another country), Google AdMob, Expo, Cloudflare, Apple, TikTok and Meta. These transfers are needed to provide the service and are made with providers that are contractually bound to an adequate level of protection.
9. How long we keep your data
- Your account and what you keep in it: for as long as you have the account.
- Your nutrition plan: until you delete it or delete your account.
- The periods you paid for and the last day you opened the app: for as long as you have the account. Reasons for leaving Premium aren't linked to anyone, so they stay as counts.
- A discount code you opened: on your account, until you pay with it or it expires. The list of codes keeps which account opened it for as long as you have the account.
- Logs from our servers: up to 30 days.
- Counters of tries per IP address: up to 2 days after the last try from that address. Your account's counters are deleted with it.
- A recipe's photo: for as long as the recipe has it. We delete it when you change or remove it, or when you delete the recipe. A photo uploaded for a recipe that didn't get saved, within a day.
- Photo reports (who reported, the reason and the note): until they're reviewed, then 30 more days. Which photos you reported, so they stay hidden from you: for as long as you have the account.
- Account reports (who reported, the reason and the note): until they're reviewed, then 30 more days. The accounts you blocked: until you unblock them or delete your account.
- If we restrict your account: the record lasts until the restriction ends, and one more day. If we close it: for 30 days we can reopen it; then everything deleting your account would delete is deleted, but we keep your email (or your Google or Apple account), the reason and the dates for two more years, only so that account can't sign in or sign up again.
- Photos you scan, the PDF or photos of your nutritionist's plan, and what TikTok, Meta or YouTube send back about a video: we don't keep them.
To delete your account, go to Profile › Account & privacy › Delete account. Everything is deleted right away: your profile, your kitchen, your pantry, your cart, your plans, your nutrition plan, the Premium periods you paid for, your recipes (with their photos, ratings and comments), your comments and ratings on other people's recipes, your followers and who you follow, your notifications and what you told others about their recipes (you're also taken off how many people saved them), the photo reports you made and those about your photos, the accounts you blocked and other people's blocks of yours, the account reports you made and those about yours, your photo and your account. The discount codes you opened no longer say which account opened them. You leave the pantries you share: they stay for the other people, with the items you added. Google may take some extra time to remove backup copies from its systems.
An account we closed can't be deleted from the app: it's deleted 30 days after it was closed, as the previous section explains.
The only data kept has no link to you: the shared results of product searches (product names, prices and photos) that all users rely on.
10. Your rights
You have the right to:
- Access your data and know how we handle it.
- Rectify it if it's wrong or incomplete.
- Erase it.
- Object to a use of it.
- Portability: receive a copy in a commonly used format.
- Temporary blocking while we resolve a request.
- Withdraw your consent at any time.
- Not be subject to decisions based solely on automated processing that significantly affect you. cucinIA makes no such decisions: you can change or ignore the recipes and targets the AI suggests.
You can do much of this directly in the app: edit your profile, your kitchen and your nutrition plan, delete your nutrition plan or delete your account. For anything else, write to privacidad@steadylabs.cl from your account's email address. It's free. We reply within 30 calendar days, which we may extend once by another 30 days, letting you know.
If you're not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to Chile's Personal Data Protection Agency (Agencia de Protección de Datos Personales) or to the data protection authority in your country.
11. Security
- Every connection is encrypted (HTTPS).
- Your private information can only be read by your own account, and we check this with security tests.
- The AI only receives what each task needs.
- To stop abuse, our server limits some requests (looking up a pantry invite code, looking up a discount code that doesn't exist, reporting a photo or an account) per account and per network address: it keeps a counter with your IP address and how many of those requests came from it in the last hour, the last 2 hours or the last day, depending on the request.
- If a security breach affects your data, we'll tell you and the authority when the law requires it.
No system is completely secure, but we work to protect your data as well as we can.
12. Minors
cucinIA is not directed at children under 14. If you're under 14, you may only use it with the consent of your mother, father or legal guardian. If we learn we hold data from a child under 14 without that consent, we'll delete it.
The nutrition plan also follows the rules in section 3: authorization from your mother, father or legal guardian if you're under 16, and no calorie or weight targets for anyone under 18.
13. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy in an important way, we'll let you know in the app before the change applies. The date at the top shows the current version.
14. Contact
Steady Labs SpA
[ADDRESS]
privacidad@steadylabs.cl
The rules for using cucinIA are in the Terms of Use, and help with the app in Help and contact.