Phork It! Privacy Policy

Last updated: November 2, 2026

1. Who we are and what this covers

Phork It! ("Phork It!", "we", "us") decides how your personal information is used in the Phork It! app for iOS and Android, on phorkit.com, in our emails and in related services (the "Services"). Under the EU and UK GDPR, Phork It! is the data controller. You can reach us about anything in this policy at [email protected].

This policy explains what we collect, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it and the rights you have. It is part of our Terms of Service.

The short version. We don't sell your personal information, and we never sell, rent or trade your email address or anything else that identifies you. We use your information to run Phork It!, to improve it and to market it, including showing our ads to people who already know us. We share insights about cooking trends with partners only as aggregated or de-identified data that can't be linked back to you.

2. What we collect

We collect information you give us, information created when you use the Services, and information from partners.

Guest accounts. Where the app offers it, you can try Phork It! as a guest without giving us an email address. A guest account is identified only by an internal account ID and the sign-in stored on your device. To limit abuse, we count how many guest accounts are created from each network using a scrambled (hashed) form of the IP address, and delete that count after a day. If you later add an email address and confirm it with a sign-in code, your guest account becomes an ordinary account with the same recipes, plans and lists. If that email address already has an account and you choose to combine them, we move your guest recipes, collections, plans, lists, cook log and photos into that account and close the guest account (Section 7).

Feedback. When we ask for feedback (in-app prompts, surveys, interviews, user tests, beta programmes or emails) and you choose to take part, we collect your answers, ratings, comments, ideas, bug reports, screenshots and, if you agree to it, audio or video recordings of interviews and tests, together with your account and usage data. Taking part is optional.

We also receive limited information from advertising and attribution partners, such as which campaign led to your install and whether our ads reached you, and from shopping and affiliate partners, such as whether a purchase you started through Phork It! was completed, and from the App Store and Google Play, through RevenueCat, the state of any subscription you buy in the app. We don't buy information about you from data brokers. We don't knowingly collect government IDs, payment card numbers, precise location or biometric data.

3. How we use it and our legal bases

If you use the optional daily-target calculator, we use the details you provide to estimate daily comparison targets and restore your calculator inputs across your devices. These details and targets stay private to your account; they are not included in shared recipes or household member profiles. You can remove saved calculator details in Nutrition settings while keeping your entered targets. We do not keep a weight-history log through this calculator.

The "legal basis" column applies to users in the EEA, UK and Switzerland, where the GDPR requires one for each use.

Feedback. We use Feedback to improve and build the Services, train our models, do product and market research, and, where you allow it, in marketing. Our legal basis is legitimate interests, and consent for recordings and for publishing anything that identifies you. Under our Terms of Service you give us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use Feedback for any purpose, and you permit us to collect, analyse, combine with your other data and share the personal information in it as this policy describes. We won't publish your name, photo or voice with your Feedback without your permission.

Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed them against your rights. You can object at any time (Section 9). Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time without affecting earlier processing. We don't make decisions about you that have legal or similarly significant effects by automated means alone.

4. Who we share it with

Service providers process data for us, under contracts that limit them to our instructions:

Research and survey tools (survey, user-testing, interview recording and transcription services) receive Feedback, your email address and, if you agree, recordings, so we can run and analyse feedback sessions.

App stores. When you buy a subscription, Apple or Google takes the payment and handles it under its own terms and privacy policy. We never see your payment card details.

Advertising platforms. To advertise Phork It! and measure our ads, we share limited information (advertising identifiers, hashed email addresses, IP address and app events such as "signed up" or "imported a recipe") with advertising platforms, as Section 5 explains. We don't share your recipes, notes, food preferences or support messages with them.

Shopping and affiliate partners. When you choose to send a shopping list or recipe to a grocery or retail service, we pass it to that service at your request. It handles that information under its own privacy policy.

Brands, retailers and research partners, as sponsors or recipients of insights, receive only aggregated or de-identified data, such as campaign performance reports for sponsored content and cooking trend insights. In that role they never receive your email, name or other information that identifies you. This doesn't change what a shopping partner receives when you choose to send it a list or recipe (above).

Legal and safety. We disclose information when the law requires it, or to protect the rights, safety and property of our users, creators, Phork It! or others.

Business transfers. If Phork It! is sold, merges or reorganises, information may pass to the new owner under this policy.

With your permission. For example, when you choose to share a recipe with someone or send a list to a shopping partner.

De-identified and aggregated data that can't reasonably identify you may be shared and licensed, for example as market insights. See Section 5 for the safeguards we apply.

5. No sale of personal information, advertising and aggregated insights

We don't sell your personal information. We don't sell, rent or trade your email address, name, contact details or anything else that identifies you, and we don't give personal information to data brokers.

Our own marketing and retargeting. We advertise Phork It! on other apps and websites. To show our ads to people who have used the Services, to find new people similar to our users (lookalike audiences) and to measure which ads work, we share limited information with advertising platforms: advertising identifiers (only with your permission where required), hashed (scrambled) email addresses, IP address and app events such as "signed up" or "imported a recipe". Under California and some other US state privacy laws this counts as "sharing" for cross-context behavioural advertising, or "targeted advertising". It is not a sale: no one pays us for your information.

Sponsored content in the app. We may show sponsored recipes, offers or ads from brands and retailers inside the Services, chosen using what we know about how you use Phork It!. This happens on our side: brands don't receive your identity or your activity, only aggregated reports such as how many people viewed or saved their recipe.

Aggregated and de-identified insights. We may create, use, publish, share and license data that has been aggregated or de-identified, such as "gochujang recipe saves rose 40% this month" or "one in four users plans meals on Sunday", including trend reports and group-level (cohort) insights for brands, retailers, grocery services and research partners. We take reasonable measures so this data can't reasonably be linked to you: we only report on groups large enough that no individual can be singled out, we remove direct identifiers, we don't try to re-identify the data, and we contractually require anyone who receives it not to either. Food preferences that may reveal health information are only ever included as broad statistics, never in data about smaller groups.

Your choices.

• Opt out of sharing for targeted advertising. Use the "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" link at the bottom of our Privacy Policy page or in the app's settings. It opens an email to [email protected] with the subject "Do Not Sell or Share": send it from the address on your account, or tell us which email to cover. You can also write to that address directly. We act on it within 15 business days, and it also covers profiling for targeted advertising.
• Global Privacy Control. We honour GPC signals as an opt-out for the browser or device that sends them.
• Consent where required by applicable law. In the EEA, UK and Switzerland, and anywhere else the law requires it, we only share information with advertising platforms with your prior consent, which you can withdraw at any time. On iPhone we ask through Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt before we access your advertising identifier or track you across other companies' apps and websites.
• Device settings. You can reset or limit your advertising identifier in your device settings.

Opting out doesn't stop you from seeing ads, including sponsored content in the app, but they won't be based on information shared with advertising platforms.

Under 16. We don't share personal information of users we know are under 16 for targeted advertising.

Health-related information. Allergies, diets and other food preferences that could reveal health information are used to run the Services. Beyond that, they only ever appear in broad aggregated statistics (Section 5). They are never sold, shared with advertising platforms or used for targeted advertising.

No penalty. Opting out doesn't change the price or quality of the Services.

6. Emails and push notifications

• Mailing list. We only add you to our newsletter and product news if you agree to receive them: on phorkit.com, by submitting your email address under the statement "By continuing, I agree to receive news about Phork It!", or in the app. We keep a record of your consent: the wording, the date and time, and where you gave it. You can unsubscribe with the link in any email or by emailing [email protected].
• Service emails. While your account has a confirmed email address we send emails you can't opt out of, such as a welcome email when you sign up with your email or add it to a guest account, sign-in links, one-time codes and important changes to our Terms or this policy. A guest account has no email address, so we send it no emails at all.
• Getting-started tips. After you confirm your email address, either when you sign up or when you add it to a guest account, we send up to four short emails in the next two weeks with tips on using Phork It!: importing a recipe, planning it, shopping for it and cooking it. We tell you about them when you sign up. We skip a tip once you've done that step, and stop after you first mark a recipe as cooked or after two weeks. We send them on the basis of our legitimate interests, as direct marketing of our own service to people who created an account, with the chance to refuse at sign-up and in every email. You can turn them off at any time with the "Unsubscribe from tips" link in any tip, with the switch in the app's Settings, or by emailing [email protected]. Turning them off doesn't stop service emails. We don't track whether you open the tips or click their links.
• Push notifications. The app uses push notifications for app features, such as telling you an import has finished or a cooking timer is done. A notification about an import shows the recipe's name or why the import failed, and we deliver it through our push provider (currently Expo), Apple and Google. We ask your permission first, and you can turn them off in your device settings at any time. If we ever want to send marketing through push, we will ask for your separate consent first.

7. How long we keep it

Feedback is kept for as long as it is useful to us. Recordings of interviews and tests are deleted within 24 months, and Feedback linked to your account is de-identified or deleted within 30 days after you delete your account, unless you agreed to its publication.

We may keep information longer if the law requires it, or to resolve disputes and enforce our Terms.

8. International transfers and security

Transfers. We and our providers may store and process your information in the United States, the European Union and other countries whose data protection laws may differ from yours. When we transfer personal data out of the EEA, UK or Switzerland, we use an approved safeguard: an adequacy decision (including the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where a provider is certified) or the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses with the UK addendum. You can ask us for a copy of these safeguards at [email protected].

Security. We protect your information with encryption in transit, access controls and sign-in without passwords. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal information, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

9. Your rights

EEA, UK and Switzerland (GDPR). You have the right to access your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how we use it (including an absolute right to object to direct marketing), take a copy to another service (portability), and withdraw consent at any time. You can also complain to your local data protection authority, for example the State Data Protection Inspectorate in Lithuania, but please contact us first so we can try to help.

California and other US states. Depending on where you live (including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas and other states with privacy laws), you have the right to:

• know what personal information we collect, use, disclose, sell and share, and get a copy of it;
• delete it and correct it;
• opt out of sharing for targeted advertising and of profiling (Section 5);
• limit the use of sensitive personal information (we only use food preferences that may reveal health information to run the Services and, once aggregated, in broad statistics, unless you consent to more);
• not be discriminated against for using these rights.

How to use your rights. You can delete your account yourself at any time in the app (Settings → Account → Delete account). Deleting your account doesn't cancel a subscription you bought through the App Store or Google Play: cancel it in your store account settings. For any other request, email [email protected] from the address on your account. A guest account has no email address we can use to confirm a request, so use the in-app deletion, or add your email address to the account first. We will verify your request by confirming that email address, and may ask for more information if needed. An authorised agent can ask for you with your signed permission. We reply within one month (GDPR) or 45 days (US state laws), and tell you if we need more time. If we refuse a request, you can appeal by replying to our answer with "Appeal" in the subject; if we deny the appeal, you can contact your state's attorney general.

10. Children, changes and contact

Children. The Services are not for children under 13, or under 16 in the EEA, UK and Switzerland. We don't knowingly collect their personal information. If you believe a child has given us information, email [email protected] and we will delete it.

Changes. We may update this policy. We'll post the new version with its date at the top, and for important changes we'll notify you in the app or by email before they apply. Where the law requires your consent to a change, we will ask for it.

Contact. Phork It!, [email protected]. Use this address for questions, requests about your rights, opt-outs and complaints.