CookCircle Privacy Policy

1. Information we collect

• Account information, including your email address, account identifier, authentication records, username, display name, biography, profile photo, date of birth, and onboarding status.
• Content and media you submit, including recipes, ingredients, instructions, comments, recipe and profile images, kitchen names and images, and the visibility settings you choose.
• Community activity, including follows, follow requests, blocks, likes, saves, kitchen memberships and invitations, notifications, and interactions with recipes and comments.
• Trust and safety information, including reports, report explanations, content snapshots, moderation decisions, warnings, account restrictions, policy acceptances, and content-filter decisions. Rejected text is represented by a one-way fingerprint rather than retained in content-filter event records.
• Support correspondence and the contact information, attachments, and details you include when you email us.
• Technical and security information processed by CookCircle or its service providers, such as app version, platform, session information, request timestamps, and server or security logs. Infrastructure providers may process network information such as an IP address to deliver and protect the service.

2. How we use information

• Provide authentication, profiles, recipe publishing, comments, kitchens, feeds, search, notifications, and other requested features.
• Apply your visibility choices and personalize the content and accounts shown to you.
• Prevent spam and abuse, investigate reports, enforce the Terms and Community Guidelines, protect users, and maintain an audit history of moderation actions.
• Respond to support, privacy, safety, and legal requests and communicate about your account or material service changes.
• Maintain reliability, diagnose errors, secure CookCircle, comply with law, and establish or defend legal claims.

3. Public and private information

Your username, display name, biography, avatar, follower and following relationships, and content you publish publicly may be visible to other CookCircle users or visitors. Recipe and kitchen visibility controls limit access as described in the product, but no online sharing method is risk-free.

Your email address, date of birth, private drafts, account credentials, private moderator notes, and non-public account safety records are not displayed on your public profile. People with access to a shared kitchen may see content and membership information shared with that kitchen.

4. How information is shared

We share information with other users when you direct us to publish or share it. We also use service providers for infrastructure, database hosting, authentication, file storage, email delivery, app distribution, and security. They process information on our behalf under their applicable agreements.

We may disclose information when reasonably necessary to comply with law, respond to valid legal process, address an emergency, protect rights and safety, investigate abuse, or complete a merger, financing, acquisition, or transfer of the service subject to appropriate protections.

As of this policy's effective date, CookCircle does not sell personal information, serve third-party behavioral advertising, or use personal information to track you across other companies' apps or websites for advertising purposes.

5. Retention and deletion

We retain information while your account is active and as needed to provide CookCircle. You may delete your account through app settings. Account deletion removes or de-identifies account content according to the deletion flow, subject to reasonable backup, fraud-prevention, safety, legal, and audit-retention needs.

Reports, moderation evidence, restrictions, policy acceptances, content-filter fingerprints, and immutable audit events may be retained after related content or an account is deleted when needed to protect users, document enforcement, prevent abuse, or meet legal obligations. Support correspondence is retained only as long as reasonably needed for those purposes.

6. Your choices and rights

You can edit profile information, change recipe visibility, remove content where controls are available, block accounts, acknowledge warnings, and request account deletion from the app. You may contact us to request access, correction, deletion, or another privacy right available where you live. We may need to verify your identity before completing a request.

Some information cannot be deleted immediately when retention is required for security, legal compliance, dispute resolution, or the integrity of append-only safety records. We will explain an applicable limitation when required.

7. Children

CookCircle is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from a child under 13. A higher minimum age or guardian consent may apply where required by local law. Contact us if you believe a child has provided information contrary to these requirements.

8. Security and international processing

We use administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards intended to protect information, but no system can guarantee complete security. CookCircle and its providers may process information in the United States and other countries where they operate, subject to applicable legal safeguards.

9. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as CookCircle changes. We will publish the new version and effective date and provide additional notice when required by law. Privacy Policy publication does not by itself change the separate Terms and Community Guidelines acceptance record.

10. Contact us

Send privacy questions or requests to John Edward Garcia Nunez at jhongarcian@gmail.com. Questions about these practices are governed by the laws applicable in State of Texas, United States, subject to rights that cannot legally be waived.