Privacy Policy
Effective July 20, 2026
Faves (“Faves,” “we,” or “us”) is a restaurant dish-rating app. This policy explains what information the app collects, why, and who we share it with. We've written it in plain English and based every statement on what the app actually does today.
Information you give us
- Account and sign-in. You can sign up with an email address and password, or use Sign in with Google or Sign in with Apple. You can also sign in with a one-time code we email you. We store your email address so we can identify your account; passwords are handled by our authentication provider and we never see them in readable form. If you use Google or Apple, we receive your name and email from them so we can create your account.
- Your profile. A display name, an optional @handle (username), and an optional profile photo you choose to upload.
- Your ratings, reviews, and journal. The dishes and restaurants you rate, your star ratings, any written reviews, and the photos of dishes you post.
- Menu and receipt photos. When you scan a menu or receipt, the photos you capture are uploaded so our system can read the text on them (see “How menu and receipt scanning works” below).
Information the app collects with your permission
- Location. With your permission, the app uses your device's location to find and match the restaurant you're at, and to show nearby places. It may also read the location stored inside a photo you share into the app (a photo's EXIF GPS tag) for the same purpose. Location is used at the moment you're rating or searching to match a restaurant; we don't build a running history of everywhere you've been.
- Contacts (to find friends). If you choose to find friends from your contacts, the app reads your address book on your device and converts each phone number and email into a scrambled, one-way code (a SHA-256 hash) before anything leaves your phone. Only those codes are sent to our server to check for matches — your contacts' actual phone numbers and email addresses never leave your device.
- Notifications. If you allow push notifications, we store a push token for your device so we can send you alerts (for example, when a scan finishes or someone follows you).
You can decline any of these, and change your mind later in your phone's settings. Declining location, contacts, or notifications only turns off the related feature — the rest of the app keeps working.
How we use your information
- To create and run your account and sign you in.
- To save and show your ratings, reviews, and photos, and to power features like restaurant matching, nearby search, friend suggestions, and rankings.
- To read the menus and receipts you scan and turn them into a list of dishes you can rate.
- To send you notifications you've opted into, and one-time sign-in codes by email.
- To keep the service working and secure (for example, basic rate-limiting and diagnostic logs that help us fix bugs). We don't sell your personal information, and we don't use it to serve third-party advertising.
How menu and receipt scanning works
When you scan a menu or receipt, the photos are uploaded to our private storage and sent to our AI provider, Anthropic (the maker of Claude), whose model reads the text and returns the list of dishes or items. Once the read is finished, the uploaded scan photos are deleted from our storage — they're only kept for as long as it takes to read them.
What's public
Faves is a social app, so some of what you create is visible to others by design: your display name, @handle, profile photo, and the dishes you rate — including your star ratings, written reviews, and dish photos. When you share a dish, post, restaurant, or profile with someone, we generate a public web page (on this site, tryfaves.com) so the link previews and opens for anyone you send it to. Please don't include anything private in a review or photo you wouldn't want others to see.
Who we share information with
We share information with a small set of service providers that help us run the app:
- Supabase — our backend: it hosts the database, file storage, and sign-in/authentication for the app.
- Anthropic — reads the menu and receipt photos you scan (see above).
- Google Places — provides restaurant information (names, addresses, and nearby results) when you match or search for a place.
- Google and Apple — if you choose Sign in with Google or Sign in with Apple, they handle that sign-in.
- Resend — delivers the sign-in code emails we send you.
- Expo's push service — delivers the push notifications you opt into to your device.
We may also disclose information if required by law, or to protect the safety, rights, or property of our users or the service.
How long we keep your information
We keep your account information and the content you create (ratings, reviews, photos) for as long as your account exists. Menu and receipt scan photos are deleted right after they're read. If you delete your account, we remove your data as described next.
Deleting your account
You can permanently delete your account at any time from Settings in the app. Deleting your account removes your profile and the content tied to it — including your ratings, reviews, saved photos, profile photo, and any scan uploads — from our systems. Shared reference data such as a restaurant's name isn't personal to you and remains for other users.
Children
Faves is not intended for children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has used the app, contact us and we'll remove the account.
Security
We use industry-standard measures to protect your information, including encrypted connections and access controls on our backend. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to keep your data safe.
Changes to this policy
As Faves grows we may update this policy. When we make a meaningful change, we'll update the effective date at the top of this page.
Contact us
Questions about privacy? Email us at privacy@tryfaves.com.