What we know about you, and why

Who we are

RecipeJam is responsible for the personal data described here — the data controller, in the language of the legislation. You can reach us at hello@recipejam.com, and that address reaches a person rather than a queue.

What we hold

Your account

Your name, your email address, and a password we never see in readable form — it is stored as a one-way hash. Optionally a nickname and a profile picture. We record which method you last signed in with and when, because an unexpected sign-in is something you should be able to notice. If you turn on two-factor authentication or register a passkey we store what is needed to check it.

The recipes themselves

Everything you put in: recipes, ingredients, method, timings, notes, photographs, collections and any eBooks you compile. This is your material. We do not read it to build a profile of you, we do not train anything on it, and we do not show it to anybody you have not shared it with.

Payment

Card details never reach RecipeJam. Checkout and billing are handled by Stripe on their own pages; what we keep is the customer and subscription reference they give us, and whether the subscription is active. That is enough to know whether your account works and nothing more.

Technical records

For each request we keep the page, the response code, how long it took, the referring page, your browser's user-agent string, and a random identifier that groups the pages of one visit together. Your IP address is not stored: it is put through a keyed one-way hash so that repeat abuse from one address can be recognised without the address itself being kept. We also record product events — a recipe created, a book compiled — so that the parts of the service nobody uses can be found and fixed.

Teams and connected applications

If you invite somebody to your kitchen we hold the invitation and the membership. If you connect an AI assistant or another application through our API, we hold the access it was granted and when it was last used, so you can withdraw it.

Why, and on what basis

• To provide what you paid for — your account, your recipes, sharing, eBooks, the API. This is performance of our contract with you, and it is why we cannot run the service without it.
• To take payment — also contractual; and we keep billing records as long as tax law requires, which is a legal obligation rather than a choice.
• To keep the service standing up — rate limits, sign-in throttling, abuse detection and error diagnosis. Our legitimate interest, and yours: the alternative is a service anybody can knock over.
• To count how the site is used — first-party statistics, shared with nobody, which you can switch off. See the cookie page for why this one is opt-out rather than opt-in.
• Google Analytics — consent, and nothing loads until you give it.

Who else is involved

We use a small number of suppliers, and no others have access:

• Amazon Web Services — hosting, the database, photograph storage and outgoing email, all in London (eu-west-2). Pages are delivered through Amazon's global edge network, so a request from outside the UK is answered from a server nearer to you.
• Stripe — payments and invoices. They are a controller in their own right for what they collect at checkout, and their own privacy policy covers it.
• Google Analytics — only if you accept it, and only then.

Stripe and Google are US companies, so accepting either involves your data leaving the UK under the transfer safeguards in their respective agreements. Everything we hold ourselves stays in London (eu-west-2).

One thing worth naming because it is easy to miss: if you import a recipe by giving us a web address, our server fetches that page. The site you named will see a request from us, not from you.

How long we keep it

• Your account and recipes — for as long as the account exists.
• Deleted recipes — they go to your bin first, so a mistake is recoverable, and are removed permanently after that.
• Technical request records — 3 months.
• Product events — 24 months.
• Billing records — as long as tax law requires.

Recipes you choose to publish

A share link makes a recipe, collection or book readable by anybody who has the link. Those pages ask search engines not to index them, but that is a request, not a lock — a link you have given out can be passed on, and anybody holding it can read the page. Turning sharing off withdraws the link immediately. Treat publishing as publishing.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, ask us to restrict or stop a particular use, or object to our counting. Where you gave consent you can withdraw it, and that is as easy as giving it. Email hello@recipejam.com and we will answer within one month.

Being straight about one thing: there is no button in the application yet that deletes your whole account. Ask us and we will do it — account, recipes, photographs and logs — and confirm when it is done. A self-service version is planned, and until it exists the request route is the real one.

If you think we have got this wrong you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk. We would rather you told us first, but it is your right either way.

Children

RecipeJam is meant for adults keeping their own recipes and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 13; if you believe we have, tell us and we will remove it.

Keeping it safe

Everything travels over an encrypted connection. Passwords are hashed and cannot be read back, two-factor authentication and passkeys are available on every account, and photographs are stored privately rather than on a public address that could be guessed. No system is beyond reach, and we would tell you promptly if one of ours were breached.

Changes to this notice

If this changes we will change this page and the date at the top of it. If a change matters — a new supplier, a new purpose — we will tell you rather than leaving you to notice.