Privacy Policy

Our Commitment to Privacy

GlutenScanning is designed with privacy at its core. We believe your health data is personal and should remain private. The app has no account, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking. Most of what you do in it stays on your phone (iPhone or Android), and this policy lists everything that leaves it: what is sent, to whom and why.

Information We Collect

Information You Don't Need to Provide

• No account creation required
• No email address needed
• No phone number required
• No name or personal identification

Data That Stays on Your Device

• Scan History: The products you scan and their results are stored locally on your device
• History Search: Searching your scan history happens on your device
• Food Log: The foods you log and your daily allergen load are stored on your device
• Meal Results: The meal analysis results you save are stored on your device
• Recipes: The recipe ideas you receive are cached on your device
• Favorites and Allergen Profile: In the Android app, the products you mark as favorites and the allergens you choose to be alerted about are stored on your device
• Onboarding and Settings: Your answers to the onboarding questions and your preferences are stored locally

The app does not send any of this to us or to a third party. What does leave your device, and only for the features described below, is listed in the next section.

Third-Party Services

Open Food Facts

Product information comes from the Open Food Facts database (world.openfoodfacts.org). The app contacts it in three cases:

• Barcode lookup: the barcode number you scanned or typed
• Find alternatives: the product's category, its declared allergen tags and its brand, used to search for comparable products
• Product photos: pictures of the product are loaded from Open Food Facts' image servers

As with any web request, these requests also carry your IP address and a user agent that identifies our app. Nothing about you, your history or your dietary profile is included.

Open Food Facts is a non-profit organization. Read their privacy policy at: https://world.openfoodfacts.org/privacy-policy

PubMed (NCBI)

Allergen pages list related research from PubMed, a database run by the US National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). The app searches it with the allergen's name from its own catalogue only. Like any web request, the search carries your IP address; nothing about you or your dietary profile is included.

When you open a research article or a source link, it opens at that website (PubMed, the publisher or the cited organization). In the iPhone app, if the app is not in English, these links open through Google Translate's page translation; the Android app opens them directly. Those websites' own privacy policies apply.

AI Features: Our Server and OpenAI

Three features use OpenAI's API. The app never contacts OpenAI directly: it sends each request to our server, glutenscanning-backend.fly.dev, hosted by Fly.io in its Paris (France) region, which passes the request to OpenAI and returns the answer. What each feature sends:

• AI meal analysis: the meal photo you take or choose, re-encoded on your device without location metadata, to at most 512 pixels on iPhone and 768 pixels on Android
• AI recipe ideas: the allergens you choose to avoid. This is health information. A recipe requested from a meal result sends the suggested dish's name and the allergens to leave out.
• Ingredient translation: when a product you look up has its name or ingredient list in a language other than the app's, that name and ingredient list are sent so they can be shown in the app's language. In the iPhone app this happens automatically; in the Android app only when you tap Translate.

The app asks for your permission before your first meal analysis or recipe request. If you decline, nothing is sent for those features. For all three features, the data is:

• Sent over an encrypted HTTPS connection
• Sent without your name, an account or a device identifier
• Not stored by GlutenScanning: our server keeps no copy of the photo, allergens or text it passes on, and does not store your IP address
• Not used by OpenAI to train its models; OpenAI may keep API requests for up to 30 days to monitor for abuse (see OpenAI's API data policy)

Subscriptions

On iPhone, subscriptions are sold and managed by Apple through the App Store (StoreKit). Apple handles the payment: we never receive your payment details or your Apple Account details. You can manage or cancel a subscription in your Apple Account settings.

On Android, subscriptions are sold and managed by Google through Google Play Billing. Google handles the payment: we never receive your payment details. The app asks Google Play only whether you have an active subscription. You can manage or cancel a subscription in the Google Play Store app (Payments & subscriptions › Subscriptions).

No App Analytics

The app contains no analytics, advertising or tracking SDKs, and no other third-party SDKs, and does not collect usage statistics. If you choose to share analytics with app developers in your iPhone's settings (Privacy & Security › Analytics & Improvements), Apple shares crash reports with us in anonymous form. On Android, if your device shares usage and diagnostics data with Google, Google Play may show us aggregated, anonymous crash and performance statistics (Android vitals); the app itself sends no crash reports.

Android App and Google Play

The Android app, "GlutenScanning: Gluten Scanner" (com.glutenscanning.app) on Google Play, is published by LyteFast. Everything above applies to it; in addition:

• No account, no tracking SDKs: the app has no sign-in and contains no analytics, advertising or crash-reporting SDKs. It does not use the advertising ID and does not request your location.
• Camera: the camera permission is used only to read barcodes and, if you choose, to take a meal photo for AI meal analysis. Barcode reading happens on your device; camera images are not sent anywhere, except the meal photo you choose to analyze.
• Barcodes: the barcode number is sent to Open Food Facts to look up the product, as described above.
• AI features: the meal photo, the allergens you choose to avoid for recipe ideas and the ingredient text you ask to translate are sent through our server, glutenscanning-backend.fly.dev, to OpenAI, as described above. The app asks for your permission before your first meal photo or recipe request.
• Research articles: PubMed (NCBI) is searched with allergen names only.
• Data on your device: your scan history, favorites, allergen profile, food log and settings are stored only in the app's private storage on your device. Android backup is turned off for the app, so this data is not copied to your Google Account backup; uninstalling the app or clearing its data deletes it (see Delete your GlutenScanning data).
• Wear OS watch (optional): if you install the GlutenScanning watch app, your phone sends it today's allergen load, your recent scans with their results and your allergen list, and the watch can ask the phone to look up a barcode you type. This goes directly between your own devices through Google's Wearable Data Layer; it is not sent to us.
• Purchases: subscriptions go through Google Play Billing; we never receive your payment details.

All network requests from the Android app use encrypted HTTPS connections; unencrypted connections are disabled. Google Play's own privacy policy applies to your use of Google Play.

What We Don't Do

• ❌ We don't sell your data
• ❌ We don't share your data with advertisers
• ❌ We don't track you across other apps or websites
• ❌ We don't create user profiles
• ❌ We don't access your camera without permission
• ❌ We don't store your photos

Data Security

Since most data stays on your device, it benefits from your device's built-in security:

• Protected by your device passcode/biometrics
• Encrypted when your device is locked
• On iPhone, backed up to iCloud if you have backup enabled (encrypted)
• On Android, not included in device or Google Account backups

Requests to Open Food Facts, PubMed and our server use encrypted HTTPS connections.

Children's Privacy

GlutenScanning is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

Your Rights

Most of your data stays on your device, so you control it directly:

• Delete Data: Clear scan history in Settings or delete the app. Step by step: Delete your GlutenScanning data
• Export Data: Not applicable (data is already on your device)
• AI Features: If you decline the permission request, meal analysis and recipe ideas send nothing. Our server keeps no copy of what these features send, so there is nothing for us to delete; OpenAI may keep API requests for up to 30 days
• Opt Out: The app collects no analytics. Crash-report sharing is set in your iPhone's settings (Privacy & Security › Analytics & Improvements) or, on Android, in your device's Google usage and diagnostics setting

Website Analytics

This website (glutenscanning.com) uses Google Analytics 4 to understand how visitors find and use the site. This is separate from the GlutenScanning mobile app, which does not use any third-party analytics.

Our website analytics setup is configured to be privacy-first:

• Consent required: No analytics data is collected until you click "Accept" on the cookie banner
• IP anonymization: Your IP address is anonymized before being processed
• No advertising: Google Signals and ad personalization are disabled
• No cross-site tracking: We do not share data with advertising networks
• Easy opt-out: Click "Decline" on the banner, or clear your browser's local storage to be asked again

We use analytics to count visits, see which pages are popular, and understand which search terms bring people to the site. We do not use it to identify individuals.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by updating the "Last updated" date at the top of this policy.

Medical Disclaimer

GlutenScanning is for informational purposes only and does not replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always verify ingredients on actual product packaging and consult with qualified healthcare providers about dietary restrictions and allergies.