Privacy Policy

The short version

You can use Plato without an account. What you save stays on your iPhone.
If you sign in, your recipes, journal and photos sync privately to your account. Other people can’t see them.
No ads, no tracking, and we don’t sell your information.
Apple processes payments. We never receive your card details.
You can export your data or delete your account in the app at any time.

Who we are

Plato (“Plato”, “we”, “us”) publishes the Plato iPhone app and runs plato.recipes. If you have a question about this policy or your information, email plato@harbisongroup.com.

Using Plato without an account

You don’t need an account to use Plato. Without one, the recipes you write, your journal entries, ratings, notes, photos, shopping lists, preferences and cooking progress are stored only on your iPhone, and we don’t receive them. They may be included in your iPhone’s backups, such as iCloud Backup, which follow your settings and Apple’s terms.

Information we collect when you have an account

An account is optional. If you create one, we collect the following and link it to your account. We use it to run Plato for you, never to track you.

Name: If you use Sign in with Apple (or another sign-in option we offer), the name that provider shares with your permission. Used to set up your account.
Email address: Shared by Sign in with Apple. Used to identify your account and to contact you about it if needed. If you use Apple’s Hide My Email, we receive a private relay address instead.
Account ID: A random identifier that keeps your data separate from everyone else’s and syncs it to your devices.
Photos: Only the photos you choose to add, for example to a journal entry. They’re stored privately so they sync with your account.
Your content: Custom recipes, journal entries, notes and ratings, plus your cooking preferences and optional setup answers, such as cooking goals, available time, household size, dietary pattern, ingredients you avoid, favorite cuisines and equipment.
Cooking activity: Recipes you save, favorite, view or cook, and where you left off in a recipe. Used to sync your progress and to suggest recipes.
Connection and security data: Information such as IP address and sign-in records that our providers process to deliver the service and protect accounts from abuse.

Ingredients you avoid are food preferences. Plato doesn’t ask for health or medical information and can’t tell you whether a recipe is safe for an allergy. We don’t collect your precise location, contacts, health data or advertising identifier.

How we use information

We use information only to:

provide Plato’s features, including syncing your data across your devices;
sign you in, keep your account secure and prevent abuse;
suggest recipes in the app based on your preferences, ratings and cooking history;
send the account emails you need and, if you joined the waitlist, launch updates;
answer you when you contact us;
comply with the law and enforce our Terms of Use.

No ads, no tracking

Plato shows no ads and doesn’t track you. That means:

no advertising or analytics SDKs in the app, and no access to your device’s advertising identifier;
no combining your information with data from other companies’ apps or websites, and no sharing it with advertisers or data brokers;
no selling your personal information, and no sharing it for targeted advertising.

Recipe suggestions are made inside Plato, using only what you’ve given Plato.

Permissions and photos

Plato asks for a permission only when a feature needs it, and you can change permissions at any time in the iPhone Settings app.

Camera (optional): to take a photo of what you cooked.
Photos: you pick individual photos with Apple’s photo picker. Plato doesn’t get access to your whole library.
Notifications (optional): only to tell you when a cooking timer finishes.

Before saving a photo, Plato re-renders it, which removes embedded metadata such as GPS location. Anything visible in the photo itself stays. Plato never asks for your location.

Purchases

Premium recipes are sold as in-app purchases through Apple’s App Store. Apple processes payments under its own terms and privacy policy, and we never receive your payment card details. To unlock and restore your recipes, the app checks your verified purchases from Apple on your device. Purchases belong to your Apple Account, whether or not you have a Plato account.

The waitlist

If you join the waitlist on plato.recipes, we store:

your email address;
when you first and most recently signed up;
a record of your agreement to receive launch updates, including which version of the notice you agreed to and when.

We use your email only to tell you about Plato’s launch and availability. Joining the waitlist doesn’t create a Plato account.

To keep out spam, the signup form turns your network address into a protected one-way code (a keyed hash) and counts repeated attempts. For IPv6 connections, the code covers your network block (/64) rather than the exact address. We don’t store your raw IP address, and these codes are kept apart from waitlist emails. The counters expire after an hour or a day and are deleted when the next valid signup is processed.

We keep your email until you ask us to remove it or the waitlist is no longer needed. To leave the list, email plato@harbisongroup.com.

This website

plato.recipes doesn’t use advertising or analytics cookies and doesn’t load third-party tracking scripts. The recipe preview on the home page runs in your browser and doesn’t save anything. Vercel, which hosts the site, processes standard request information, such as IP address, browser type and the pages requested, to deliver the site and protect it from abuse. Because we don’t track you, browser Do Not Track signals don’t change anything here.

Service providers and where data is stored

A small number of providers process information on our behalf, only to run Plato:

Supabase: account sign-in and account emails, storage for synced data and photos, and the waitlist database. Plato’s Supabase project is hosted in the United States.
Vercel: hosting for plato.recipes and processing of waitlist signups.

Apple provides the App Store, payments and Sign in with Apple under its own privacy policy.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect the rights and safety of our users or others, or as part of a merger or sale of the business, in which case this policy continues to apply to your information. If you live outside the United States, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States.

How long we keep information

Account data: for as long as you keep your account. Deleting your account deletes your synced data and photos.
Deleted items: when you delete something, a marker with no content stays in your account until you delete the account, so your other devices don’t bring it back. Photos you remove are deleted from our storage during a later sync, after a grace period of at least a day.
Technical sync records: about 30 days.
Provider logs and backups: for a limited time, under our providers’ retention settings.
Waitlist: until you ask us to remove your email or the waitlist is no longer needed.
Support emails: as long as needed to help you and keep a record of your request.
On your devices: until you delete it. When you sign out, you can also remove the account’s copy from that iPhone.

Your choices and rights

Get a copy: Settings → Export My Cooking Data creates a ZIP file of your recipes, journal, preferences and photos.
Correct it: edit your recipes, entries and preferences in the app at any time.
Delete it: delete individual items in the app, or your whole account in Settings → Account → Delete Account. You can also email us to ask for deletion.
Leave the waitlist: email us.
Permissions: change camera, photo and notification access in the iPhone Settings app.

Depending on where you live, you may have other rights, such as to access, correct, delete or move your personal information, or to object to or limit how we use it. To make a request, email plato@harbisongroup.com. We may need to confirm it’s you before we act, and we won’t treat you differently for using your rights. You can also complain to your local data protection authority.

Security

We protect your information with encryption in transit (HTTPS) and access controls that keep each account’s data private to that account. Data isn’t end-to-end encrypted, so our providers and authorized operators can technically access it to run the service. No system is perfectly secure, so please keep your devices and sign-in details safe.

Children

Plato isn’t directed to children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal information, contact us and we’ll delete it.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we’ll update the effective date at the top. If the changes are significant, we’ll let you know in the app or on this website.

Contact us

Plato
plato@harbisongroup.com