Privacy policy

Who processes your data

Data controller: Individual entrepreneur Orynbayev Baglan (ИП Орынбаев Баглан).

The service comprises the mobile app, the web app, the Telegram bot, the Telegram Mini App and this website. To get a copy of your data or have it deleted, use the request form; for any other question about your data, write to hello@mealcoach.fit. We reply within 30 days.

What we collect

Your account

• The name you give us.
• Your email address — if you signed up by email or with Google. Accounts created in the Telegram bot may have no email address at all.
• If you sign in with Google: your permanent Google account identifier (sub), your email address and your name. We do not request or store your Google profile picture.
• If you use Telegram: your numeric Telegram user ID and your @username, if you have one.
• Your phone number — only if you sent it to the bot yourself using the “share contact” button. Without that step we do not have it.
• The country and time zone you selected, so “today” is calculated correctly and reminders arrive at a sensible hour.
• Your notification settings, the date your account was created, and whether your email has been verified.
• One-time codes (email verification, Telegram linking) — stored only as a SHA-256 hash, and they expire.

Your food entries

• The name of the meal and its foods, the time you ate, and the meal type.
• Calories and macronutrients — entered by you or suggested automatically.
• Your notes on an entry — free text.
• The meal photos you attach.
• The status of the entry (pending, approved, flagged) and your coach's comments.
• Your personal library of saved meals and foods.

Your conversation with the Telegram bot

• The conversation history is stored in full so the bot keeps context between messages. Everything you write or send to the bot ends up there.
• Voice messages — the audio is transcribed into text.
• The /clear command deletes the stored history of that conversation.

Technical data

• IP address, app or browser type and version, and operating system — from ordinary server logs, needed to run the service, diagnose faults and prevent abuse.
• Your device's push notification token and platform (iOS/Android), if you allowed notifications in the mobile app.

We do not track your GPS location and we do not read your contacts or your list of installed apps.

Body and health measurements

We plan to add weight, body measurements and nutrition targets. These would be entered by you, stored in your diary, and visible to your coach alongside your food entries. The feature does not exist yet and we collect none of this today.

Apple Health, Google Health Connect and wearables

We plan to support importing data from health platforms and wearables (steps, energy burned, weight from smart scales, heart rate). Any such import would be switched on only by your explicit permission in the platform itself, would be revocable at any time, and would be used solely to show the data to you and your coach. Health platform data will never be used for advertising, shared with ad networks, or sold — both Apple's HealthKit terms and common sense require this. No such integration exists yet.

Payments and subscriptions

The service is currently free. When paid features arrive, payment will be handled by an external payment provider or the app stores. Card details will not reach us and will not be stored by us — we would see only that a payment happened, the plan, the renewal date and the payment history.

Analytics and crash reporting

Today the service uses no analytics, no visitor counters, no advertising or tracking SDKs and no crash-reporting service. We may add product analytics and error reporting in future so we can see where the app breaks and which features get used. Such data would be tied to a technical installation identifier rather than to the contents of your diary, and we will update this page before anything of the kind goes live.

What we never do

We do not sell personal data, do not pass it to advertising networks and do not show ads. We do not use your food entries, photos or bot conversations for ad profiling.

Your coach can see your entries

One special case: a coach can create a record for someone who does not use the app themselves, and log entries on their behalf. Such a record holds only the name the coach entered and the food entries — no email address, no password, no phone number. If you have learned that a coach keeps such a record about you and want it removed, write to us.

Why we process your data, and on what basis

Each purpose below states its legal basis in GDPR terms (Art. 6).

• To run the service — show you your diary and show your coach their clients. Basis: performance of a contract.
• To recognise food from a photo or a voice message. Basis: performance of a contract.
• To send the reminders and notifications you switched on. Basis: consent, withdrawable in settings.
• To confirm an email address is yours and protect the account. Basis: performance of a contract and legitimate interests.
• To keep the service secure and investigate faults and abuse. Basis: legitimate interests.
• To tell you about the service — occasional messages about new features. Basis: legitimate interests, with a right to opt out (below).
• To meet legal obligations — accounting, responding to lawful requests. Basis: legal obligation.
• Special category data. Nutrition information — and, in future, body measurements and health platform data — may count as health data. We process it on the basis of your explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a) GDPR), given when you start keeping a diary and withdrawn by deleting your account.

Who we share data with

We do not sell data. We share it only with the services MealCoach cannot run without, and only to the extent required:

• An AI service provider — food recognition from photos, voice transcription, and the conversational bot. Your meal photos, the audio of your voice messages and the text of your conversation with the bot are sent there, including your name and the entry details the bot needs to reply.
• Our object storage provider (S3-compatible) — where meal photos are physically stored.
• Telegram — if you use the bot or the Mini App. Telegram processes your messages as the messaging provider. When the bot shows you entries with photos, Telegram's servers fetch those photos from storage by their link.
• Google — only when you sign in with Google, to verify the token issued to you.
• Cloudflare — delivery of this website and the API, and sending our email. Cloudflare receives the recipient address and the message contents.
• you.com — the web search the bot uses to check what a product contains. The query, composed from your message, is sent there.
• Our database and hosting providers — storage of everything above.
• A payment provider and the app stores — once subscriptions exist.
• Analytics and crash-reporting services — if we add them.

We will tell you the current list of specific providers on request at hello@mealcoach.fit.

We will also disclose data where the law requires it, or to protect the rights and safety of our users. If the service is sold, reorganised or merged, data may transfer to the new owner — in that case we will tell you beforehand, and the terms on which it is handled will not get worse without your agreement.

Messages we send you

We send two kinds of message:

• Service messages — email verification, reminders to log a meal, your coach's comments. Configurable in the app: reminders and feedback notifications can be switched off.
• Messages about the service — occasional Telegram messages about new features, sent to users with a linked Telegram account.

International transfers

Some of the services listed above are located outside your country, so your data is processed abroad, including in the United States.

If you are in the EEA, Switzerland or the UK, those transfers rely on the mechanisms the law provides: standard contractual clauses with the recipients, or an adequacy decision. You can request a copy of the safeguards that apply by writing to hello@mealcoach.fit.

How we protect your data

Traffic to our servers uses HTTPS, passwords are stored hashed (BCrypt), reading a diary requires being signed in, and one-time codes are stored only as hashes.

One exception is worth stating plainly: a meal photo's link works without authentication. The address contains a random identifier that cannot be guessed and is published nowhere — but anyone who obtains that link can open the photo. It works this way so photos can be displayed in the app and in the Telegram bot. Do not forward these links to people you don't want seeing them.

No service can guarantee absolute security. If a breach occurs that is likely to result in a high risk to your rights, we will notify you and the supervisory authority within the time the law allows (for GDPR, 72 hours from becoming aware).

How long we keep data

• Account and food entries — for as long as your account exists.
• A deleted entry — removed from the database, with its photo deleted from storage.
• Bot conversation history — until you run /clear or delete your account.
• Technical logs — normally no longer than 12 months.
• After account deletion — data is removed within 30 days; backups are overwritten on their normal rotation. We may keep longer anything the law requires us to keep, such as payment records.

Your rights

You have the right to access your data and receive a copy in a machine-readable format, to correct inaccurate data, to have it erased, to restrict processing, to object to processing based on legitimate interests, to withdraw consent you have given, and not to be subject to decisions made solely by automated means.

About automated decisions. Photo recognition is a suggestion, not a decision: the numbers are editable by hand, and it is a human coach who reviews your diary. No automated decision with legal or similarly significant effects is made about you.

Some data you can delete yourself: individual entries and their photos in the app, your bot conversation history with /clear, and notifications in settings.

If you think we are handling your data wrongly, tell us and we will try to put it right. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the data protection supervisory authority where you live.

Children

The service is not intended for anyone under 16 and we do not knowingly collect their data. We do not currently verify age at sign-up. If you believe a child has given us their data, email hello@mealcoach.fit and we will delete it.

Cookies and this website

mealcoach.fit sets no cookies, loads no analytics and runs no JavaScript at all. Fonts are served from our own server rather than a third-party CDN, so visiting this page is not visible to anyone else.

The app uses no cookies. On your device it stores your sign-in token (valid for 30 days), your chosen language, and a list of recently used foods — the last of which never leaves the device. Signing out erases them.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle data, we will update this page and the date at the top. We will tell you in the app or by email about significant changes — and before any of the future capabilities flagged above actually goes live.