Privacy policy

Introduction

This Privacy Policy explains which personal data the App processes, why, for how long, and what rights you have. It applies to the mobile application, its web version and this website. Capitalized words have the meaning given in the Terms of use.

The data controller is: Leman Byte, a simple partnership of Ivan Trifunovic, Pierrick Antenen and Esteban Font Geneva, Switzerland Contact email: contact@lemanbyte.com

In short

You can use the map without an account. Your precise position stays on your device.
If you sign in with Google or Apple, the App receives your name, email address and a unique identifier of your account, as well as your profile photo with Google.
Your reports are linked to your account but never published: other Users never see them, nor who sent them. They are about the restaurant, never about your health, and are only used to decide which restaurants are shown on the map. You can see and delete them at any time in the App.
When you scan a menu, the photo is sent to Google and Anthropic to read it and describe the dishes. The Owner does not keep the photo or the result.
The App has no advertising and no tracking, and the Owner does not sell your personal data. It only counts how it is used, with anonymous statistics that you can turn off in Settings.
You can delete your account at any time, directly in the App.

Data processed when you use the App

Location

If you allow it, your device’s location is used on your device to center the map on you and show the places around you. Your precise position is never sent to the Owner’s servers: when you search, the App only sends a position rounded to about 1 km (see below). You can withdraw this permission at any time in your device settings.

Map and search

To show restaurants, the App sends the Owner’s servers the area of the map you are viewing and what you type in the search bar. With each search, it also sends your position rounded to about 1 km, or the center of the map if your position is not available, so that the closest restaurants come first.

Data stored on your device

Your appearance and usage statistics settings and the last area of the map you viewed, so that the map opens where you left it, are stored on your device. Once you sign in, your session and your profile (name, email address and profile photo link) are stored too. Signing out removes them from the device.

Emails

You do not need an account to write to the Owner, for example to ask for a correction through “Is this your restaurant?” or Settings → Help and contact → Restaurant owners. The Owner then receives your email address, your message and any other details you choose to give, such as your name. It only uses them to answer you and to handle your request, and never shows them in the App.

Technical data

Like any online service, the Owner’s servers and those of its service providers receive technical data when the App contacts them, such as your IP address, the type of device or browser and the time of the request. This data is used to deliver the Service, to secure it and to prevent abuse (for example by limiting the number of requests) and is kept for a limited period.

Usage statistics

To understand how the App is used and improve it, the App counts the screens you open and a few actions, such as opening a restaurant, a travel guide or the report form, or sending a report. Each count includes the screen, the type of device (iPhone, Android or web browser), the name of the city or country shown on the map and technical details of your browser. It never includes your name, your email address, your account, your position, what you type in the search bar, or which restaurant you reported.

No cookie or identifier is stored on your device for these statistics. They are kept by PostHog, which counts visitors with a code computed from your IP address and browser and changed every day, so that the same person cannot be followed from one day to the next. PostHog does not keep your IP address.

The statistics are on by default. You can turn them off at any time in Settings → Preferences → Share anonymous usage stats, and nothing is sent when your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal. This website counts its page views in the same way.

Data processed when you have an account

Account

When you sign in with Google, the App receives from Google a unique identifier of your Google account, your name, your email address (when Google has verified it) and a link to your profile photo. When you sign in with Apple, the App receives from Apple a unique identifier of your Apple account, your name (Apple shares it only the first time you sign in) and your email address, or an Apple relay address that forwards to it if you choose to hide your email. The Owner also records when the account was created and when you last signed in. The App never receives your Google or Apple password, and your email address is never shown to other Users. When you sign in with Apple, the Owner also keeps a token issued by Apple, used only to end the App’s access to your Apple account when you delete your account.

Saved places and “Ate here, no issues”

The restaurants you save, and those where you confirmed a visit with no issues, with the date of each. Other Users only see how many visitors confirmed a visit with no issues, never who.

Reports

You need to be signed in to send a report, to limit abuse. The Owner keeps the restaurant, the category, the severity, the month of the visit, when the report was sent and the account that sent it, so that an account can report a restaurant only once and abuse can be stopped. Reports are never published, and other Users never see who sent them. You can see your reports and delete them at any time in Settings → your name at the top → My reports, or by writing to contact@lemanbyte.com; deleting your account also deletes your reports.

Health information

The report form only asks about the restaurant: what kind of problem it was and how serious. It never asks about your health, and the Owner does not use reports to learn anything about it.

Menu scan

In the Scan tab, you can take or choose a photo of a restaurant menu. Before sending it, the App makes the photo smaller and removes its metadata, such as the place and time it was taken. It then sends the photo to the Owner’s servers, with the language of the App and the time zone of your device, which helps to guess the country of the menu.

Before your first scan, the App asks for your permission to send the photo to Google and Anthropic.

The Owner’s servers send the photo to Google Cloud Vision, which reads its text, then the photo, its text, the language and the time zone to Anthropic, whose AI model Claude finds the dishes and describes them. The result is sent back to your device and stays there until you scan another menu or close the App. The Owner does not store the photo, its text or the result. It only keeps, with your account, the number of menu photos you scanned in the current month, to apply the monthly limit.

Only photograph menus. Anything else in the photo, such as people or personal information, is sent too.

Public reviews

The Owner’s team reads public online reviews by hand, like any visitor would: the negative ones (1 to 3 stars) from the last 12 months. Nothing is copied from them: the Owner does not store or publish their text, rating or photos, nor the names or profiles of the people who wrote them. For each food-safety problem found, the team only notes its type, how serious it is and the month of the review. These notes do not identify the people who wrote the reviews, are never published and are deleted 12 months after the month of the review.

Restaurants and their owners

For each restaurant in the App, the Owner keeps its name, address and position on the map, the address of its page on the website where the reviews are published, whether it is shown, the month of its last check and, for 12 months, the food-safety problems noted from public online reviews and Users’ reports: their type, how serious they were and the month when they happened. When a restaurant is run by one person, this can be personal data about them. The Owner processes it for its legitimate interest in informing the public about food safety, and never publishes the problems it notes. A restaurant’s owner can ask for a correction, object, or ask a person to review a decision not to show the restaurant, by writing to contact@lemanbyte.com, or by using “Is this your restaurant?” on the restaurant’s page or Settings → Help and contact → Restaurant owners.

Why the data is processed

Providing the Service (showing restaurants, keeping your account, saved places and confirmations, using your reports to decide which restaurants are shown, and scanning the menus you photograph): performance of the agreement with you (the Terms of use).
Location: your consent, given through your device’s permission.
Securing the App, preventing abuse and moderating content: the Owner’s legitimate interest in keeping the App reliable and its information fair.
Reading public reviews and noting the problems they describe: the Owner’s legitimate interest in informing the public about food safety. The notes do not identify the people who wrote the reviews.
Health information in public reviews, for example that a reviewer was ill after a meal: the reviewer made it public themselves by publishing the review.
Anonymous usage statistics: the Owner’s legitimate interest in understanding how the App and this website are used, to improve them. You can object at any time by turning them off in Settings.
Answering your emails: the Owner’s legitimate interest in answering the people who write to it.
Complying with the law and answering requests from authorities: legal obligations.

Who receives the data

The Owner does not sell your personal data and does not share it for advertising. The Owner hosts the App itself, on servers it rents from Infomaniak, which also keeps its emails. It also works with the following service providers:

Google, when you sign in with Google (Google’s privacy policy applies to your Google account). In the web version, Google’s sign-in service is loaded when you open sign-in, and Google then receives your IP address. In the mobile application, Google’s sign-in kit may also collect technical data, such as a device identifier and usage data, which Google may use for analytics;
Apple, when you sign in with Apple (Apple’s privacy policy applies to your Apple account);
Google Cloud Vision, which reads the text of the menu photos you scan. Google processes each photo in memory without storing it, and does not use it to train or improve its services;
Anthropic, whose AI model Claude describes the dishes from the photo and its text. Anthropic does not use them to train its models and deletes them within 30 days, unless it needs to keep them longer to enforce its usage policy or to comply with the law;
PostHog, which keeps the anonymous usage statistics on its servers in the European Union (Frankfurt, Germany);
OpenFreeMap, whose servers deliver the map, built from OpenStreetMap data.

All of them, Infomaniak included, receive only the data they need for their service and protect it at least as well as this Privacy Policy does.

The Owner may also disclose data to public authorities when the law requires it.

International transfers

The Owner is based in Switzerland. The App’s servers and the Owner’s service providers may be located in other countries, in Europe, Asia or the United States. Your data may therefore be processed outside your country. When the law requires it, the Owner relies on appropriate safeguards, such as adequacy decisions or standard contractual clauses.

How long the data is kept

Account and saved places: until you remove them or delete your account.
“Ate here, no issues” confirmations: 12 months, then they are deleted automatically and you can confirm again. You can remove them earlier, or delete your account.
Reports: 12 months after the month of the visit, then they are deleted automatically, or earlier if you delete them (Settings → your name at the top → My reports) or your account. A report that the Owner’s team rejects is deleted.
Menu photos and their results: not kept by the Owner (see “Menu scan” and “Who receives the data”). The number of menu photos you scanned this month is kept with your account and starts again at zero each month.
Emails: until 2 years after your last message.
Session: a sign-in stays valid for up to 90 days, after which you need to sign in again.
Data stored on your device: until you clear the App’s data or uninstall it. Signing out removes your session and your profile from the device.
Technical data: server logs are kept for 30 days, then deleted.
Anonymous usage statistics: 12 months, then deleted by PostHog.

Deleting your account and data

You can delete your account at any time, directly in the App: Settings → your name at the top → Delete my account.

Deleting your account permanently deletes:

your profile: name, email address, profile photo link and Google or Apple account identifier;
your saved places;
your “Ate here, no issues” confirmations;
your reports;
the number of menu photos you scanned this month.

If you signed in with Google, you can also remove the App’s access in your Google Account settings.

Deletion cannot be undone.

Removing the App’s access in your Google or Apple account settings does not delete the data held by the Owner: delete your account in the App as described above.

If you can no longer sign in, write to contact@lemanbyte.com and the Owner will delete your account.

Your rights

Depending on the law that applies to you, in particular the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation, the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection and the privacy laws of US states, you have the right to:

access the personal data the Owner holds about you and receive a copy of it;
have it corrected if it is inaccurate;
have it deleted;
restrict or object to its processing, including processing based on legitimate interest;
receive it in a structured, machine-readable format (portability);
withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting the processing carried out before;
lodge a complaint with the data protection authority of your country.

To exercise these rights, write to contact@lemanbyte.com. The Owner will answer within one month and may ask you to confirm your identity, for example by writing from the email address linked to your account.

Children

The App is not intended for children under 16, and the Owner does not knowingly collect their personal data. If you believe that a child under 16 has created an account, write to contact@lemanbyte.com and the account will be deleted.

Security

The Owner takes reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your data, such as encrypted connections and restricted access to its servers. However, no method of transmission or storage is completely secure.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

The Owner may update this Privacy Policy. The date of the latest update is shown at the top of this page. If the changes are significant, the Owner will inform Users in the App or by email.

Contact

For any question about this Privacy Policy or your personal data, write to contact@lemanbyte.com.

Read the Terms of use