Privacy Policy
Who we are
IQFood (“we”, “us”) is a health and nutrition tracking app and the website iqfood.app, operated by GUŢAN N. ANDREI PERSOANĂ FIZICĂ AUTORIZATĂ, a Romanian sole trader (PFA) with its registered office at Bulevardul Bucureștii Noi nr. 136, parter, ap. 5, Sector 1, București, Romania, registered in the Romanian Trade Register under no. F2026039000002 (EUID ROONRC.F2026039000002), tax identification number (CUI) 55385290. We are the controller of your personal data. This policy explains what data we collect, why, and the choices you have. Questions or requests: support@iqfood.app.
What this policy covers
It covers both the IQFood mobile app and this website (including the waitlist). If you only joined the waitlist, the only personal data we hold about you is your email address, which we used to tell you about IQFood's launch; every email includes an unsubscribe link.
Data we collect in the app
- Account data: your email address, sign-in provider, display name and profile photo (if you set one), and your @tag.
- Profile data: weight, goal weight, height, birth date, gender, goal and activity level, the answers you give during onboarding and in your profile.
- Health and lifestyle data you log: meals and their nutrition, weight entries, daily check-ins (sleep, steps, stress, activity, workouts, mood), menstrual-cycle entries, and lab results you choose to add (for example HbA1c or lipid values). This is sensitive health data: we process it only to run the app for you, with your explicit consent (see "Health data and your consent" below).
- Photos and voice: meal photos you take and voice notes you record for AI logging are sent to a third-party AI service to recognize and log food (see "AI processing" below). IQFood does not store that photo or recording, only the food log you confirm. Photos and voice notes you send in chats with friends are stored as messages.
- Social content: messages, stories, reactions and connections you create inside the app.
- Phone number (optional): if you choose to verify your phone number, we store it to confirm it is yours. The one-time code that confirms it is sent by SMS through Google (Firebase Authentication) or Twilio, or, if you choose, by WhatsApp through Twilio (see "Who processes it for us"). You can additionally turn on "find me by phone number" so people who have your number can add you; this is off by default and you can turn it off at any time. Your number is never shown to other users.
- Device and usage data: device model, OS and app version, language, and crash/performance diagnostics.
- Approximate location: our analytics provider (Google) derives an approximate, city-level location from your device's IP address to give us aggregate usage statistics. We do not collect precise/GPS location, and the app asks for no location permission.
- Premium status: whether your account is a founding member, when your free Premium ends, whether you can still take the founding price, and whether Premium is on.
- Purchases: if you subscribe or restore a purchase, we receive from Google Play or the App Store: the product and plan, any offer used (founding or partner price), the order ID (Google Play) or transaction IDs (App Store), the purchase token, the purchase, renewal and expiry dates, whether the subscription was cancelled, refunded or revoked, and the store environment (a real purchase or a test purchase). We use it only to turn Premium on for your account, keep it in sync across your devices, and handle renewals, refunds and disputes. Google and Apple process the payment as separate controllers under their own privacy policies; no card or bank details ever reach IQFood.
- Link between a purchase and your account: so that a store purchase can be matched to your IQFood account, the app passes the store an identifier derived from your IQFood account ID by a one-way hash: the obfuscated account ID on Google Play and the app account token on the App Store. It contains no name, email or other profile data.
- Install source and referrals: recorded once per account, the store campaign that brought you to IQFood: on Android the Google Play install referrer (for example a partner's or a friend's link), on iPhone Apple's ad-attribution data (whether you came from an Apple Search Ads campaign, and which one; no tracking prompt and no advertising identifier). If you open a partner's or a friend's link, or enter a code, we record that code on your account, how it was recorded (link, install referrer or typed) and when. Only the first partner recorded is kept. What a partner sees: totals (clicks, sign-ups, active and paying subscribers, revenue and Performance Fee) and, once the partner has at least five paying subscribers, a list of individual ledger lines showing only the day, the type of entry, the plan type, the net revenue, the amount and the status. A partner never receives your name, email, account ID, device data, health data or any other information that identifies you.
- Partner link clicks: when you open a partner link (iqfood.app/r/…), our website counts the click for that partner. It sets no cookie and stores nothing on your device. To count unique visitors and filter out bots, our hosting provider computes, at the edge, a one-way hash of your IP address (for IPv6, of its network prefix) with a key that changes every day, and reads your browser user agent only to skip bots and tell the platform; your raw IP address and user agent are not stored by IQFood. We keep the hash for 3 days, and keep only the count, the platform (Android, iPhone or desktop) and the country.
- Consent records: your answers on the health-data, AI-logging and marketing consent screens (whether you agreed, the version of the text and the time) so that your choice is respected on all your devices.
- Optional survey answer: if you answer the optional question shown when AI logging stops, we store your answer to improve IQFood; it is never used for advertising.
Wearables and platform health data (Health Connect / Apple Health)
If you choose to connect a health platform (Health Connect on Android or Apple Health on iOS), IQFood reads the following data types from it: steps, sleep sessions, heart rate, resting heart rate, heart-rate variability, exercise/workout sessions, active calories burned, body weight, body fat and lean body mass. We use them for one purpose: filling in your daily log and powering your personal metabolic, training and recovery estimates, exactly as if you had entered the values by hand. Values you enter manually always take precedence over synced ones.
What is stored: steps, sleep and active minutes are written into your daily log and stored with the rest of your log data, so they are available across your devices. The remaining types (heart rate, resting heart rate, heart-rate variability, active calories, body fat and lean body mass) are read and used on your device to render your training and recovery view; they are not stored on our servers.
Read-only: IQFood never writes to Health Connect or Apple Health. We access this data only with your permission, which you can review or revoke at any time in Health Connect settings (Android) or the Health app (iOS); the app keeps working without it. Health-platform data is treated like every other health record in this policy: it is never used for advertising, never sold, and never shared with third parties beyond the processors that run the app (listed below), and it is deleted with your entries or your account per the retention rules below.
Health data and your consent
Health data is special-category data under the GDPR. We process it only on the basis of your explicit consent (GDPR article 9(2)(a)), which you give on the "Your health data" screen when you create an account or first start the app as a guest, separately from these terms and from any other choice. IQFood uses it only to run the app for you: your curves, estimates and insights. It is never sold and never used for ads.
We record your answer on your account (whether you agreed, the version of the text and the time), so another phone does not ask again. Without this consent IQFood cannot store your logs or compute your curves, so the app stays locked; if you already have data, it is kept and nothing is deleted until you choose to.
Withdrawing consent: you can withdraw it at any time by deleting your data or your account, in the app, or as described on iqfood.app/delete-account. Withdrawing does not affect processing that took place before.
Why we process it
To provide the service you signed up for: logging meals, computing your personal metabolic estimates, syncing across devices, connecting you with friends or a coach you choose, and giving you the Premium access you are entitled to, including subscriptions you buy (performance of contract). Health data is processed on the basis of your explicit consent, which you can withdraw at any time by deleting the data or your account. We also process limited data to keep the service safe (abuse prevention), to send notifications you can turn off, and to meet legal obligations (for example accounting records for purchases and partner payments). We record your install source, partner attribution and partner link clicks on the basis of our legitimate interest in knowing which channels work, preventing fraud and paying partners correctly. Offers and product news are sent only with your consent. We do not sell your data and we do not show ads.
AI processing
When you use AI logging (photo, voice or chat), IQFood sends the content you submit to a third-party AI service: Google LLC's Gemini model on Google Cloud Vertex AI, acting as our data processor.
What is sent: the photo, the voice recording or the text you submit for logging, the earlier messages in that AI conversation, the foods already in your draft, your app language and your local time. What is never sent: your name, email, weight, goals, lab results, check-ins, Apple Health or Health Connect data, or anything else from your profile. Only what you put into the AI conversation itself is sent.
How it is collected: only when you choose to log with the camera, the microphone or the AI chat, never in the background, and only after you have given explicit permission on the "AI logging" consent screen the first time you use it.
All uses: to identify foods, portions and nutrition and turn them into your food log. We also keep a per-account usage counter (how many AI requests you made this month) and an error log that contains no content. The content is used for nothing else.
How Google protects it: Google processes the content as our data processor under the Google Cloud Terms of Service and the Cloud Data Processing Addendum. Google uses it to return the answer and for abuse monitoring only: it does not use it to train or improve its models, does not use it for advertising, and does not disclose it outside Google and its contracted subprocessors, who are bound by the same data-processing terms. Google may cache a request for up to 24 hours and may log prompts for abuse monitoring, as described in Google Cloud's data-governance documentation. These commitments provide the same or equal protection of your data as this policy.
Your control: AI logging is optional; barcode logging never contacts an AI service. You can withdraw your permission at any time in Profile → Privacy → "AI logging (Google Gemini)", after which the app asks again before any AI use. No other part of the app sends your personal data to an AI service.
Analytics and diagnostics
Usage analytics are opt-in. On first launch we ask whether you want to help improve IQFood by sharing anonymous usage statistics: which features and screens you use, and how the core flows perform. You can say no, and you can change your choice at any time in Profile → Privacy. These statistics never include your meal contents, weights, lab results, or any other health values, only how the app is used. Crash and performance diagnostics stay on for stability so we can find and fix problems, and they carry no health data. Analytics and diagnostics are processed by Google (Firebase Analytics, Crashlytics, and Performance Monitoring) as our processor, and are deleted when you delete your account.
Notifications and marketing
Free Premium reminders: if your account has free Premium, we send a service notification 14 days, 7 days and 1 day before it ends. These reminders contain no prices or offers; they tell you when your free Premium ends, that nothing is charged automatically, and what stays free. You can turn notifications off in your phone's settings.
Offers and product news (email and notifications): optional and off unless you switch it on. You can change it at any time in Profile → Privacy, and every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link. We record your choice, the version of the text and the time. Without this consent we send you only service messages, never offers.
Who processes it for us
The app runs on Google Firebase (Authentication, Cloud Firestore, Cloud Storage, Cloud Functions, Cloud Messaging) and Google Cloud (Vertex AI, the third-party AI service described under "AI processing"), acting as our processors under data-processing terms. Emails (launch news, and offers if you opted in) are sent through Amazon Web Services (Amazon SES) as our processor. Phone verification codes are sent by Google (Firebase Authentication) or through Twilio (Twilio Verify), both as our processors. Twilio receives your phone number, the channel you choose (SMS or WhatsApp) and the app's language, and keeps a record of each verification attempt. A code you choose to receive on WhatsApp is delivered through WhatsApp (Meta). Twilio may process this data in the United States; such transfers are covered by its Data Protection Addendum, its EU-US Data Privacy Framework certification and Standard Contractual Clauses. Subscriptions are sold and billed by Google Play and the Apple App Store, which act as separate controllers under their own terms and privacy policies. Data you share with a coach or with friends inside the app is visible to them per the permissions you grant, and those grants are revocable in the app. Google may process AI requests on servers outside the EU/EEA; such transfers are covered by the Cloud Data Processing Addendum and its Standard Contractual Clauses / EU-US Data Privacy Framework commitments. The website, the partner link pages and the partner portal are served by Cloudflare as our processor, which also provides bot protection (Cloudflare Turnstile) on the partner application form.
Retention and deletion
Your data is kept while your account exists. You can delete individual entries at any time, and you can delete your whole account in the app (Profile → Delete account), which removes your account data, including your install source and consent records.
You can also request deletion without the app: see how to delete your account or data, or email support@iqfood.app to request deletion or a copy of your data.
If you unsubscribe from waitlist emails, we stop sending you those emails. We retain only your email address and unsubscribe status on a restricted do-not-contact list to prevent your address from being added to those mailings again. This processing is necessary to comply with our legal obligations to respect your withdrawal of consent or objection (GDPR Articles 6(1)(c), 7(3) and 21(3)). We keep this limited record while we operate the relevant mailing lists and it remains necessary to respect your choice. You can contact support@iqfood.app to exercise your data protection rights.
AI request records (date, kind, token counts and cost, never the photo, audio or text) are kept for up to 12 months for billing and abuse prevention, including after you delete your account, and are then deleted.
Store purchase records (order or transaction IDs, product, dates and the pseudonymous link to your account) and partner attribution are kept after you delete your account for as long as the store subscription can still renew or be refunded. In the partner ledger, your account ID is replaced by a pseudonym 120 days after your account is deleted and the last related ledger line; the pseudonymous records are then kept only as long as the law requires for accounting and tax records.
Partners and applicants
If you apply to the IQFood Partners program or become a partner, we process your application, business, tax and payout details as described in the Partner Privacy Notice. Rejected applications are deleted after 6 months.
Your rights (EU/GDPR)
You have the right to access, rectify, erase, and receive a portable copy of your data; to restrict or object to processing; and to withdraw consent at any time without affecting prior processing. You can lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority (in Romania: ANSPDCP, dataprotection.ro). To exercise any right, use the in-app controls or email support@iqfood.app.
Security
Data is encrypted in transit and protected by per-user access rules on our backend. No method of storage or transmission is 100% secure, but we restrict access to what the app needs to function.
Children
IQFood is not directed at children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child is using the app, contact us and we will delete the account.
Changes
If this policy changes in a meaningful way, we will tell you in the app (or by email, for waitlist-only contacts) before the change takes effect.