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Privacy Policy

Last updated October 10, 2026

Forkmate is a product of High Country Codes, a Colorado sole proprietorship ("we," "us") — the data controller for the personal data described here. This policy explains what we collect, how we use it, and who helps us run the service. We aim to collect as little as possible. Questions or data-rights requests: privacy@forkmate.ai.

Information we collect

  • Account information — your email address and how you sign in, handled by our sign-in provider. You can sign in with your email address and a password; with your Google account, in which case Google shares your name, email address and profile picture with our sign-in provider and we use your email address and, to show it beside your own messages in the app, your profile picture; or on our sign-in provider's own sign-in page, which may also offer a one-time code emailed to you, or a passkey if you have set one up there. A passkey's fingerprint or face check stays on your device; the provider keeps only a public key. When you create an account or sign in with a password in the app, your password passes through our server to our sign-in provider over an encrypted connection; we don't store it, log it or keep it anywhere, and the provider stores it in hashed form, according to that provider. When you create an account, our sign-in provider emails you a 6-digit code to confirm the address is yours (and a new one if you ask, or if you sign in before confirming). The code confirms your address; it never signs you in on its own. When you sign up or sign in, our sign-in provider receives your email address and, to protect sign-in from abuse, your IP address and browser type. We don't keep your IP address or browser type ourselves, apart from our hosting provider's operational logs (up to 7 days, described below). To limit abuse, we do keep codes made from your IP address's network with a secret key, which can't be turned back into the address: one to cap how many accounts a network can create in the app (kept up to 2 days), and one to cap AI use by new accounts on a network (see AI limits and abuse prevention). To limit how many emails and sign-in attempts one address can get, we keep a scrambled form of your email address, never the address itself, for up to 2 days. A new account stays unconfirmed until its code is entered; if it is still unconfirmed about 24 hours later, we have our sign-in provider delete it. If someone tries to create an account with an email address that already has one, and the password doesn't match, we don't say so on screen; instead our sign-in provider emails that address a link to reset its password. If you ask to reset your password, our sign-in provider emails you a link to its own page where you choose a new one.
  • Bot checks on sign-in — every sign-up, sign-in, code and password-reset form in the app uses a bot check from our hosting and security provider to tell people from automated abuse. It runs in a frame served by that provider, which receives your IP address and technical information about your browser and device to make that check; it does not read what you type into the form. Most of the time it runs without you noticing. We receive only the result of the check. The provider runs the check for us, and also uses that information as its own controller to improve its bot detection, under its own privacy terms for the check.
  • The data you log — the meals you record and, optionally, profile details you choose to enter (sex, age, height, weight, activity level, diet style, allergies, foods you like or dislike, and calorie or macro goals), or confirm when Forky offers to remember a like or dislike, to personalize your targets and Forky’s suggestions. Any display preferences you set (such as hiding numbers) are stored with your account; see the Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy. If you send us feedback from inside the app, or answer the one-time “How’s logging going?” question with a 👍 or 👎, we keep it with your account so we can act on it. A note sent with the Feedback button also keeps the name of the screen you sent it from (such as “Diary › Meal chat”), chosen from a fixed list of the app’s screens and shown to you before you send, never anything read off the page. If you ask a connected AI assistant to send us feedback, the note you asked it to send is kept the same way, with which kind of AI app sent it and the topic you or it chose (logging, accuracy, connecting, or other); if you tick “Include my last meal’s text” (shown to you beside the box, and offered only while your health-data consent is current), the words you typed for your most recent meal in the meal box are kept with that note. Feedback is kept with your account, with your email so we can reply, so deleting your account deletes it. When we fix something you reported, we may leave you a notification saying so, with a short note from us; it is kept with your account for up to 180 days, shown in the notifications of the new app design, readable by an AI assistant you connect, included in your data export and deleted with your account.
  • Usage & reliability data — to know whether Forkmate works, we record that certain things happened on your account — for example that you signed up, moved through onboarding, or logged a meal from the web app or from an AI assistant — with your account identifier, the time and which surface was used (for an AI assistant, which kind: Claude, ChatGPT or another), and, for your sign-up and your first logged meal, how you first reached us (the label, landing section and tags described under Campaign & referral identifiers). If you answer the one-time “How did you find Forkmate?” question shown after your first logged meal, we keep your choice from its fixed list (or that you closed it) with your account and in these records. If you choose “Other”, you can also type a few words about where you heard of us (up to 80 characters; before keeping them we remove anything that looks like an email address and the tracking part of any link); those words are kept the same way, are included in your export and are erased with your account. Neither your choice nor your words are ever sent to our product-analytics provider. These records never contain what you ate, your nutrition values or your notes (meal text we keep to improve matching is a separate store, described below). They are kept in our own infrastructure and erased with your account. Because you consent to usage analytics as a condition of using Forkmate, a pseudonymous version of some of these events is also sent from our server to our product-analytics provider; see Analytics. Separately, our hosting and security provider keeps operational logs for up to 7 days. They can include your account identifier, your IP address and an approximate location derived from it, your browser type, and the addresses you requested (which can include a food search term), and are used only to run and secure Forkmate.
  • AI limits and abuse prevention — AI reading is free but limited, so that fake or throwaway accounts can't use up what everyone shares. With your account we keep how much AI it has used each day and each month (an amount, never what you asked), when the account was created, whether its email address is confirmed, and whether the address's domain is on a public list of temporary-email services. We use these only to decide whether AI can run on a request. Accounts in their first 30 days have lower limits than older accounts, lowest in their first 72 hours, and accounts on a temporary email address don't get AI. For accounts in their first 72 hours, we also keep daily totals of AI use per network, under codes made with a secret key from the IP address's network and the network provider's number (ASN) for that day, deleted within 2 days. We also keep a monthly total for each account under a code made the same way from the account, deleted within 62 days. These totals contain no IP address, account identifier or email address. None of this is sent to analytics. When a limit is reached, you can still log your meal without AI.
  • Meal descriptions you type, read by AI — once you have given the consent described below, each meal you type into the web app and submit (never as you type, and whether or not you then log it) is sent, as text only, to our AI provider, which returns the foods, amounts and any details in it. The calories and macros on your plate come from public food databases (USDA FoodData Central and Open Food Facts) or, for a dish from a restaurant you name, from figures the restaurant has published, found on its own site or on a nutrition site that lists them; the AI must copy those from a page its search returned, and we show you that page. Only when none of those has a figure for a food does our AI provider estimate its calories and macros from the same meal text, and that line is labelled "Estimate". An estimate is an approximation, not a measured or published value, and a copied figure can be wrong too, so check the line if it matters. When a meal names a restaurant, we also send our AI provider just the restaurant's name and the names of the dishes and sauces from it (not the rest of what you typed, not the amounts, and nothing about you) so it can search the web for that restaurant's published nutrition information; its web search passes those names to its search provider. If the restaurant's figures are found, your plate says whose they are, which site they came from, and links that page; if not, it says the line is an estimate. We keep what was found for a restaurant dish (the restaurant's figures and the page) for up to 90 days and reuse it for anyone who names that dish; it holds no account, no meal text and no time except when it expires and the day the figures were found. To avoid sending the same description twice, we keep how a description was read (the foods, amounts and how they were described, never a place, and only when every one matched a food in our database) for up to 30 days. That copy is not linked to you or your account, and we don't try to link it; we store no time with it, though our hosting provider's cache keeps its own expiry date. When an AI assistant you connect logs or changes a meal and sends us how you described it, our AI provider may read those words in the same way, to check the foods and amounts against what you said. Apart from what this section, Meal text we keep and Your diary chat describe, your imports, notes, profile and diary history are not sent to our AI provider.
  • Meal text we keep to improve matching — under the same consent, we keep the meals you type in the web app, including ones you don't log: the text, how our own matcher read it, how the AI read it, whether you changed the plate before logging it, whether you pressed "Fix with AI", and the day it was written. When an AI assistant you connect logs or changes a meal and sends us how you described it, we keep those words the same way, with the foods and how our own matcher read them. It is linked to your account, so you can export it and so deleting your account deletes it. It is not anonymous. We use it only to find meals Forkmate reads wrongly and to improve how it matches foods. For analysis, we can make a copy of it that removes your account, the exact time and a place you named after "at" or "from" (such as "at the diner"), and scrubs email addresses, phone numbers, web links and long numbers. Free text can sometimes point to a person, so we treat those copies as personal data: they are deleted within 90 days, and are never copied into our code or test files (test cases are written by hand). We may analyse these copies with AI tools to check and improve our accuracy. To check how accurate our data is, we may also analyse a copy of your meal history in the same way: the foods, amounts and figures you logged, the day, and the kept meal text, with a code in place of your account and without notes, exact times or places. Kept meal text is never sent to analytics and never used to train AI models, and it reaches our AI provider only as the meal being read at that moment and, without your account attached, in the analysis described here. Each one is deleted automatically 1 year after it was written (plus up to 30 days in our hosting provider's point-in-time recovery). If you withdraw consent we stop keeping new ones. Ones already kept may still be used to improve food matching until each expires 1 year after it was written; deleting your account erases them.
  • Your conversation in the meal box — the web app shows the meals you type as a conversation, so you can see what was logged and undo it. To show it back to you, we keep the text of each message that was a meal (the same words your diary and the kept meal text above already hold), the answer you tapped to a follow-up question, and what Forkmate did (logged, asked, undone) with the calories and diary entries involved. If you send something that isn't a meal, such as a diet question or a message with no food in it, we keep only that it was declined or had no food, never what you wrote. Forkmate's replies are fixed wording we wrote, not written by an AI. The stored conversation is kept with your account; it is never sent to our AI provider (only the meal you just typed is, to be read, as described above), to analytics or to an AI assistant you connect, and it is not added to the kept meal text. Each message is deleted automatically 7 days after it was written (plus up to 30 days in our hosting provider's point-in-time recovery). You can clear it at any time in the app; clearing it does not remove meals from your diary or the kept meal text. It is included in your data export and erased when you delete your account.
  • Your diary chat (the new app design) — in the new design of the app, which some people are trying out before everyone gets it, each day of your diary is a chat. If you signed in with an account that has a profile photo (such as Google), that photo shows beside your own messages: our server gets its address from our sign-in provider, fetches it when the app asks for it, and keeps a copy for up to a day, only for you; your browser checks with us each time it shows it, so the next person to sign in on the same browser never sees it, and without one we show your initial. We keep each day's chat with your diary until you delete your account: the text of each message you typed that was a meal, what Forkmate read from it (the foods, amounts and nutrition figures it showed you, and the meal and day), and whether you logged it, changed it, undid it or cancelled it. When an AI assistant you connect, a personal key you made or a MyFitnessPal import adds, changes or removes a meal, that day’s chat also keeps a note of it: which app it was (named by the address we verified for it, or by the name you gave your key), the foods, amounts and nutrition figures, and how you described the meal if the assistant sent us your words. Meals an app or import added before we kept these notes get one too, made once from your own diary and marked “From your history”: the foods and figures as they stand in your diary, and which app only where we can tell from records we already hold, otherwise “An AI app”. A message with no food in it that Forky doesn’t answer is kept only as the fact that it was declined or had no food, never what you wrote, and a photo or barcode you sent is kept only as the fact that you sent one. Most of Forkmate’s replies are fixed wording we wrote, but Forky, the coach, is an AI: his follow-up questions about a meal and his answers to your questions are written by our AI provider’s model, pass Forkmate’s automatic checks before you see them, and can still be wrong. Forky, the app’s coach (in early beta), answers some messages itself, and we keep those exchanges word for word in your chat, with Forky’s replies: a short question or two when you name a meal without details (such as “a burger”: where from, which one), with your answers; a question you ask Forky about food, training or your own diary, with his answer; a like or dislike he offers to remember, saved to your food profile only if you tap yes; a request we won’t help with because it is clearly harmful (such as weapons, violence or sexual content); and a message about self-harm or an eating disorder. To choose its next question, Forky sends our AI provider the meal you named, what you have answered so far and your latest answer, never anything else from your account; the meal your answers add up to is then read like any meal you type. To answer a question, Forky sends our AI provider your question and a short summary: your food profile (likes, dislikes, allergies, diet style), the names of the foods you log most, and, unless Calm mode is on, today’s calories, protein, carbs and fat, how many meals you’ve logged, and your calorie goal (left out when it is set below what Forkmate suggests, or if you are under 18, in which case it is told only that, so it keeps weight-loss talk out). Answers about your diary (such as your highest-calorie food in a given week) are worked out by Forkmate from your own diary, not by the AI, and a plainly worded one sends the AI nothing at all. Forky is a coach, not a doctor or a dietitian, and his answers are not medical advice. A clearly harmful request is also recorded: we keep a small record with your account (what kind of request it was, when, and which message). A message about self-harm or an eating disorder is never held against you: Forky replies with care and the 988 line. Neither ever stops you using Forkmate. No one watches these messages as they arrive, and Forkmate can't send help: if you're in danger, call 911 or your local emergency number. The record and those messages are included in your data export and deleted with your account; a safety record stops counting after 90 days and is deleted the next time one is recorded or read, or with your account. Your diary chat is not deleted automatically, and a single day's chat can't be deleted on its own. If you sent something by mistake, you can cancel it while it is not logged: nothing from it is added to your diary, and it stays in your chat with what Forkmate read from it, the message crossed out and the card hidden, like the rest of the day's chat. You can change or remove a recent meal, which changes your diary too; the chat still keeps what you typed and shows the meal as removed. Deleting your account deletes all of it (plus up to 30 days in our hosting provider's point-in-time recovery). It is never sent to our AI provider (only the meal you just typed is, to be read, and, while Forky asks about it or answers a question, the words of that exchange, as described above), to analytics or to an AI assistant you connect. It is included in your data export.
  • Saved recipes — when you save a meal you logged as a recipe, we keep the name you give it, how many servings it was, and a copy of its foods and numbers, so typing the name logs it again. It is stored with your account, kept until you delete the recipe or your account, and included in your data export. Deleting the original meal does not change the recipe.
  • Food lookups — when you or your AI assistant search for a food or scan a barcode, our servers may send the search term or barcode to the public USDA FoodData Central and Open Food Facts databases to fetch its nutrition values. Only the term or barcode is sent — never your identity, your account, or your diary. When a meal you type names a brand's packaged product (for example a frozen bowl or a protein bar), we search those two databases for that product by its brand and product name only, and keep the product's figures we find (with the database or page they came from) in a shared product list that anyone naming that product reuses. If neither database has it, we send our AI provider just the product's brand and name (not the rest of what you typed, not the amount, and nothing about you) so it can search the web for the product's published nutrition label on the maker's or a retailer's site; its web search passes those names to its search provider. A label found that way is checked against the passages the search quoted from that page, kept in the same list and shown to you as "From the label · Unverified" with a link to that page until we have checked it. That list holds the product as the database or label names it, never your words, your account, your meal or when you ate.
  • Meal photos, read by AI — the camera button in the web app first looks for a barcode in your photo, on your device; a photo with a barcode is not sent anywhere, and only the barcode number is looked up as described under Food lookups. If no barcode is found, and only if you are signed in and have given the consent described below, the photo is shrunk on your device and sent, through our server, to our AI provider, which returns the foods and amounts it can see and, where no public database has a food, an estimate of its calories and macros, labelled as an estimate. Details stored inside the image file (such as where and when it was taken, and the camera) are removed on your device and again on our server before the photo is sent. Our AI provider receives the photo and nothing else about you: not your name, email, account, diary or profile. Forkmate does not keep the photo: it is not saved to your account, our database, our logs or any cache, and it is not added to the meal text we keep to improve matching. Only what you choose to log is kept, like any meal. Our AI provider handles the photo as it handles meal text: it may not train models on it, and it deletes it within 30 days, or keeps it for up to 2 years if its automated safety systems flag it. It receives the whole picture, so anything else in it, such as people, documents or a recognisable place, reaches it too: please photograph only the food. The AI is told to list only food and drink and never to describe or identify a person, but that is an instruction, not a guarantee.
  • Campaign & referral identifiers — when you reach us from a marketing link or ad, we may receive campaign tags (UTM parameters) and a first-party referral identifier so we can understand which campaigns lead to sign-ups. If you come to the app from our marketing site, the link into the app also carries a one-word label for the kind of place that first sent you to forkmate.ai (for example a search engine, an AI assistant, "direct" or "other") and the section of our site you first landed on (for example /blog/, never the individual page). If you are in the European Economic Area, the UK or Switzerland, the label and section are not stored. If nothing like this reached us when you signed up, we record instead one fixed word saying so: that you came to the app directly, that you were in one of those regions (so we could not tell), or, if your account was created by connecting an AI assistant to Forkmate, that it was, and which kind (Claude, ChatGPT or another; never the app's address). We never record the address of the site that sent you, what you searched for, or your IP address for this. Advertising click identifiers (such as Google's gclid) are no longer recorded (since September 2026), even when they appear in the link you arrived from, and our marketing site removes them from the page address before our site analytics sees it. The tags, label and landing page are kept with your account until you log your first meal, then deleted. A reduced version (each tag mapped to a fixed list, plus the label and the landing page's section, such as /blog/) stays with the record of your sign-up and first logged meal, which is erased with your account, and is sent to our product-analytics provider as described under Analytics. None of it is ever combined with what you log.

Importing from other apps

Forkmate can import your history two ways, and neither asks for your login or account password to the other service.

(1) Guided importer (MyFitnessPal): our guided importer accepts the whole encrypted MyFitnessPal export: you drop in the .zip and paste the password MyFitnessPal sent you. We never ask for your MyFitnessPal login or account password. The archive is opened and read entirely inside your own browser — the password, the archive, and every non-food record in it never leave your device — and only the food entries (dates, meal, food name, serving, and nutrition values) are sent to us to build your diary.

(2) AI-assisted import: you point your own AI assistant at your export and it logs the food rows into Forkmate through the same secure MCP connection you use to log meals. In this path your file is handled by your AI assistant, not by Forkmate.

Before anything is saved we show you exactly what will be added and ask you to confirm. Imported entries are health-related data and get the same protection, retention, and export/deletion rights as meals you log yourself.

Using Forkmate from an AI assistant

You can connect Forkmate to an AI assistant you already use (such as Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor) over our MCP connection. You sign in to Forkmate to authorize it (an app that runs on your computer uses a personal key you make in Settings instead, stored by us only as a one-way hash, which you can revoke at any time), and each request it makes is limited to your own account. Forkmate receives only what the assistant sends to Forkmate's tools — for example a meal to log, an entry to change, a like, dislike or allergy you asked it to save, or a question about a date range — and returns your data only to that signed-in connection, so that it can answer you. Forkmate does not receive your conversation with the assistant.

That conversation, including anything the assistant reads back from Forkmate, is governed by the assistant's own terms and privacy policy, not ours. Some consumer AI plans may use chats for model training unless you opt out in that app's settings; Forkmate cannot control how a third-party assistant you connect handles your conversation. You can disconnect an assistant at any time from the assistant's settings; deleting your Forkmate account also ends its access.

If you connect Forkmate to Meta Muse, more applies than for other assistants. Meta receives what Muse sends to Forkmate's tools and everything Forkmate returns, which can include your diary, your food profile and other health-related data. Under Meta's connector terms, Meta may also use that information, and how you used Forkmate through Muse, to personalize and improve Muse. Meta does this as an independent controller, for its own purposes and under its own privacy policy, not ours and not on our behalf; the promises in this policy (for example, not using your data for advertising or to train AI models) bind Forkmate, not Meta. Disconnecting Forkmate from Muse ends Muse's access but does not delete your Forkmate diary, and deleting your diary or your Forkmate account does not delete what Meta has already received; ask Meta about that. If you don't want this, use Forkmate in the web app or through another assistant instead of Muse.

Some directories of AI tools (for example Smithery) can relay your assistant's requests to Forkmate through their own gateway. If you connect that way instead of directly to mcp.forkmate.ai, your requests and the data Forkmate returns pass through that service, under its own terms and privacy policy, not ours, and that service may hold the authorization that lets it read and change your Forkmate diary for you until you disconnect it there. Forkmate is listed in Smithery's directory, but Smithery runs that gateway, not us. You choose whether to use it, and we don't control how it handles your data. Connecting directly to mcp.forkmate.ai avoids it.

How we use it

To provide and improve the service: store your food diary, compute your daily calories and macros, secure your account, and diagnose problems. Forkmate is free: there are no paid plans, and we collect no payment information. We do not sell your personal data or use your health-related data for advertising.

Health-related data & medical disclaimer

Our Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy sets out, for Washington, Nevada and everyone else, exactly which health data we collect, why, where it comes from, who it is shared with, and how to access or delete it.

The meals, body metrics, and goals you log can reveal health-related information. We treat this as sensitive: we never sell it or use it for advertising, and we share it only with the providers below, to operate Forkmate, to check logged meals for accuracy and to understand how it is used (pseudonymous usage events only, never the data itself), and, if you connect Forkmate to Meta Muse, with Meta, which uses it for its own purposes (see If you connect Forkmate to Meta Muse).

Forkmate is a tracking tool — not a medical device, healthcare provider, or source of medical or nutritional advice. Calorie and macro estimates are for general informational purposes only and may be inaccurate. Consult a qualified professional before making dietary, health, or medical decisions.

Our nutrition figures — including carbohydrates — are estimates drawn from public databases (USDA, Open Food Facts), restaurants' published figures, packaged products' published labels (read by AI and marked Unverified until we check them), your own entries or, where none of those has a figure, our AI provider's own estimate, labelled "Estimate". They are approximate, not lab-measured or per-batch, and are not accurate enough for insulin dosing, blood-glucose prediction, or any other medical decision. Rely on the product's own label and your care team for those.

Forkmate is also not a treatment or monitoring tool for eating disorders or any mental-health condition. If tracking your food or body ever feels harmful or distressing, please seek support from a qualified professional — in the US you can call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (free, confidential, 24/7, and also helps with eating-disorder distress). See our Terms for details.

Service providers (sub-processors)

Apart from Meta, if you connect Forkmate to Meta Muse (see If you connect Forkmate to Meta Muse), we share data only with vendors that help us run Forkmate, under contract. They act on our behalf and not for their own purposes, except where a line below says otherwise. Meta is not one of them. For the visit measurement on our marketing site we have turned off the provider's advertising signals, ad personalisation and data sharing with its other products, and we have not linked it to any advertising account. Forkmate's web app uses an AI model to read the meals you type: each meal description you submit goes to our AI provider, which returns the foods and amounts in it and, where no published or database figure exists, an estimate of their calories and macros. For a meal that names a restaurant, our AI provider also receives the restaurant, dish and sauce names on their own, to search the web for that restaurant's published nutrition, and its web search passes those names (never the rest of what you typed, or anything about you) to its search provider. Nutrition values come from public food databases or from figures a restaurant has published; only when neither has a figure does the AI estimate them, and those lines are labelled "Estimate". We call our AI provider directly; no AI gateway sees the text. Our AI quality-review provider (below) receives a record of each reading, so we can check it was right. We describe each provider below by what it does rather than by name. We'll tell you the current list of providers if you ask: privacy@forkmate.ai.

  • Our sign-in provider — authentication and login, including checking your password, emailing the code that confirms your address, and emailing password-reset links.
  • Our hosting and security provider — hosting, storage, and infrastructure security, including the bot check on the app's sign-in forms. For that check, the provider also uses the check's signals for its own purpose of improving its bot detection (see Bot checks on sign-in).
  • Our email provider — business email: when you email us (for example support@, privacy@ or legal@forkmate.ai) or we reply, that correspondence is handled through it.
  • Our site-analytics provider — visit measurement on our marketing site, forkmate.ai, only. Not in the app. See Analytics.
  • Our AI provider — as our processor: reads each meal description you type in the web app, and each meal photo you send from it in which no barcode was found, and separates it into foods and amounts, estimating their calories and macros only when no published or database figure exists; and receives the meal text we keep again, without your account attached, when we analyse it to improve matching, and, with a code in place of your account, a copy of your meal history when we check how accurate our data is (see Meal text we keep). It may also read the words a connected AI assistant sends us for a meal, to check the foods and amounts against what you said. For a reading, it receives only that text or photo (with the photo's file details removed) and how it was read and, for a typed meal that names a restaurant, the restaurant, dish and sauce names on their own, to look up the restaurant's published nutrition on the web. For Forky, the in-app coach, it also receives the meal you named and your answers while he asks about it, and each question you ask him with a short summary: your food profile (likes, dislikes, allergies, diet style), the names of the foods you log most and, unless Calm mode is on, today’s totals and calorie goal (see Your diary chat). Never your name, email or account ID. It also receives a sample of meal readings again, the meal text and how it was read, without your account, so we can check the reading was right. Under its commercial terms it may not train models on any of it. It deletes meal text and photos within 30 days, or keeps them for up to 2 years if its automated safety systems flag them.
  • Our product-analytics provider — usage analytics for the app, as our processor: pseudonymous records of which features were used and when, sent from our server. Never food, nutrition values, notes, body measurements, goals or your email. See Analytics.
  • Our AI quality-review provider — as our processor, in the United States, so we can check that what our AI reads and what Forkmate answers are accurate and safe. It receives a record of each AI reading in the web app: the meal text you typed and how it was read (the foods, amounts and calories), and, for a photo, only that a photo was read and what was read from it, never the photo. It also receives a record of each request an AI assistant you connect makes to Forkmate: which assistant, which action, a shortened copy of what the assistant sent and what we answered (for a read of your diary, only how many meals and the food names, never the full diary), and whether it worked. Each record carries your account ID, so we can find your records, and later whether you logged, changed, cancelled or removed what was read. Before anything is sent we remove email addresses, anything that looks like a phone number, the parameters of web links and anything that looks like a password or key, and we shorten long text. It never receives your account's email address or name, or your IP address. When we recognise that what you typed is not a meal and Forky doesn’t answer it, it receives only that a non-meal message was sent, never the words; for a clearly harmful request, or a message about self-harm or an eating disorder, it receives only which kind it was. It also receives a record of each of Forky’s questions about a meal (the meal you named, your answers and the question Forky asked) and of each question you ask Forky, with his answer and whether Calm mode was on, never the summary of your account he was given (though his answer may mention part of it, such as a food you like); a question Forky passes to your care team is sent as that kind only, never its words. It acts only on our instructions. We delete these records after 27 days, and deleting your account deletes them.

Analytics

On our marketing site (forkmate.ai) we use an analytics provider to count visits and clicks on the sign-up and "connect your AI" buttons. If you are in the European Economic Area, the UK or Switzerland, it does not load until you press Accept in the cookie banner. Everywhere else it runs by default, and you can switch it off at any time with Cookie settings at the bottom of every page. When it runs, that provider receives the pages you visit, your browser and device type, an approximate location derived from your IP address, and those button clicks. It also records how far you scroll down a page, clicks on links that lead to other websites, and file downloads. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat it as a Reject. It does not run on the quiz page, which asks for body measurements, and it never runs in the Forkmate app. We use it only to count visits and clicks: we don't use the provider's advertising features, and we don't use your data for targeted advertising. The provider keeps this data for 2 months, and processes it in the United States.

The app (app.forkmate.ai) loads no analytics scripts. Its only third-party script is a bot check on sign-in forms, from our hosting and security provider (see Bot checks on sign-in above), not analytics. Usage analytics is a condition of using Forkmate: the health-data consent you give before logging anything covers it, and to learn which features people use, so we can improve Forkmate and decide how to fund it, our server sends our product-analytics provider pseudonymous usage events: which feature was used and when. For example: that an account signed up, gave consent, logged, edited or deleted a meal (whether through the web app or an AI assistant, and whether the meal had 1, 2–3 or 4+ foods; for a meal described in the web app, also whether you changed the plate before logging it and a rough band for how sure our food matcher was of it), previewed a plate, tapped “Fix with AI”, for a deleted meal roughly how long after logging it was deleted (under 10 minutes, under a day, or longer), was shown, answered or closed the “How’s logging going?” question, or sent feedback (👍, 👎 or no rating, whether a note or a meal’s text came with it, and whether it was sent from the after-log question, the feedback link, the Feedback button or an AI assistant, never the note, the meal or the screen), moved through an onboarding step, opened the app, changed time zone, connected an AI assistant (which kind), imported from MyFitnessPal, or deleted the account. The sign-up and first-logged-meal events also say where you came from: the label and landing section described under Campaign & referral identifiers (or the word saying you came to the app directly or through an AI assistant; never which assistant, and never the region word), and any campaign tags, each reduced to a fixed list of values (anything not on the list is sent as "other"). The first-logged-meal event also says whether it came through the web app or an AI assistant, and which kind (Claude, ChatGPT or another). Each event, except the daily totals below, carries an identifier we derive from your account ID with a secret key. It is not your email or your account ID, and the provider cannot turn it back into either. We do not send your IP address, and the provider's location lookup is switched off. Our product-analytics provider never receives what you ate, food names, meal descriptions, calories or other nutrition values, notes, weight or other body measurements, goals, or your email. Account deletions are counted without any identifier at all, as daily totals. The provider keeps these events for up to one year. If you withdraw your consent, we stop sending events straight away, and 7 days later we ask the provider to delete the ones tied to you, unless you give consent again before then (so a withdrawal made by mistake loses nothing). If you delete your account, we ask straight away. Once asked, it removes the person record within minutes and deletes the events in its next scheduled deletion batch. Apart from the fact that you signed up and how you first reached us, which we send when you first consent and again with your first logged meal, nothing from before you give the current consent is ever sent to it.

Our hosting and security provider, which hosts and serves both the site and the app, records standard request logs as part of operating them.

Cookies

The marketing site sets analytics cookies only when its visit measurement runs (see Analytics): the provider's _ga and_ga_* cookies, which last up to two years. Your choice in the cookie banner is kept in your browser's local storage (fm_analytics_consent) so we don't ask again. If you are in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, no analytics cookie is set unless you accept. Outside the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, the marketing site also sets one first-party cookie of its own, fm_attr(about 24 hours, readable only by forkmate.ai and not by any script on the page), holding the label, landing section and campaign tags described under Campaign & referral identifiers, so the link into the app carries where you first came from even after you have clicked between our pages. In those three regions it is not set. The app (app.forkmate.ai) sets the cookies needed to sign you in and keep you signed in, including one (__Secure-fm_verify, about 10 minutes) that ties the step where you confirm your email address to your browser, all strictly necessary. On the app's sign-in forms, the bot check's frame (served by our hosting and security provider) reads technical information from your browser to run the bot check, and may store data in your browser for that purpose. We treat this as strictly necessary to protect the sign-in you asked for, so it runs without asking for cookie consent; see Bot checks on sign-in. If you arrive from our marketing site (outside the EEA, the UK and Switzerland) or from a link that carries campaign tags, it also sets a short-lived first-party cookie (fm_attr, about 24 hours) holding those tags, the label and landing section described under Campaign & referral identifiers, and a random referral identifier, so a sign-up can be attributed to the campaign that led to it. None of these cookies is shared with anyone, and none ever carries health-related data.

The app also keeps a few preferences in your browser's local storage: your color theme (forkmate_theme), whether you finished onboarding (forkmate_onboarded), whether numbers were hidden last time (fm_quiet), so they don't flash on screen while the app loads, whether you dismissed the optional "set a goal / connect your AI" card (forkmate_extras_seen), and, if you ask to be reminded about a MyFitnessPal import, that you started one (forkmate_mfp_import_started). These stay on your device and are never sent to us or anyone else. All of them except the color theme are about you rather than the device, so the app deletes them when you sign out.

Two more are used only around installing the app:

  • forkmate_install_dismissed: that you chose "Not now" on the offer to add Forkmate to your home screen. It stays on your device and is never sent to us.
  • forkmate_pending_pwa_events: if you open our install page or install the app while signed out, this holds a note of that on your device: only the event's name (for example "install prompt shown") and where it came from (the install link or the in-app card), with the time. Unlike the keys above, it is sent to us: the next time you sign in on this device it is sent as an install event on your account, then deleted. Notes older than one day are deleted without being sent.

Your rights & data retention

You can access, export, or delete your data at any time — export and account deletion are available directly in your account settings. We keep your data while your account is active. Deleting your account erases your data from our live systems immediately; copies in our hosting provider's point-in-time recovery expire within 30 days. That includes the meal text we keep to improve matching. Meal text already sent to our AI provider is deleted on its schedule (within 30 days, or up to 2 years if its safety systems flagged it); we can't recall it. Deleting your account also deletes your records at our AI quality-review provider (we ask it to at once, and check again until none are left); otherwise they are deleted after 27 days. If you connected Forkmate to Meta Muse, what Meta received is kept under Meta's own policy; deleting your Forkmate account does not reach it. A de-linked analysis copy is not linked to your account either, so deletion can't find it; it is deleted within 90 days of the export. The 30-day cache of how a description was read is not linked to you, so it is not found by an account deletion; it expires on its own. Deleting your account deletes its AI usage record. The per-network and per-account AI totals described under AI limits and abuse prevention can't be found from your account, so an account deletion doesn't remove them; they are deleted within 2 days (per network) or 62 days (per account). The restaurant figures we keep for up to 90 days (14 days when none were found) hold no account and no meal text, so an account deletion does not find them either; they expire on their own. We may retain limited data longer where the law requires it (for example a legal hold or court order), which can override the timelines above.

Depending on where you live (for example the EU/UK, or US states such as California and Colorado), you may have additional rights — including access, correction, deletion, portability, and the right to opt out of certain processing. Contact privacy@forkmate.ai to exercise them. We respond within 30 days (45 where state law allows); if we decline a request, you can appeal by replying to our decision. If you are in the EU/UK you may also complain to your local data-protection authority. Where we process health-related data, we rely on your explicit consent (see Legal bases): before you log anything — in the web app or through an AI assistant — we ask you to tick a box consenting to it. Consent can also be given in a connected AI assistant by replying that you agree, and we record it with the time and the app (and the words you replied with); a meal you asked the assistant to log first is held with your account for up to 30 minutes, so it can be logged once you agree, and deleted unlogged if you don't. That same consent covers having the meals you type read by our AI provider, keeping what you type to improve matching, and the pseudonymous usage analytics described above; all three are conditions of using Forkmate. You can withdraw it at any time in Settings. That pauses logging, stops your diary being shared with connected AI assistants, stops AI reading, stops us keeping new meal text, stops usage analytics straight away, deletes your records at our product-analytics provider 7 days later unless you consent again before then, and otherwise deletes nothing: we keep your data only so you can still see, export or delete it, or pick up where you left off, and it stays until you ask us to delete it or you consent again. The exception is meal text we already kept, which may still be used to improve food matching until it expires after 1 year; deleting your account erases it from our systems (a de-linked copy in an analysis export is deleted within 90 days, and our AI provider deletes what it received within 30 days, or up to 2 years if its safety systems flag it). Messages in your meal-box conversation still expire 7 days after they were written, and you can still see and clear them. Your diary chat is kept until you delete it, and you can still see and delete it. Withdrawal does not affect processing before it.

We have not sold or "shared" personal data (as California defines it) in the past 12 months, and we do not use your data to train AI models, and our AI provider may not either.

If you are in the EU, the UK or Switzerland, these are the legal grounds we rely on for each use of your data:

  • To provide the service you asked for (contract): creating and running your account, signing you in (including your email address and the code that confirms it), storing your diary and computing your totals (for the health-related parts, only with your explicit consent, below), exports, and answering your emails. We ask for your email address before the health-data consent because an account cannot exist without it; nothing you type about food in the app reaches us until you have consented.
  • Our legitimate interests, in keeping Forkmate secure and working and in understanding which campaigns bring people to it: abuse prevention on sign-in (the bot check, sign-in, email and per-network sign-up limits, and the IP address and browser type our sign-in provider checks), AI limits and abuse prevention (see AI limits and abuse prevention), operational logs, reliability monitoring, and campaign and referral measurement. You can object to these; email privacy@forkmate.ai. We will then stop unless our reasons outweigh your interests, as they normally will for security checks on sign-in.
  • Your explicit consent: the health-related data you log, the AI reading of the meals you type, the meal text we keep to improve matching, and the app's usage analytics, all under the one consent described above, which you can withdraw in Settings; and, where the law requires it (the EEA, the UK and Switzerland), the visit measurement on our marketing site.
  • Legal obligations: where the law requires us to keep or disclose data, for example under a legal hold or court order.

Forkmate is operated from the United States. When you use it, your data is sent to us there, and we and the providers listed above process it in the US and, for some providers, in other countries. The law there may not protect your data in the same way as the law where you live. Where one of our providers processes your data, its terms with us include the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (with the UK and Swiss amendments), or the provider is certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and its UK and Swiss extensions. Email privacy@forkmate.ai for a copy of the relevant safeguards.

Children and teens

You must be 13 or older to create a Forkmate account. Forkmate is not for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 13. If you are 13 to 17, please use Forkmate with a parent's or guardian's awareness. If you live in the EU or UK and are under the age your country sets for consenting to online services (between 13 and 16), a parent or guardian needs to consent for you. If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal data, email privacy@forkmate.ai and we will delete it.

Contact

Questions or requests: privacy@forkmate.ai.

Changes

We may update this policy and will revise the date above when we do. If we make a material change, we'll tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect, and if we start collecting a kind of health-related data, or using it for a purpose, that our policies do not already describe, or start sharing it with a new kind of recipient, we ask for your consent again first (except for Meta Muse, which applies only if you choose to connect Forkmate to it; see If you connect Forkmate to Meta Muse) (see the Consumer Health Data Privacy Policy).

This is a preliminary policy for an early-stage product and will be expanded with full legal review before we serve regulated markets at scale.