Privacy Policy

How we collect, use, and protect your data

Effective Date: February 24, 2026

Sharp Cooking ("we," "us," or "our") is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains what data we collect, how we use it, and your rights regarding your personal information.

By using Sharp Cooking, you agree to this Privacy Policy. If you don't agree, please don't use our service.

What Information We Collect

Account Information

When you create an account, we collect your name and email address. Email is used for authentication, account recovery, and service notifications (like shared recipes or security alerts). We never sell your email to third parties.

Recipe Data

Your recipes, meal plans, shopping lists, tags, and notes are stored in our database. This content belongs to you. We use it only to provide the service — we don't analyze your recipes for advertising, sell your recipe data, or share it with third parties.

Usage Data

We collect basic usage statistics through Plausible Analytics, a privacy-focused, cookieless analytics service. This includes page views, referral sources, and device types — but no personal information. Plausible doesn't track you across websites and complies with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy regulations without requiring cookie consent.

Image Uploads

Recipe photos you upload are stored on Cloudinary, a third-party image hosting service. Images are private by default and only accessible through Sharp Cooking. Cloudinary's privacy policy is available at cloudinary.com/privacy.

How We Use Your Information

We use your information to:

  • Provide the service: Store and sync your recipes, meal plans, and shopping lists across devices
  • Authenticate you: Verify your identity when you sign in via magic links or passkeys
  • Communicate: Send account notifications, shared recipe alerts, and service updates
  • Improve the service: Analyze aggregated usage data to fix bugs and add features
  • Prevent abuse: Detect and prevent spam, copyright violations, and terms of service violations

We do not: Sell your data, track you across the web, use your recipes to train AI models, or share your personal information with data brokers.

Cookie Policy

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We use minimal, strictly necessary cookies for authentication. These cookies keep you logged in and cannot be disabled without breaking core functionality. They don't track you or share data with third parties.

Advertising Cookies

Sharp Cooking is supported by contextual advertising through Google AdSense. AdSense may use cookies to serve relevant ads and measure ad performance. These cookies are managed by Google and subject to Google's privacy policy at policies.google.com/privacy. You can opt out of personalized advertising at google.com/settings/ads.

No Tracking Cookies

We don't use tracking cookies, marketing cookies, or third-party cookies beyond the ones mentioned above. Our analytics (Plausible) is completely cookieless. You won't see intrusive cookie consent banners because we don't need them.

Third-Party Services

Sharp Cooking uses the following third-party services:

We carefully vet all third-party services for privacy compliance and only use providers that align with our privacy-first values.

Data Protection

Recipe Privacy

Your recipes are private by default. We actively block search engine crawlers (Google, Bing, etc.) and AI web scrapers (GPTBot, Claude-Web, etc.) from indexing your content. Recipe URLs require authentication and aren't publicly accessible.

Security Measures

We use industry-standard security practices: HTTPS encryption for all connections, secure authentication tokens, regular security audits, restricted database access, and automatic security updates. While no system is 100% secure, we take security seriously.

Data Breaches

In the unlikely event of a data breach that affects your personal information, we'll notify you via email within 72 hours and explain what information was compromised and what steps we're taking to address it.

Your Rights

GDPR Rights (European Users)

If you're in the EU, you have the right to:

  • Access your personal data
  • Correct inaccurate data
  • Request deletion of your data
  • Object to data processing
  • Export your data in a portable format
  • Withdraw consent at any time

CCPA Rights (California Users)

If you're in California, you have the right to:

  • Know what personal information we collect and how we use it
  • Request deletion of your personal information
  • Opt out of data sales (we don't sell data, so this doesn't apply)
  • Non-discrimination for exercising your privacy rights

How to Exercise Your Rights

To exercise any of these rights, email us at info@sharpcooking.com. We'll respond within 30 days.

Data Retention & Deletion

We keep your account data and recipes for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account (Settings → Delete Account), we permanently delete:

  • All recipes, meal plans, and shopping lists
  • Your name and email address
  • Authentication tokens and session data
  • Recipe photos from Cloudinary

Deletion is permanent and cannot be undone. Make sure you export any recipes you want to keep before deleting your account.

We may retain anonymized usage statistics (from Plausible Analytics) after account deletion, but these cannot be linked back to you.

Children's Privacy

Sharp Cooking is not directed at children under 13. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we discover that a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, we'll delete it immediately.

If you're a parent and believe your child has created an account, contact us at info@sharpcooking.com and we'll delete it.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make significant changes, we'll notify you via email and post the updated policy with a new "Effective Date" at the top.

Your continued use of Sharp Cooking after policy changes means you accept the updated policy.

Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, how we handle your data, or want to exercise your privacy rights:

Email: info@sharpcooking.com

Data Controller: Schick Creative LLC

Last updated: February 24, 2026