MacroHall Privacy Policy

The short version

• You can use MacroHall without an account. Until you sign in, your information stays on your phone. The only exceptions carry nothing that identifies you: a few anonymous setup answers that help us count how students find MacroHall, and the words you type into food search.
• Progress photos and your weight log never leave your phone, even with an account.
• If you sign in, we keep your profile and food log so they sync across your phones.
• We never sell your information, never show ads, and never track you across other apps or websites.
• You can delete your account and everything we hold about you at any time, right in the app.

What stays on your phone

Some information is only ever saved on your phone and is never sent to us:

• Progress photos (they are never uploaded anywhere; leftover photos are covered below)
• Your weight log
• Meal reminder times (reminders are scheduled by your phone)
• Food preferences, favourite dishes, Gentle Mode and Care Check In settings
• Everything else, if you never create an account (apart from the anonymous setup answers and food search words described below)

What we keep if you create an account

An account is optional. If you sign in, we store the following so your information is backed up and syncs across your phones:

• Your email address, used to send you sign in codes
• Your setup answers: school and dining hall, goal, sex, height, birthday, weight, activity level, diet, graduation year, how you heard about MacroHall, what has made tracking hard before, and what your goal means to you
• Your daily targets and any goals you set yourself
• Every food you log, with its nutrition and the day and meal
• Your menu filters and how many free Build My Plate uses you have left this week

Anonymous setup answers

When you finish setup, the app sends five of your answers to us anonymously, whether or not you have an account: your school, how you heard about MacroHall, your graduation year, what has made tracking hard before, and what your goal means to you. A random code made by the app on your phone is attached so that redoing setup updates your answers instead of counting you twice. Nothing else goes with them: no name, email, account, weight, sex or birthday.

We only look at these as totals (for example, how many students heard about MacroHall from a friend) to improve the app and reach more students.

Ratings and "How busy is it" reports

When you rate a dish or report how busy a dining hall is, we save it with your account so you can change it later and so we can limit spam. Other students never see who rated or reported anything. They only see totals, like "84% liked" or "Busy now".

MacroHall Coach

Coach is an AI assistant powered by Anthropic's Claude. When you message Coach, we send Anthropic your message, your recent conversation, and a snapshot of your day so it can give useful answers: your goal, weight, daily targets, what you've eaten today, what's left, your diet filters, and the current menu.

Under Anthropic's commercial terms, this information is not used to train their AI models. We don't save your Coach conversations on our servers. We only keep a count of how many messages you send each day, to keep the service affordable.

Coach gives general nutrition suggestions, not medical advice.

Scan leftovers

Scan leftovers (MacroHall Pro) adjusts a logged meal to what you actually ate. When you use it, we send a smaller copy of your leftovers photo, plus the names and serving sizes of the foods you logged for that meal, to Anthropic's Claude, which estimates how much of each food is left. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, this is not used to train their AI models.

Leftover photos are temporary. They are deleted from your phone as soon as they have been sent, are never added to your photo library, and are never saved on our servers. We only keep a count of how many scans you do each day, to keep the service affordable. Nothing changes in your log until you review the estimate and tap Update meal.

Services we work with

We share only what each service needs to do its job:

• Supabase stores account information and runs our server code.
• Anthropic writes Coach replies and estimates leftovers from photos (see above).
• Resend sends the sign in code emails, so it receives your email address.
• The USDA FoodData Central database receives the words you type when you search for a food. Nothing that identifies you is attached.
• Your dining hall menu sites (Aramark for Laurier, McMaster Hospitality Services for McMaster) are where menus are downloaded from. We send them nothing about you.
• Apple handles payments for MacroHall Pro, along with RevenueCat, which manages subscriptions. We never see your card details.

Where your information is stored

Our service providers may store and process information outside Canada, including in the United States, where it may be accessible to authorities under local law. We choose providers that protect information with industry standard security.

How we use your information

• To run MacroHall: calculate your targets, sync your log, recommend food, and power Coach
• To understand, in totals, how students find MacroHall and what gets in the way of tracking, so we can improve the app and reach more students
• To keep the service safe and fair, like limiting spam ratings
• To answer you when you contact us

We never sell your information, never use it for advertising, and never share it with anyone except the services listed above or when the law requires it.

Health related information

What you eat, your weight and your goals are personal. We treat them with extra care and only use them to provide MacroHall to you. MacroHall is not a medical service. If food or eating ever feels hard, the Safety Center in the app lists people you can talk to.

How long we keep it

We keep your account information until you delete your account. When you tap Profile > Delete account, your account, setup, food log, ratings, busy reports, and Coach and scan counts are permanently erased from our servers. Copies in our provider's backups are removed automatically within a few weeks.

If you never sign in, deleting the app removes everything.

Your choices and rights

• See and change your information in Profile at any time
• Delete your account and everything we hold in Profile > Delete account
• Use MacroHall without an account at all
• Ask us for a copy of your information, or ask a question, by emailing [PRIVACY EMAIL]

Canadian privacy law gives you the right to access and correct your personal information and to withdraw your consent. If you are not happy with how we handle a concern, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Age

MacroHall is for people 16 and older. If you believe someone younger has given us information, email [PRIVACY EMAIL] and we will delete it.

Security

Information travels to our servers over encrypted connections, and each account can only ever read its own information. No system is perfectly secure, but we work hard to protect yours, and we will tell you if a breach puts your information at real risk.

Changes to this policy

If we change how MacroHall uses your information, we will update this policy and the date at the top. If a change is significant, we will let you know in the app before it takes effect.

Contact us

Jabez Lee is responsible for privacy at MacroHall. Questions or requests: [PRIVACY EMAIL]. This policy is also online at https://macrohall.netlify.app/privacy.html.