Privacy Policy
SoChefs.com ("we," "us," "our")
Effective date: 8/13/2026
Last updated: 8/13/2026
0. The short version
This summary is here to help. It is not a substitute for the full policy, and if the two conflict, the full policy controls.
- We collect what we need to run a recipe site, and not much else. Your account details, what you post, and the technical logs any website keeps.
- We do not sell your personal information. Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to anyone.
- We do not run advertising at all — no ads, no tracking for ads, no advertising profiles.
- We strip location data out of your photos before publishing them. Cameras record where a picture was taken. Your kitchen is your home. That data does not go up with the photo.
- AI services help run the site. Recipe photos you scan, text you publish, and ingredient lists are processed by the AI providers we use for recipe extraction, content moderation, and nutrition estimates — on our behalf, not for their own use.
- Anything you publish publicly is public — and the words of a public recipe are permanent, because you dedicated them to the public domain. See Section 8.
- Nobody under 14. You confirm you are 14 or older when you sign up, and we keep a record of that confirmation.
- You can see, correct, export, or delete your data. Section 11 explains how.
Contact: privacy@sochefs.com
1. Who we are and what this covers
SoChefs.com is the controller of your personal information — meaning we decide what gets collected and why. This policy covers SoChefs.com. It does not cover other sites you reach through links from ours; when you leave, their policies apply.
2. Nobody under 14
Our minimum age is 14, with no exceptions. We don't knowingly collect information from anyone younger. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 14, we close it and delete the information promptly. If you believe a child under 14 has an account here, tell us at privacy@sochefs.com and we will deal with it.
3. What we collect
3.1 What you give us
| Account | Display name, email address, and password (stored hashed — we never see it) |
|---|---|
| Your age and terms confirmation | When you sign up, you confirm you are 14 or older and accept the Terms of Service. We record that confirmation: when it happened, the document versions you accepted, and the network address it came from. See Section 9 for how long we keep it. |
| Profile (optional) | Bio, location, cooking style, cuisines, kitchen setup, links, profile and cover photos |
| Content | Recipes, photographs, comments, posts, votes, "Cooked It!" marks, and reports or feedback you file |
3.2 What we collect automatically
- Device and connection: IP address and browser information
- Logs: our security and operations logs record events like sign-ins, failed sign-ins, and moderation decisions — including the email address and IP address involved, so we can tell which account is being attacked or abused
We do not run third-party analytics or advertising trackers. We do not collect precise GPS location, and we don't ask for it.
Cookies: we use them for two things — keeping you signed in, and remembering preferences like your theme. That's it. There is no advertising or tracking cookie to opt out of.
3.3 What we get from others
- Sign-in providers, if you use one to sign up or log in: your name, email, and profile picture — nothing else, and we don't post anywhere on your behalf
- Other users: reports about your content or conduct
4. AI processing
Some of what makes SoChefs work is done by AI services we use as processors:
- Recipe scanning: when you scan a photo of a recipe card, the photo is sent to an AI vision provider to read it into the recipe form.
- Moderation: text you publish may be scored by an automated moderation service to catch content that breaks the rules.
- Nutrition estimates: the ingredient text of recipes is sent to an AI provider to help match ingredients against the USDA food database.
These providers process your content for us, to provide the feature — not for their own purposes. We don't send them your account details; they see the content being processed.
5. Photographs and the data hidden inside them
This one deserves its own section, because most people don't know it.
Digital photographs carry hidden metadata (EXIF) — often including the exact GPS coordinates where the picture was taken, the date and time, and the device that took it. A photograph of a cake on a kitchen counter can contain the photographer's home address, to within a few metres.
So:
- We strip location and device metadata from every image on upload, before it is published or stored in its public form. This is automatic and you don't have to do anything.
- We do not use stripped location data, and we don't retain it after processing.
- We keep harmless technical metadata — dimensions, format, orientation — because we need it to display the image.
A related warning we'd rather give than not: photographs can reveal more than you intend — mail on the counter, a view through a window, a school uniform, a reflection. Have a look before you post, especially if the account belongs to a young person.
6. Why we use your information
| What we do | Why |
|---|---|
| Create and run your account | To give you the service you signed up for |
| Publish and display your recipes, photos, and posts | Same |
| Send service email (verification, password resets, notifications) | So your account works; you control notification frequency in settings |
| Moderate content and enforce our rules | To keep the site safe, lawful, and pleasant |
| Keep security and operations logs | To protect the service and its members from abuse |
| Keep your age and terms confirmation | Because the confirmation is what makes the account permitted, and we may have to prove it happened |
| Fix bugs and improve the product | To make the site work better |
We don't use your information for advertising, we don't build profiles of you, and we don't sell it.
7. Who we share information with — and who we don't
We share with service providers who work for us: hosting and backup storage, email delivery, and the AI providers described in Section 4. They may only use your information to do the job we hired them for.
We also share:
- When the law requires it — a valid court order, subpoena, or legal obligation. We review each request and push back on overbroad ones.
- To report child sexual abuse material, as we're required to.
- In an emergency, where someone's life or safety is at serious risk.
- If the business is sold or merged — your information may transfer, and this policy travels with it until we tell you otherwise.
We do not:
- Sell your personal information. Not now, and it's not the business model.
- Share it for advertising. There is no advertising.
- Give it to data brokers.
- Use your private recipes or private photos for anything other than showing them to you and the people you've shared them with.
8. What's public, and what's permanent
Public means public. Your display name, profile, published recipes, photographs, comments, and posts can be seen by anyone, including people who aren't signed in, and can be indexed by search engines, copied, and archived by others. We can't control what happens to it after that.
Two different things happen when you publish a recipe, and they have different privacy consequences:
- The words of the recipe enter the public domain permanently (Terms of Service 7.3). Deleting your account removes them from SoChefs.com, but it cannot un-dedicate them or recall copies elsewhere. This is the one thing on this site you genuinely cannot undo.
- Your photographs stay yours (Terms of Service 7.4). If you delete them, we stop displaying and using them.
Think before you publish. A recipe description is a lovely place for a story, and stories contain details — your child's name, your street, your workplace, where you'll be on holiday. Once it's public, it's public.
9. How long we keep things
- Your account and content: while your account is open.
- When your account is closed or removed: your content comes off the site, and copies in our backups age out within about a month.
- Your email address, after an account is removed for cause or purged: we keep it on a suppression list, so the same address can't be used to evade the removal.
- Your age and terms confirmation: we keep it even after your account closes. Its whole purpose is proving the confirmation happened, and that need outlives the account.
- Security and operations logs: kept for a limited period for security purposes, then rotated out.
- Reports of illegal content: as long as the law requires.
10. Your controls
In your settings and on your own content, at any time, you can: edit or delete your recipes, photos, comments, and posts; switch a recipe between private, shared, and public (remembering that the public domain dedication on already-published Recipe Text is permanent); set your notification frequency; switch themes; and block another member.
To close your account, email support@sochefs.com.
11. Your rights
Wherever you live in the United States, we give you the same rights:
Access what we hold about you. Correct what's wrong. Delete your data. Export it in a portable format. Complain without being penalized for it.
To use any of these: email privacy@sochefs.com. We'll verify it's really you — usually by asking you to act from your registered email — and respond within 30 days. It's free, and we will never give you a worse service for exercising a privacy right.
12. How we protect it
Encryption in transit, hashed passwords, access limited to those who need it, and security monitoring of the systems the site runs on. No system is perfectly secure, and we won't pretend otherwise. Use a strong, unique password, and tell us at support@sochefs.com if you think something is wrong with your account.
13. Where we are, and changes to this policy
We're based in the United States, and the Service is operated from it.
We'll update this policy as the service changes. If a change is material — new categories of information, a new purpose, a new kind of sharing — we'll give you reasonable advance notice by email or in-product notice before it takes effect.
We'd rather hold less of your data than more. If you spot somewhere we're holding something we don't need, tell us — that's a bug worth fixing.