Privacy Policy

This policy explains what data is used by the HeyCal app, the heycal.app website and the HeyCal account, where it is kept, who processes it and what your rights are, under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and French data protection law. This English version is a translation: the French version, available at /confidentialite, prevails.

In short

• Without an account, your profile, journal and weigh-ins stay on your phone. We have no access to them.
• To analyse a meal, the photo or description you send goes through our server, then to Anthropic (Claude), which identifies the foods. Neither our server nor Anthropic keeps it on our behalf, and it is not used to train any artificial intelligence model.
• If you create an account (optional), your journal is synced to our servers, located in the European Union, so you can access it on heycal.app and on your other devices. You can export or delete it at any time.
• Apple Health data is never used for advertising, never sold and never sent to artificial intelligence.
• No ads, no advertising cookies, no selling of data.

1. Who we are

The HeyCal app, the heycal.app website and the HeyCal account are published by ROCKET SOCIAL, a French SASU with a share capital of €500, whose registered office is at 26 chemin de Chalin, 69130 Écully, France, registered with the Lyon Trade and Companies Register under number 832 329 445 ("the publisher", "we"). We are the controller of your data.

For any question about your data or to exercise your rights: contact@heycal.app. We have not appointed a data protection officer.

2. Two ways to use HeyCal

Without an account. Your profile, goals, meal journal (with photos), weigh-ins and activity are stored only in the app's private storage, on your phone. We have no access to them. Only the photo or description of a meal you have analysed passes through our servers, for the time of the analysis (section 3.2).

With a HeyCal account, which is optional, this data is also stored on our servers, located in the European Union. You can find it on heycal.app and on all your devices (section 3.5).

Device backups

If your phone's backup is turned on (iCloud Backup on iPhone, Google backup on Android), your operating system may include the app's data in that backup. Apple or Google keep it in your personal account, under their own privacy policies. We have no access to these backups.

Erasing data on your phone

You can erase the data stored on your phone at any time from Profile › Erase my data, or by uninstalling the app. Without an account, we hold no copy and can't restore it.

3. The data we process

3.1 Your profile and goals

During onboarding, the app asks for your sex, year of birth, height, weight, target weight, goal (lose, maintain or gain weight), chosen pace and activity level. This information is used to calculate your daily calorie budget and track your goal. The calculation takes place on your phone.

3.2 Meal analysis

When you take a photo of a meal, choose a photo, describe a meal or correct an analysis, the app sends our analysis server:

• the photo, resized and re-encoded as JPEG, or the text you wrote;
• for a correction, the list of foods already identified;
• the app language;
• technical data needed to keep the service secure: your IP address and, where applicable, a pseudonymous identifier used to check your subscription and prevent abuse.

Our server, hosted by Vercel, passes the photo or text to Anthropic PBC (United States), which provides the Claude artificial intelligence model. Anthropic identifies the foods and estimates the portions, then our server calculates calories and macronutrients with the Ciqual table and sends the result back to your phone.

Anthropic receives neither your name, nor your email, nor your profile, nor your health data: only the photo or text of the meal. Our server doesn't keep the photo or text after the analysis. Anthropic acts as our processor: under its commercial terms, it doesn't use this data to train its models and keeps it only for a limited time, for security and abuse detection.

The result of the analysis is saved in your journal, on your phone and, if you have an account, on our servers. Avoid photographing people or documents: only the meal is useful for the analysis.

3.3 Your journal

The journal contains your meals (name, photo, foods, quantities, calories and macronutrients, date and time), your weigh-ins, and your daily steps and active energy. It is used to show your daily budget, your energy balance and how your weight changes.

3.4 Apple Health (HealthKit) and Health Connect

Connecting to Apple Health is optional. The app only asks for access after you agree, one data type at a time, on the iOS permission screen. With your permission, HeyCal:

• reads your steps, active energy and weight, to adjust your daily budget and show your activity;
• writes each meal recorded in HeyCal (calories, protein, carbohydrates, fat) and each weigh-in made in HeyCal.

Our commitments for this data:

• it is never used for advertising, marketing or commercial data mining;
• it is never sold, nor shared with data brokers or advertising networks;
• it is never sent to Anthropic or to any artificial intelligence service;
• HeyCal doesn't store it in iCloud;
• it is not shared with any third party, except the host of our server, which keeps it on our behalf if you have created an account.

You can change or withdraw these permissions at any time in the Health app, from your profile, under Apps. The data HeyCal wrote to Health stays under your control there: you manage and delete it from the Health app.

On Android, once the app is available there, the connection to Health Connect will work the same way, with the same commitments.

3.5 Your HeyCal account

If you create an account, we process:

• your email address, or the relay address provided by Apple if you choose to hide your email;
• the account identifier provided by Apple or Google if you sign in with them, and the name they send us, if any;
• the dates the account was created and used, and sign-in logs (IP address, device), to keep the account secure;
• the synced data: profile and goals, meal journal with photos, ingredients and values, weigh-ins, daily steps and active energy.

For email sign-in, a one-time code is sent to you by our email delivery service. If you use Sign in with Apple or Google, Apple or Google authenticate you under their own privacy policies and send us only the information listed above.

This data is kept on the HeyCal API server, which we operate ourselves on a machine rented from Hetzner (Germany), for meal photos, and in a MongoDB Atlas database hosted in Paris (France).

You can export your data in CSV format from your space on heycal.app, and delete your account from the Profile tab in the app or from the website.

3.6 Your subscription

Apple. Purchases and subscriptions are processed by Apple (App Store), using the Apple account on your phone, and later by Google (Google Play) on Android. They act as independent controllers, under their own privacy policies. We never receive your payment details. Apple sends us aggregated sales reports and, if you agreed to share diagnostics with app developers, anonymised statistics and crash reports.

RevenueCat. To check that your subscription is active and let you restore your purchases, the app uses the service of RevenueCat, Inc. (United States), our processor. It receives:

• a pseudonymous user identifier (a random identifier created by the app, or the technical identifier of your HeyCal account), which contains neither your name nor your email;
• the purchase information provided by Apple: plan, purchase and expiry dates, price and currency, store country, transaction identifiers and purchase receipts, trial period and renewal status;
• technical information: device model and operating system, app version, language, IP address of the connection.

RevenueCat receives no data from your profile, your journal or Apple Health.

3.7 The heycal.app website

The website is hosted by Vercel. When you visit it, Vercel records technical logs (IP address, date, page requested, browser) to keep the service secure and working properly.

We measure the website's audience with Vercel Web Analytics, without cookies. This tool produces aggregated statistics (page views, country, device type, referring site) with no persistent identifier and no cross-site tracking.

Cookies are described in section 10.

3.8 If you write to us

If you contact support, we use your email address and the content of your message to reply. Please don't include health information that we don't need to help you.

4. Summary: purposes, legal bases and retention periods

Data	Purpose	Legal basis	Retention
Profile and goals (sex, year of birth, height, weight, target weight, goal, pace, activity)	Calculate your calorie budget and track your goal	Explicit consent (GDPR Art. 6(1)(a) and 9(2)(a))	On the phone: until you erase it. With an account: as long as the account exists
Photo, description or correction sent for analysis	Identify the foods and estimate the portions	Explicit consent (Art. 6(1)(a) and 9(2)(a))	Not kept by our server after the analysis; limited retention at Anthropic for security
Journal (meals and photos, foods, values, weigh-ins, steps, active energy)	Keep your journal, show your budget and summaries, sync your devices	Explicit consent (Art. 6(1)(a) and 9(2)(a))	On the phone: until you erase it. With an account: as long as the account exists
Data read from and written to Apple Health or Health Connect	Adjust your daily budget, show your activity, keep Health up to date	Explicit consent (Art. 6(1)(a) and 9(2)(a)), given in the app and in the system permissions	Same as the journal
Account (email, Apple or Google identifier, name if any, sign-in logs)	Create and secure your account, sign you in, sync	Performance of the contract (Art. 6(1)(b))	As long as the account exists. After deletion, backups erased within 30 days. Account deleted after 3 years of inactivity
Subscription (pseudonymous identifier, purchases, receipts, status)	Check your access, manage the trial, renewals and restored purchases, prevent fraud	Performance of the contract (Art. 6(1)(b)); legitimate interest in preventing fraud (Art. 6(1)(f))	For the length of the subscription, then 3 years after it expires
Sales reports and accounting records	Meet our accounting obligations	Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c))	10 years
Server and website technical logs (IP address, date, request, browser)	Security, abuse prevention, troubleshooting	Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f))	About 30 days
Website audience statistics	Measure website traffic	Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f))	Aggregated statistics, with no persistent identifier
Website authentication cookie	Keep you signed in	Performance of the contract (Art. 6(1)(b)); strictly necessary cookie	Until you sign out or the session expires
Support conversations	Reply to you	Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f))	3 years after the last contact

When these periods end, the data is deleted or anonymised.

5. Health data and consent

Your weight, height, meals and Apple Health or Health Connect data are data concerning your health, which the GDPR gives stronger protection (Article 9). We only process them with your explicit consent, which you give in the app before entering them, then on the Apple Health permission screen if you connect it, and when you create an account to sync them.

You can withdraw your consent at any time:

• by disconnecting Apple Health in the Health app (profile › Apps › HeyCal);
• by erasing your data from Profile › Erase my data;
• by deleting your account, from the app or the website;
• by emailing us at contact@heycal.app.

Withdrawing consent doesn't affect processing carried out before. Since HeyCal exists precisely to track your food and weight, the app can no longer work without this data.

The calculation of your calorie budget and the analysis estimates don't produce any decision with legal effects on you or that similarly significantly affects you.

6. Recipients and processors

Your data is only accessible to the publisher and to the following providers, each for its own part. Our processors act on our instructions, under a data processing agreement.

Provider	Role	Data concerned	Location
Vercel Inc.	Hosting of the website, technical logs, audience statistics	IP address, logs	United States and global network
Anthropic PBC	Food identification by artificial intelligence	Photo, description or correction of a meal	United States
Hetzner Online GmbH	Hosting of the HeyCal API server: accounts, meal photos, meal analysis	Account data, photos, photo or text in transit, technical logs	Germany
MongoDB, Inc. (MongoDB Atlas)	Account database	Account data and synced journal	France (AWS servers in Paris)
Resend (Plus Five Five, Inc.)	Sending sign-in codes	Email address	Sent from the European Union (Ireland)
RevenueCat, Inc.	Subscription management	Pseudonymous identifier, purchase information	United States

The following act as independent controllers, under their own policies:

• Apple, for sales through the App Store, Sign in with Apple and Apple Health;
• Google, for Sign in with Google and, later, sales through Google Play and Health Connect.

We may also disclose data to public authorities, only where the law requires it. We don't sell, rent or transfer any data.

7. Transfers outside the European Union

Some providers are located in the United States (Vercel, Anthropic, RevenueCat, Resend), and MongoDB, Inc. is a US company, even though the database is hosted in Paris. Data transfers to the United States, including any remote access for support or maintenance, are covered:

• by the European Commission's adequacy decision on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, for certified providers;
• otherwise, by the standard contractual clauses adopted by the European Commission, included in our providers' data processing agreements.

You can get a copy of these safeguards by emailing us at contact@heycal.app.

8. What we don't do

• No ads in the app and no advertising identifier: HeyCal doesn't track you across apps or websites.
• No selling, renting or transferring of data, to anyone.
• No use of your photos, meals or health data to train artificial intelligence models, neither by us nor by Anthropic.
• No use of Apple Health or Health Connect data for marketing.

9. Retention periods

Retention periods are detailed in the table in section 4. In summary:

• Data on your phone: until you erase it or uninstall the app.
• Your account data: as long as your account exists. After it is deleted, the data is erased from our servers, and from our backup copies within 30 days at the latest.
• Inactive accounts: an account with no sign-in for 3 years is deleted along with its data, after a warning email.
• Technical logs: about 30 days.

10. Cookies and trackers

On the website, we only set an authentication cookie, which is strictly necessary, when you are signed in to your account. It keeps you signed in and doesn't require your consent (Article 82 of the French Data Protection Act). Audience measurement (Vercel Web Analytics) sets no cookies. The website uses no advertising cookies or third-party trackers.

If we ever add marketing or advertising measurement tools (for example the Meta pixel), a banner will ask for your consent before anything is set, and this policy will be updated before they are put in place.

In the app, no advertising tools or third-party trackers are used, and the app doesn't ask for access to your phone's advertising identifier.

11. Your rights

You have the following rights over your data:

• access: get a copy of your data;
• rectification: correct inaccurate data, which you can do directly in the app;
• erasure: have your data deleted;
• portability: receive your data in a machine-readable format (CSV export from heycal.app);
• restriction: have the use of your data temporarily suspended;
• objection: object to processing based on our legitimate interest;
• withdrawal of consent, at any time (section 5);
• instructions after your death: set instructions for what happens to your data after your death (Article 85 of the French Data Protection Act).

How to exercise them:

• Data on your phone: you view, correct and erase it directly in the app. We can't do it for you, since we have no access to it.
• Your account data: use the export and account deletion features on heycal.app or in the app, or email us at contact@heycal.app from the address linked to your account.
• Subscription data held by RevenueCat, if you have no account: email us with your Apple purchase receipt (order number), which lets us find the transaction.
• Data held by Apple or Google: contact them directly.

We reply within one month, which may be extended by two months for a complex request; we will let you know if so. If we have reasonable doubts about your identity, we may ask you to confirm it. Exercising your rights is free of charge.

If you believe your rights are not respected, you can lodge a complaint with the French data protection authority (Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés, CNIL), 3 place de Fontenoy, TSA 80715, 75334 Paris Cedex 07, France, https://www.cnil.fr, or with the data protection authority of the European Union country where you live.

12. Only for people aged 16 and over

HeyCal is only for people aged 16 and over and is not intended for younger people. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 16, we delete it along with its data.

13. Security

• Communication between the app, the website and our servers is encrypted (HTTPS).
• Each account can only reach its own data; the database is not exposed to the internet; sessions can be revoked and only a fingerprint of their token is stored; photos are only reachable through signed links that expire.
• The publisher's access to data is limited to what is needed to run the service and provide support.
• On your phone, your data is protected by your system's security features (device encryption, passcode). We recommend turning on a passcode or biometric authentication.

If a data breach poses a risk to your rights, we will notify the CNIL within 72 hours and, if the risk is high, we will also inform you.

14. Changes

We may update this policy, especially as the service evolves. The date of the last update is shown at the top of the page. If we make a significant change, we will let you know in the app or by email, if you have an account, before it takes effect.

15. Contact

ROCKET SOCIAL · 26 chemin de Chalin, 69130 Écully, France · contact@heycal.app

See also: Terms of Use and Sale · Legal Notice · Support