Privacy Policy

Effective 4 November 2026

Groceriva is a shopping list, recipe and meal planning app for the web and Android. This policy explains what we collect, why, who sees it and what you can do about it. Questions or requests: yiannis30@hotmail.com.

Who is responsible for your data

Groceriva is operated by Yiannis Ioannides, who is responsible for the personal data described in this policy. Postal address: Steliou Kiriakidi 4, 4191, Limassol, Cyprus. You can contact us at yiannis30@hotmail.com.

What we collect

• Account: your name, email address and password (stored only as a salted hash). Used to create and secure your account and to send verification, password reset and invitation emails. If you sign in with Google, Google tells us your name, email address and profile picture; we never see your Google password.
• What you create: shopping lists and items, recipes (text and any picture you upload), pictures you take of your own products, meal plans, pantry contents, prices you save, budgets, and allergens you ask to be warned about. Used to run the app and sync it across your devices and with people you share with.
• Sharing: the names and emails of people you connect with, and one-time sharing links (stored only as a hash).
• Preferences: language, theme, units, time zone and currency.
• Technical data: IP address, device and browser type, session identifiers and server logs, for security, abuse prevention and reliability. When something breaks on our server, an error report goes to our error-monitoring service (Sentry); it never contains your password, cookies, sign-in tokens or what you typed.
• Notifications: if you turn on notifications, we keep a delivery token for your device or browser. On Android it comes from Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging; in a browser, from the browser's push service. Turning notifications off or signing out removes it.
• Barcodes: the number you scan or type (never the camera image), sent to our server to look the product up in the public Open Food Facts database.
• Subscription: if you buy Groceriva Pro on the website, payment is handled by Stripe; in the Android app, by Google Play, with RevenueCat keeping track of the purchase under your Groceriva account id. The same applies to AI credit packs. We receive your plan, billing status and the packs you bought, never your card number.

We do not collect precise location or your contacts, and we do not sell your personal data. We do not use your content to train AI models.

Advertising

The free plan of the Android app shows ads from Google AdMob: a banner from time to time, and an optional video you can watch to unlock Pro features for a day (Google tells our server when you have watched it, quoting your Groceriva account id). To show them, Google and its partners may use your device's advertising ID and similar technical data, such as your IP address and device details, to serve and measure ads and prevent fraud. In the European Economic Area, the UK and other places where the law requires it, the app asks for your consent first, and you can change your choice later in the app's privacy options. You can also reset or delete your advertising ID in your Android settings (Settings → Privacy → Ads). Pro removes all ads. See how Google uses data from partner apps.

Our website (groceriva.com) shows no ads. The free plan of the web app (app.groceriva.com) may show ads from Google AdSense. Google and other third-party vendors use cookies to serve ads based on your previous visits to the web app and to other websites; Google's advertising cookies let it and its partners serve ads to you based on those visits. In the European Economic Area, the UK and Switzerland, the web app asks for your consent before showing personalised ads, and you can change your choice later. You can turn off personalised ads in Google's ad settings, and opt out of other vendors' cookies at aboutads.info. Pro removes all ads.

Website analytics

Our website (groceriva.com) uses Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages are useful, but only if you accept analytics cookies in the banner. Until you do, no Analytics script loads and no Analytics cookies are set. If you accept, Google sets cookies such as _ga and receives your IP address, browser and device details and the pages you visit; Google Analytics does not store full IP addresses. We do not use this for ads, do not link it to your Groceriva account, and the app itself does not use Google Analytics. You can change your choice at any time with "Cookie settings" at the bottom of every page of the website. See how Google uses data from partner sites.

Camera, photos and microphone

Photos of receipts, recipes and printed expiry dates are read on your device; the picture is not uploaded unless you save it as a recipe picture or as the picture of a list or pantry item (people you share a list with can see that picture), or you ask the AI to read it (see below). When you pick a scanned product, its picture from Open Food Facts (licensed CC BY-SA) is copied to our storage. A picture taken without a connection stays on your phone until it can be uploaded. A picture you upload but never save, or replace or remove, is deleted from our storage within a few days. Barcode scanning uses your camera on the device. Voice input uses your phone's or browser's speech recognition, so the audio may be processed by that provider under its own terms. Groceriva never receives or stores the audio.

Public recipe links

If you create a public link for a recipe, anyone with the link can read that recipe (title, picture, ingredients, steps) without an account. Your name, email and private notes are not part of it, and you can switch the link off at any time.

Connecting Groceriva to ChatGPT

You can connect your Groceriva account to ChatGPT. You sign in to Groceriva yourself and see which permissions ChatGPT asks for before you approve them; ChatGPT never sees your password. ChatGPT then receives an access token that is valid for one hour and is renewed with a refresh token (valid for 30 days unless renewed). Every request from ChatGPT is checked against that token, so it only reaches your own account, and the lists people have shared with you, for the permissions you approved.

Depending on what you ask, ChatGPT can read and change, through Groceriva:

• your account's id, name and email address (to show which account is connected);
• your shopping lists and their items, including lists shared with you (shared lists can be read and changed by everyone they are shared with, as in the app);
• your saved recipes, their pictures, and nutrition facts and tips for list items and ingredients;
• your meal plan;
• your pantry, if your plan includes it.

What ChatGPT adds or changes is stored in your Groceriva account like anything you do in the app, and kept and deleted under this policy. A picture you attach or create in ChatGPT for a recipe is downloaded and stored with that recipe. We do not receive your conversations with ChatGPT, only the requests ChatGPT sends to Groceriva. OpenAI's own terms and privacy policy govern what ChatGPT does with your conversation and with the data Groceriva returns to it.

Disconnecting: remove Groceriva from ChatGPT's settings at any time; ChatGPT then loses access. Your Groceriva data stays in your account. Deleting your Groceriva account also ends every ChatGPT connection to it.

AI features (Pro)

Pro includes AI credits, and you can buy more. When you use an AI feature on credits (for example reading a receipt, a recipe from your ingredients, asking while you cook, a week summary or a picture of a dish), our server sends what that feature needs to OpenAI: the text of the request, the recipe or list it is about, or the photo. It is sent under Groceriva's own OpenAI account, not linked to your name or email. We do not keep the request or the photo after it is answered; a recipe or picture is saved only if you save it. We keep a log of the credits you receive and use (which feature, how many credits, when), for your balance, support and refunds, and delete it with your account. OpenAI processes this data for us and, under its API terms, does not use it to train its models.

With your own key

If you add your own OpenAI or Anthropic API key, we store it encrypted on our server, so it works on all your devices. Only you can see it, and deleting it in the app removes it. You can let people in your sharing group use it, with a monthly limit you choose; they never see the key, and we count how often they use it to keep to that limit.

When you, or someone you let use your key, use an AI feature (a recipe from your ingredients, completing a recipe, nutrition and calorie estimates, a picture of a dish, reading a handwritten pantry list or a printed expiry date), our server sends what that feature needs to the provider you chose: the text of the request, the recipe's title and ingredients, or the photo. We do not keep the request or the photo after it is answered; a recipe or picture is saved only if you save it. The provider's own terms and pricing apply to what is sent to them and to what they charge you.

Who else sees your data

People you invite can see and edit the lists and recipes you share with them. We use service providers who process data for us: DigitalOcean for hosting and server backups, email delivery, Stripe, Google Play and RevenueCat for payments, Google AdMob and AdSense for ads, Google Analytics for website visits (only with your consent), Google sign-in, Firebase Cloud Messaging and browser push services for notifications, Sentry for error reports, OpenAI for AI features on credits (or OpenAI or Anthropic when you use your own key), and Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks that whoever signs in, signs up or asks for a password reset is a person and not a bot (it sees your IP address and browser details for that check). We disclose data if the law requires it.

Keeping and deleting your data

We keep your data while your account exists. Profile → Delete my account permanently deletes your account, lists, recipes, meal plans and preferences, or email us and we will do it. Data on your device is removed when you sign out. Step by step, and what is kept: delete your account.

Backups: DigitalOcean's standard weekly Droplet backup plan keeps each backup copy for four weeks (28 days). Deleted data may remain in an existing backup until that copy expires. Backup copies are used for disaster recovery.

Your rights

You can access and export your data (Profile → Export my data gives a JSON file), correct it in the app, delete it as described above, restrict or object to how we use it, and complain to your data protection authority. Where the GDPR applies, our legal bases are contract (running your account and the app), legitimate interests (security and reliability), and consent (personalised ads and connecting ChatGPT).

Security

Connections use TLS, passwords are hashed, every request is checked against your permissions, and access tokens are short-lived. Sign-in attempts are limited, and a new password is checked against known data breaches using only the first five characters of its hash, so the password itself never leaves our server.

Children

Groceriva is not directed to children under 16, and we do not knowingly collect their data.

Changes

If we change this policy we will post the new version here and update the date above, and tell you about material changes.