Privacy policy
Elyptus is a meal tracker. You describe what you ate in your own words, and it estimates the calories and nutrients. This page explains what Elyptus collects, why, who else sees it, how long it’s kept, and how to have it deleted.
In short: Elyptus keeps the meals you describe so it can show you your journal. Each description is sent to an AI service to make the estimate. There are no ads, no tracking and no selling of your data. Delete your account and your meals go with it.
Who we are
Elyptus is made and run by Michael Ehson Ernest Henderson, trading as Tacitus Tech, in the United Kingdom. In this policy, “we” means them. We decide how your information is used: in data protection law, we are the controller.
Contact us at hello@elyptus.app.
What we collect
The app on your phone
When you first open Elyptus, it registers with our server and receives a random code that identifies that copy of the app. You don’t need to give a name, email address or phone number to use it.
The meals you describe
- What you type to describe a meal, and any corrections you add, such as “there was no oil”.
- The estimates: the calories and nutrients, the items recognised, and the assumptions made.
- The meals you save: their title, values, date and time zone, and the meal type if you choose one.
Your choices
Which nutrients to show, the theme, and any daily goals you set.
If you sign in with Google
Google tells us an identifier for your Google account and, if Google has verified it, your email address. We use the identifier to recognise your account on any phone, and the email only to show which account you’re signed in with. We never see your Google password.
If you subscribe
Google Play takes the payment, so we never see your card details. Google Play and RevenueCat, the service that checks purchases for us, tell us whether your subscription is active, when it renews or ends, and whether it was a test purchase. RevenueCat knows you by your Elyptus account’s identifier, not your email address.
If you email us
If you write to hello@elyptus.app, we keep your email address and what you write so we can reply, and delete them if you ask. If you join the beta, the email address of the Google account you use goes on Google Play’s list of testers, so you can install the test version.
When something goes wrong
The app and our server send a report to Sentry when something fails. A report says what failed and includes the app’s version, the phone’s model, Android version, language, time zone, battery level and free storage, and a random identifier. It never includes your meals, your email address or the code that identifies your copy of the app. Sentry is set not to store IP addresses.
What we don’t collect
No location, contacts, photos or advertising identifier. No analytics or tracking tools, and no ads. Our server uses your connection’s IP address for a moment, to limit how many new copies of the app one connection can register, and doesn’t store it.
Why we use it
- To give you Elyptus: to estimate your meals, keep your journal, sign you in on any phone and know whether you’ve subscribed. This is needed to provide the service you asked for.
- To keep Elyptus working and fair: error reports, and limits that stop the free meals and the AI being misused. These are our legitimate interests, and none of them involves your meals’ content.
With your explicit consent: what you describe can say something about your health, which the law treats with extra care. So before your first estimate, Elyptus asks whether you agree to it using what you describe, health included, to estimate your meals and keep your journal. Nothing is sent until you agree. We never use it for advertising, and never sell it.
You can take your consent back at any time in the app: Me → Help & Privacy → Stop and delete my meals. Every meal and description is deleted from our server, and Elyptus asks again before the next estimate.
Who else sees it
| Who | What for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| An AI service provider | Makes each estimate. It receives the text of your description and corrections, and nothing that identifies you. It doesn’t train its models on them, and deletes them within 30 days. | United States |
| Hetzner | Hosts our server and database. | Germany |
| Sign-in; Google Play, which delivers the app and takes payments; and our email inbox, where messages to hello@elyptus.app arrive. | Worldwide | |
| RevenueCat | Checks purchases and tells us about your subscription. | United States |
| Sentry | Receives error reports. | Germany |
| Cloudflare | Runs the elyptus.app domain, and forwards email sent to hello@elyptus.app. It doesn’t see the app’s traffic. | Worldwide |
Our AI service provider, Hetzner, Sentry, Cloudflare and RevenueCat work on our behalf, under data processing terms that let them use your information only to provide their service to us. Where information goes outside the UK, those terms include the safeguards UK law requires.
Google is different. When you sign in with Google, pay through Google Play or email us, Google handles that under its own privacy policy, as it does for every app. We receive only what this page describes.
We don’t share your information with anyone else unless the law requires us to.
How long we keep it
- Your meals, estimates and choices: until you delete your account. If you never sign in, they’re deleted once that copy of the app hasn’t been used for 12 months.
- A meal you delete leaves your journal at once, and its words, values and estimates leave our server with it.
- Backups of the database are kept for up to 14 days, then deleted.
- Emails to hello@elyptus.app: kept so we can reply, and deleted if you ask.
- Error reports: Sentry deletes them after 30 days.
- At our AI service provider: up to 30 days, as above.
A deleted meal leaves only a marker with its date, so your other phones know it’s gone, and an empty record of each estimate asked for, so the day’s limit still counts it. Both go with your account, or after 12 months unused.
Two records are kept with nothing personal in them: how many free meals each copy of the app has used, so they don’t start again, and what each AI estimate cost, with no description and no link to you.
Your rights
You can ask for a copy of your information, ask us to correct it or delete it, object to how we use it, or ask for it in a form you can take elsewhere. Email hello@elyptus.app and we’ll reply within a month. You can delete your account yourself at any time: see Delete your account.
If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.
Children
Elyptus is not for anyone under 18.
Changes
When this policy changes, the date at the top changes too. We’ll tell you in the app before any change to what we collect or who sees it.