Privacy Policy

Last updated: 22 June 2026

The short version: busy beer signs you in with Apple — no email, no password. We store what we need to run the app (your ratings, profile, and friends), process menu photos and ratings through AI to build your taste, and that’s it. No ads, no third-party trackers, and we never sell your data.

1. Who this applies to

This policy describes how the busy beer app and its backend handle your information. It applies to everyone who uses the app.

2. Account & Sign in with Apple

busy beer uses Sign in with Apple as the only way to sign in. Apple gives the app a stable identifier for you and, if you allow it, your name. We do not receive or store a password. If you use Apple’s “Hide My Email” option, we never see your real email address. We use this identifier to create your account and associate your ratings and profile with you.

3. What we store

To run the app, we store the following in our backend (Google Firebase):

• Profile — your display name, your @handle, and the AI-generated taste profiles for each drink category.
• Ratings — the drinks you rate, your scores, and when you rated them.
• Friends — the friend connections you make and friend requests you send or receive.
• Operational data — minimal counters used to enforce daily usage limits and prevent abuse.

Your ratings and profile sync through the backend so they’re available on each device where you sign in.

4. Menu photos & the scanner

When you scan a menu, the photo is sent to our secured server, which forwards it to the AI model to extract and classify the drinks. The photo is used to produce that result and is not stored as part of your profile or used to build an advertising profile of you. We don’t keep a gallery of your menu photos.

5. AI processing

Taste profiles, predicted scores, “beyond beer” translations, the taste story, and menu rankings are generated by Google Gemini, accessed only through our server (never directly from your device with your credentials). We send the model the relevant inputs — your ratings and/or a menu photo — and receive structured results back. We do not use your content to train AI models, and the model provider processes the request to return a result, subject to its own terms.

6. Friends & community

If you add friends (via a friend code or @handle), those people can see your display name, @handle, and your recent rating activity. Community averages shown on a drink are aggregated across many users and are not attributed to you individually. You choose whether to add friends; you can remove them at any time.

7. What we do not collect

• No advertising identifiers and no third-party analytics or tracking SDKs.
• No selling or renting of your personal data — ever.
• No password (Sign in with Apple handles authentication).
• No precise location tracking.

8. Third-party services

Service	Purpose	What it receives
Apple	Sign in with Apple; App Store distribution	Authentication; your Apple ID handles sign-in
Google Firebase	Authentication, database, cloud functions, app attestation	Your profile, ratings, and friends
Google Gemini	AI taste profiles & menu scanning (via our server)	Your ratings and submitted menu photos for the request

Each provider processes data under its own privacy terms. We send these services only what is needed to provide the relevant feature.

9. Retention & deletion

We keep your profile, ratings, and friends for as long as your account exists. You can delete your account and associated data from within the app; when you do, we remove your profile, ratings, and friend connections from the backend. Aggregate, non-identifying statistics (like a drink’s overall average) may persist after individual data is removed.

10. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, export, or delete your personal data. You can exercise the core of these in-app (edit your profile, delete your account) or by emailing us at the address below.

11. Age & children

busy beer is intended only for adults of legal drinking age. It is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under that age. If you believe a minor has used the app, contact us and we will remove the account.

12. Security

Authentication is handled by Apple and Firebase. Requests to our backend are verified with Firebase App Check / app attestation to confirm they come from a genuine copy of the app, and access to your data is restricted by server-side security rules. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable measures to protect your information.

13. Changes

We may update this policy from time to time. The “last updated” date reflects the current version; material changes will be reflected here.

14. Contact

Questions about your privacy? Email support@busybeer.app.