Privacy policy

You can use the app without an account

The recipe catalog is built into the app. Browsing, searching, filtering and saving favourites all work with no account and with no network, and none of it is sent anywhere. The app checks for catalog updates on launch; that request carries no identifier and is not logged against you.

An account exists for one reason: to sync your own recipes and favourites to another device.

What an account stores

If you create one, the following is held on the server:

• Your email address and display name.
• Your password, as an argon2id hash. The password itself is never stored and cannot be recovered from the hash — a reset issues a new one rather than revealing the old.
• Recipes you write: title, description, ingredients, steps and notes. These are private to your account and are never published to the shared catalog.
• Which recipes you have favourited, and which spirits you have marked as being on your shelf.
• One record per signed-in device, so a session can be ended: a hash of the session token, the device name and app or browser identifier it reported, and an HMAC of the IP address the request came from. The IP address itself is not stored, and the HMAC cannot be reversed into one.
• Short-lived hashed tokens for confirming your email address and resetting your password.

What the app does not do

• No analytics. There is no analytics SDK in the app, and no event tracking of any kind.
• No advertising. No ad networks, no advertising identifier, nothing sold or shared with advertisers.
• No tracking across other apps or websites.
• No access to location, contacts, photos, the camera, or the microphone. The app does not ask for any of these because it does not use them.
• No third-party sign-in, so no data is exchanged with a social account.

Who else sees it

Amazon Web Services hosts the server and delivers the app's email — address confirmation, password resets, and a notice when an account is deleted. AWS processes that data on instruction and for no other purpose.

Apple distributes the app, and receives whatever App Store purchase and download information it normally collects. That is between you and Apple; the app sends Apple nothing about you.

Nobody else. Data is not sold, rented, or shared for anyone's marketing.

How long it is kept

• Account details, recipes and favourites: until you delete the account.
• Device session records: 60 days from the last sign-in on that device, or immediately when you sign out.
• Password reset links: 60 minutes. Email confirmation links: 7 days.
• An administrative log of changes to the shared catalog, which records what changed rather than who read it.

Deleting your account

In the app: Settings, then Delete account. It asks you to type DELETE, and then it deletes rather than deactivates.

Removed immediately: every recipe you wrote and everything in it, your favourites, your shelf, every session record, and every outstanding email link.

One thing is kept, and it is worth being precise about it. A single row remains marking the account as deleted, with the email address and display name replaced by meaningless values. It exists so the administrative log of catalog changes stays intact without naming anyone, and so the address becomes free for a new account. Nothing in that row identifies you.

A confirmation email is sent to the address on the account, then that address is gone from the system.

Security

• All traffic is over HTTPS.
• Passwords are hashed with argon2id. Session tokens and email links are stored only as hashes.
• Sign-in tokens are held in the iOS Keychain, marked so they are never included in an iCloud or iTunes backup.
• Sessions rotate on every use, and a token presented twice revokes the whole chain of sessions it belongs to, on the assumption that it was stolen.
• Sign-in, registration and password reset are rate limited.

Your choices

You can see and change your display name in the app, change your password by requesting a reset, export nothing in particular because your recipes are already on your device, and delete everything from Settings.

For anything else — a copy of what is held, a correction, or a question about this policy — write to cocktails@biks.io and you will get an answer from a person.

Children

The app carries an adult age rating because it is about alcoholic drinks. It is not directed at children and accounts are not knowingly created for them. If you believe a child has created an account, write to cocktails@biks.io and it will be removed.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected or who sees it, the date at the top changes and the app will say so before the change takes effect. Small corrections to wording will just change the date.