Ishta Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Ishta collects, uses, shares, and protects information when you use the Ishta mobile app and related services.

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or your data, contact us at team@joinishta.app.

Information we collect

Account and authentication information, including your account identifier, email address, authentication provider information, and sign-in metadata from email one-time-password sign-in, Google Sign-In, or Apple Sign-In.

Profile information you provide, such as username, display name, bio, avatar image, profile visibility preference, follower/following relationships, and pending follow requests.

Content and activity you create in Ishta, including food posts, dish names, ratings, reviews, comments, mentions, votes, reports, blocks, saved wishlist items, invite links and invite redemption activity, notification records, and related timestamps.

Camera and photo library access, after you grant permission, when you choose to take or select images for posts or your profile. Uploaded images enter private processing storage first. Images attached to eligible public posts, and avatars for public profiles, are then published at stable public web addresses. Other images remain access-restricted.

Foreground location information, after you grant permission, to rank nearby restaurants higher in search and center map results. Ishta does not request background location access and does not use device location to set a profile city, rank users, or rank posts in the Feed.

Restaurant search queries, selected restaurants, Google place identifiers, place metadata, map viewport data, and related restaurant interaction data.

App usage, screen, lifecycle, diagnostic, and error information to understand usage, fix bugs, and improve reliability. This includes Feed impression and interaction information such as the post and ranked session, position, source, visible duration, opens, shares, and Not interested choices. It may also include app version, operating system, device model, locale, event timestamps, route names, and error details. We redact common secret, token, password, and authorization fields before sending analytics events.

Push notification registration and delivery information, after you grant permission and enable push notifications, including your Expo push token, platform, device session identifier and device name when available, app version, and native build version. Push delivery may include the notification title, body, and related routing data.

Phone verification

When phone verification is enabled, your phone number is sent securely to Twilio Verify to deliver and check a one-time SMS code. Phone verification supplements sign-in and does not make your number public or create a phone-based login. Ishta stores a keyed hash to enforce one account per number, a masked number, verification timestamps, and private onboarding and grace-period records. Full phone numbers and SMS codes are not stored in Ishta profiles or analytics. Temporary verification challenges are removed by scheduled cleanup after 24 hours; verified phone and enrollment records remain until account deletion. Twilio processes the number and delivery information under its own retention controls. Your device retains only masked display information after verification. After verification, you choose whether people who have your phone number may find your profile through contact matching when that feature becomes available. This is off until you explicitly allow it. You can change the choice anytime in Settings → Account & security. We store this private preference and the time of your choice with your verified phone record and remove them on account deletion. Enabling it does not upload your contacts or make your phone number public.

Age assurance

On iOS 26 or later, Ishta uses Apple's Declared Age Range API during new or incomplete profile setup, after sign-in, to check whether your declared age range meets Ishta's minimum age of 13. Apple provides Ishta only a broad declared age range, not your exact date of birth.

Ishta uses the response only on your device to decide whether you can complete profile setup. We do not store or otherwise persist the response, include it in analytics, or transmit it to Cloudflare, PostHog, or any other Ishta service. If the response indicates that you are under 13, or your age range is declined or unavailable, you cannot complete profile setup or access signed-in social features.

Accounts with completed profiles do not repeat this check at app launch or when reviewing updated Terms. All users must still meet the minimum age of 13 in the Terms.

How we use information

• Provide account access and authentication.
• Create and display profiles, posts, photos, comments, ratings, votes, wishlists, follows, invites, and notifications.
• Personalize the Feed using your follows and eligible Ishta activity, including authored, wishlisted, and upvoted posts, together with post freshness, quality, social proof, and creator diversity. Comments and downvotes are not used to infer your food preferences, and device location is not used to rank Feed posts.
• Personalize restaurant search, maps, and social recommendations.
• Enforce privacy, visibility, security, rate-limit, and abuse-prevention rules.
• Maintain, troubleshoot, analyze, and improve Ishta.
• Communicate with you about support, security, or service-related issues.
• Comply with legal obligations and enforce our rights.

How we share information

We do not sell personal information.

Anyone, including people who are not signed in, may access the limited public profile information, eligible public posts, public post images, and limited public comment previews that you choose to make public. Public content may be cached, linked to, or indexed by conventional search engines. Full comment discussions, connection lists, private activity, follower-only posts, and posts from private profiles require authorized access.

Service providers process information for us, including Cloudflare for application hosting, authentication storage, databases, object storage, media processing, queues, realtime delivery, and security; OpenAI for safety checks on submitted profile text, post text and images, comments, avatars, Clink messages and dish names, and wishlist dish names and for food classification using submitted dish names; PostHog for analytics and error tracking; Google for Google Sign-In, Maps, Places, Android push notification delivery, and Gemini food classification using the post’s dish name, review, original food photo, and permitted restaurant context, including for access-restricted posts; Apple for Apple Sign-In, Declared Age Range on supported iOS versions, and iOS push notification delivery; Expo for push notification token registration and delivery coordination; and Resend for authentication and service email delivery.

We require each third party that receives user data from Ishta to provide the same or equivalent protection of that data as described in this Privacy Policy and required by applicable platform rules and law.

We may disclose information if necessary to comply with law, respond to lawful requests, protect users or the service, prevent abuse, or complete a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets with appropriate safeguards.

Third-party services

• Cloudflare: Workers, D1 databases, R2 object storage, image processing, queues, workflows, realtime delivery, and security services.
• OpenAI: safety moderation of submitted profile text, post text and images, comments, avatars, Clink messages and dish names, and wishlist dish names, and food classification using embeddings generated from submitted dish names.
• Google: Google Sign-In, Maps, Places, Android push notification delivery, and Gemini food classification using dish names, review text, original food photos, and permitted restaurant context. Eligible access-restricted posts also use this service; the classification request excludes usernames, account identifiers, device coordinates, and previous badge progress.
• Ishta uses Google Maps and Places. The Google Privacy Policy (https://policies.google.com/privacy) is incorporated into this Privacy Policy for those services.
• Apple: Apple Sign-In, Declared Age Range on supported iOS versions, and iOS push notification delivery services.
• Expo: push notification token registration and delivery coordination, including notification titles, bodies, and related routing data.
• PostHog: analytics and error tracking.
• Resend: authentication and service email delivery.

When you use Apple restaurant search, Ishta sends your search text and, when available, the search-area center to Apple’s Maps services to find restaurants. The search-area center may be based on foreground location you permit Ishta to access. Ishta also sends Apple place identifiers to retrieve place details. Apple’s map services process map-view and technical request information to display maps. Ishta uses native MapKit on iOS and MapKit JS on Android. See Apple Maps & Privacy.

Data retention and deletion

We keep information for as long as needed to provide Ishta, maintain security, comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce agreements.

Identifiable raw Feed impression and interaction events are deleted or aggregated after 90 days. A post you mark Not interested remains excluded from your Feed until you choose Undo, the post is deleted, or your account is deleted. This choice does not hide the post elsewhere in Ishta.

You can request account deletion from inside the app. When your account is deleted, Ishta revokes active sessions, removes the account and its private Feed history and exclusions, and deletes account-owned avatar and post image objects from Ishta's active private and public storage. Public cache entries under Ishta's control are purged. Copies previously downloaded, cached, linked, or indexed by third parties may remain outside Ishta's control. Some records may be deleted, anonymized, or retained when needed for security, integrity, fraud prevention, legal compliance, backups, or to preserve non-personal aggregate metrics. Encrypted backup copies may persist for up to 30 days before deletion.

To request account deletion outside the app, contact team@joinishta.app with the email address associated with your account.

Security

We use administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards designed to protect information. Information is transmitted using modern cryptography such as HTTPS where applicable. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Your choices

• Update profile information and visibility settings in the app.
• Choose whether your profile is public or private and whether an eligible post is visible on your public profile or only to followers.
• Report posts, comments, and profiles.
• Mark a Feed post Not interested and use Undo to show it in Feed again.
• Block and unblock accounts.
• Grant or revoke camera, photo library, and location permissions through your device settings.
• Enable or disable push notifications in Ishta and grant or revoke notification permission through your device settings.
• If you revoke permissions, some features may stop working or have reduced functionality.
• Sign out of your account.
• Request account deletion in the app or by contacting team@joinishta.app.

Children's privacy

Ishta is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided personal information to Ishta, contact us at team@joinishta.app.

Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will update the Last updated date and provide additional notice when appropriate.

Contact

Ishta

Email: team@joinishta.app