Privacy, in plain words

What happens when a menu is read

You can give PlainPlate a menu in four ways. You can type or paste the words. You can add a photo. You can add a PDF. Or you can paste a website link.

Photos are made smaller in your browser before they are sent. PDFs are sent as they are.

PlainPlate then sends the menu to Anthropic. Anthropic makes the Claude AI model. The model reads the menu and writes the plain version.

What is sent to Anthropic

• The menu you gave: the words, the photo, or the PDF.
• The restaurant name, if you typed one.
• For a website link: the text of that web page, and the link itself.
• Fixed instructions on how to rewrite menus in plain words.

What is not sent to Anthropic

• Your email address or account.
• Your cookies.

PlainPlate does not keep a copy of your menu. It does not keep a copy of the plain version. Once the result is on your screen, PlainPlate's server has no record of it.

What Anthropic does with the content it receives is covered by Anthropic's privacy policy.

Website links

When you paste a link, PlainPlate's server visits that page. If it finds no menu there, it may also try common menu pages on the same site, such as /menu. It may open a PDF menu that the page links to. PlainPlate is built not to write the link to its logs.

Reading aloud

The Listen buttons use the voices built into your browser or device. Some of these are online voices. An online voice sends the words to be read to the company that provides the voice, such as the maker of your browser or phone. PlainPlate does not control this. You can pick a different voice with the speaker button at the top of the page.

What PlainPlate stores

If you do not sign in

You get 2 free tries. To count them, PlainPlate makes a code from your internet address, your browser's name, and your language setting. A secret key is mixed in. The code is one-way. It cannot be turned back into your internet address.

PlainPlate stores this code, the number of menus read, and the date of the first read. It does not store your internet address.

People who share an internet connection and use the same kind of browser may share one count.

At present these counts are not deleted automatically.

If you sign in

• Your email address.
• The date you made the account, and an account ID.
• How many menus you read each day. Not the menus themselves.
• Your time zone, such as "America/Denver", from your browser. It is used to start your free menus again at your midnight.
• Your answers to the four questions after you first sign in. These are: who is using PlainPlate, what makes menus hard, how you found PlainPlate, and whether we can email you. PlainPlate asks nothing else.

We only email news to people who say yes. If you say "Yes, and I'm happy to share feedback", your email address and your answer to "Who is using PlainPlate?" go in a weekly report to the PlainPlate team, so we can ask for your feedback.

To sign in, PlainPlate emails you a link. The link works once. It stops working after 1 hour. While the link is live, PlainPlate stores the link code, your email address, and the time it expires. Expired links are deleted.

If you subscribe

Payments are handled by Stripe. Card details are typed on Stripe's pages. PlainPlate never sees your card number.

PlainPlate stores your Stripe customer ID, whether your plan is paid, and the date it renews. Stripe receives your email address and your account ID. See Stripe's privacy policy.

Cookies and browser storage

PlainPlate sets two cookies of its own. It sets no advertising or tracking cookies.

• pp_session is set when you sign in. It holds your account ID and an expiry time, with a signature. It lasts 90 days and is renewed as you use the site. Scripts on the page cannot read it. Signing out clears it.
• pp_csrf is set when the page first loads. It is a random code that stops other websites from sending requests as you. It lasts one year. PlainPlate's server does not store it, and it is not linked to you.

PlainPlate also saves three small settings in your browser's own storage. They stay on your device. They are: the voice you chose for reading aloud, whether you have seen the tutorial, and a short-lived note if you started subscribing before signing in.

PlainPlate can be added to your home screen like an app. The small file that makes this possible stores nothing.

Analytics

PlainPlate counts a few things so it can be improved. Each count is an event name and one category from a fixed list. Nothing else is recorded.

• A visit, with the name of the website you came from, such as google.com, or "direct".
• A menu created.
• A view of the guide for speech therapists or the guide for family and caregivers.
• A download of the clinician guide PDF.
• Opening the print window on one of the guides. This is counted even if nothing is printed.
• An error, by type. For example, "the page was not a menu".
• Which link you arrived from, if you came from a handout, a newsletter, or a partner. Only a short tag from a fixed list is kept.
• Which "Was this helpful?" button you pressed.

These counts never include menu text, links, error messages, internet addresses, email addresses, or account IDs. No cookies are sent with them. They are stored at Cloudflare, apart from the database that holds accounts.

Cloudflare Web Analytics, a separate Cloudflare service, also counts page views. It runs a small script on the home page. It sets no cookies. Cloudflare's documentation lists what it collects.

Error logs

When something goes wrong, PlainPlate's server writes a log line. Logs record the kind of error and a status code. Logs are written to avoid menu text, links, and email addresses. Logs are kept by Cloudflare.

Who can see the data

• PlainPlate can see the account database: email addresses, plans, renewal dates, read counts, and the anonymous codes with their counts. They can also see the analytics counts and the logs.
• Cloudflare hosts PlainPlate. The website, the server, the database, the analytics, and the logs all run on Cloudflare. See Cloudflare's privacy policy.
• Anthropic receives the menus, as described above.
• Stripe receives your email address and account ID if you subscribe, and handles your payment.
• Resend sends the sign-in emails. It receives your email address and the sign-in link. See Resend's privacy policy.

PlainPlate shares data only with the companies listed above, and only to run the service.

This page will be updated when PlainPlate changes.