Privacy Policy

dietfam is operated by dietfam Ltd (the "Company", "we", "us"), a company registered in England and Wales. For any privacy enquiry, email support@dietfam.app or use the WhatsApp chat if you're an active user. We are registered with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

What personal data dietfam collects, why we collect it, how long we keep it, who we share it with, your rights, how we handle special-category health data, how we make automated decisions, and how to contact us with concerns.

Data you provide directly

• WhatsApp phone number — your unique identifier on our service
• Voice notes you send to the dietfam WhatsApp number
• Text messages you send (questions, corrections, replies)
• Onboarding answers — name (optional), age, height, weight (optional), goal, SCOFF screening responses, dietary preferences
• Subscription information — billing email, payment method (handled by Stripe)
• Web dashboard interactions — when you log into the dashboard

Data we derive

• Transcripts of your voice notes (produced by Google Gemini)
• Structured food and exercise logs — items, quantities, calories, macros (produced by Anthropic Claude)
• Daily and rolling summaries of your eating and exercise patterns
• Diet-quality estimates, including the gut health score — computed from your logged food (fibre, plant variety, fermented foods, processed share); an estimate, not a medical or microbiome measurement
• Safety classifications — flags applied by the model when your message contains certain patterns (e.g. medication mentions, distress signals)

Almost everything you share with dietfam is "special category data" under UK GDPR Article 9 — it relates to your physical and mental health. Our lawful basis for processing is your explicit consent, given through the in-chat consent flow at onboarding. You can withdraw consent at any time by sending /stop or /delete in WhatsApp.

• Operate the coaching service (transcribe, estimate, reply)
• Maintain your account, subscription, and billing
• Send a short daily summary with picture cards, an evening reminder if you haven't logged, a Sunday weekly retro, and (if paired) one Saturday duo report
• Show your progress in the web dashboard
• Detect and respond to safety-relevant patterns
• Comply with legal obligations (e.g. responding to lawful regulator requests)

We do not sell or rent your data, build advertising profiles, or train any AI model on your data (our sub-processors contractually do not train on our data).

If you issue /delete, all data tied to your account is hard-deleted within 30 days, except billing records (legally required to keep). Safety-event log entries become anonymised but remain for audit.

dietfam uses AI throughout. You have a right to know this.

• Speech-to-text: Google Gemini transcribes your voice notes.
• Coach reply: Anthropic Claude (Sonnet 4.6) consolidates your day, estimates calories and macros, classifies your message on safety axes, and generates the summary.
• Safety classification: when the model detects eating-disorder language, distress, medication mentions, or partner-coercion in dyad mode, the system modulates the reply, inserts a fixed deferral line, or replaces the reply with a locale-routed safety template containing helpline numbers.
• SCOFF onboarding: a brief five-question check during signup. A positive screen gets supportive information and details of specialist resources and helplines — it never blocks you from joining.
• Coercion detection in dyad mode: not used per ADR 0005 — dietfam relays reactions between paired users as a pure conduit; we do not moderate the content of those relays.

You have the right to (a) be informed of any automated decision that significantly affects you, (b) request human review, and (c) contest the decision. Email support@dietfam.app or use your WhatsApp chat. We aim to respond within 30 days.

dietfam is a wellness/coaching service and is not a medical device. Calorie estimates have a typical accuracy band of ±15%.

We use the following sub-processors. All are subject to data processing agreements with EU Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) and UK Addendum where applicable, and contractually prohibit using our data to train AI models.

LLM observability is handled in-house via a Postgres llm_traces table — no third-party observability vendor. We notify you 30 days before adding or changing any sub-processor.

When data leaves the UK/EU (to Anthropic, Google, Meta US, and Clerk in the US, and Stripe US), we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK Addendum to protect your rights.

• Access: /data in WhatsApp — signed download link valid 24h
• Rectify: /correct [field] in WhatsApp, or edit in the dashboard
• Delete: /delete in WhatsApp — 30-day hard delete
• Restrict: /stop — account suspended without deletion
• Portability: the /data export is machine-readable JSON
• Export from the dashboard: download everything we hold about you as JSON from your dashboard (Subscription → Your data)
• Withdraw consent at any time
• Complain to the ICO at ico.org.uk, or your local supervisory authority (EU)

dietfam is for adults aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18. If we identify that a user is under 18, we delete their account and all associated data.

When the system detects acute crisis (suicidal ideation, acute eating disorder, acute medical emergency, partner violence), we replace the normal coach reply with a supportive message containing crisis helpline numbers routed to your country, and log the event in our internal audit log. Your service continues as normal — logging and summaries carry on, and we never lock you out or pause your account.

We do not notify next of kin, emergency services, or any third party unless required by a lawful court order.

• All data encrypted in transit (TLS 1.3) and at rest (AES-256 with AWS-managed keys)
• Voice notes and transcripts stored in AWS infrastructure (Sydney region by default; EU regions for EU users when enabled)
• Access restricted to authorised staff; access logged and reviewed monthly
• We do not extract voiceprints from your audio

We commit to publishing a post-mortem within 30 days of any breach that affects user data.

We will notify you of material changes via WhatsApp message at least 30 days before they take effect.

For privacy enquiries: email support@dietfam.app or use your WhatsApp chat if you're an active user. For Data Subject Access Requests: /data in WhatsApp, the dashboard export (Subscription → Your data), or support@dietfam.app. ICO complaints: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.