Privacy Policy

This policy describes what Forkd collects, why, and what we'll never do with it. It's written to be read. Forkd is operated by Jai Gupta ("we").

What we collect

• Group decisions: the display name you type, your check-in answers (mood, hunger, budget, spice, adventure, cravings, diet, allergies, private vetoes), the session's result, and, if you tap a rating, your feedback. All of it is stored against an unguessable session link, not an account or identity. The hour of day you decide at is used to fit the meal and isn't stored as a profile.
• Solo mode: nothing reaches our servers. It runs in your browser; your answers and history stay in your device's local storage.
• Waitlist & beta signups: your email address, which page you signed up from, and (for beta signups after a session) the session id and rating you gave.
• Neighborhood: a free-text area the session host chooses to type (e.g. "East Village").
• Location (optional, consent-only): if you tap "use exact location" on a result page, your browser's coordinates are sent with that restaurant search and are not stored (our cache keys round to roughly 10 km). If you tap "share my location for a fair midpoint" during a group check-in, coordinates rounded to roughly 1 km are stored with that session's check-in, used only to center the group's restaurant search on a fair middle, and never shown to other guests. Decline either prompt and everything still works.
• Analytics: anonymous, aggregate page analytics (via Vercel Analytics), no cross-site tracking, no ad identifiers. We use your browser's local storage only to remember your own preferences; no tracking cookies.

Sensitive by design

Allergies and dietary choices (including halal and kosher) can imply things about your health or religion. We treat them accordingly: they are used onlyas filters to compute your group's decision, they are never shown to other participants, never used to build a profile of you, never used for advertising, and never sold or shared for value, categorically.

Services we rely on

Forkd runs on a small number of infrastructure providers, each receiving only what it needs:

• Vercel, hosting, data storage, and aggregate analytics.
• Resend, sends our waitlist and beta emails to the address you gave us.
• Google (Places API), when a session has a neighborhood, we query Google for restaurants using only a search like "Korean restaurant in East Village". No names, emails, check-in answers, or identifiers are sent, just the cuisine and the typed area. Google's handling of that query is covered by Google's own policies.
• ElevenLabs, when voice announcements are enabled, the short narration script (the winning dish and participant count) is sent to generate audio. Check-in details, vetoes, and allergies are never part of it.

What we don't do

• No selling or sharing of personal data for value, and categorically never dietary, religious, or health-adjacent data.
• No ad targeting, no data brokers, no cross-site tracking.
• Location is only ever used if you explicitly grant it at a browser prompt, and precise coordinates are never stored: searches round to ~10 km, group midpoints to ~1 km.
• Private vetoes are never shown to other users, in the session or anywhere else.

Retention & deletion

• Session data is kept so the result link keeps working for your group, and we delete old sessions over time.
• Email jai.gupta@berkeley.edu to delete a specific session, your waitlist entry, or your beta signup; we'll confirm within a few days.
• Clear your browser's site data to erase everything solo mode knows.

Your rights

• You can request a copy of the data tied to a session link or your email, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it, same address as above. We don't discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.
• Forkd is not directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has used Forkd, contact us and we'll delete the data.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, we'll update the date above and note the change here before it takes effect.

Contact

Forkd is operated by Jai Gupta. Questions: jai.gupta@berkeley.edu.