plate. — Dubai, UAE

Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

plate. ("Plate", "we", "us") is a restaurant logging and dining discovery application operated by its founder, an individual based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

This policy explains what personal data we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and what rights you have. Please read section 5 carefully — it describes how your information may be shared with restaurants.

2. What data we collect

2.1 Information you give us

2.2 Information you create by using Plate

2.3 Information collected automatically

• —Device and browser type
• —IP address
• —Session and login timestamps
• —Server logs kept by our hosting provider: which pages were requested, when, and from which IP address
• —How you use Plate while signed in: which restaurant pages you open and which screen you came from; what you type into the Places and Dishes search and how many results it found; pins you tap on the map; restaurants you add to or remove from your wishlist; spins of the roulette and what it landed on; the restaurants "for you" suggests to you; when you start and finish logging a visit; and when you make a "your plate" card. Each of these is stored with your account, the date and time, and a random identifier for that browser session.
• —Errors the app hits: if something goes wrong in your browser, the error message and which screen you were on, so we can fix it. Never the contents of what you were typing.
• —Your device, once per session: whether the app is installed to your home screen, whether you use the light or the dark look, the width of your screen, and whether it is an iPhone, an Android phone or a desktop browser — recorded with the first usage event of a session, to know what to design for.

We do not collect continuous GPS or background location data. Restaurant locations shown on the map come from our own catalogue, not from tracking you.

3. Why we collect it

We process your data to:

• —Create and maintain your account
• —Provide the core service — logging visits, ratings, wishlists, search
• —Show your profile, visits and lists to other Plate members
• —Operate social features (following, feeds, upvotes, activity)
• —Personalise your experience based on your stated preferences
• —Maintain security, prevent abuse, and debug problems
• —Review reports of content and members, and act on them (section 4 of the terms)
• —Produce insights and analytics, including commercial products described in section 5

4. Who can see your information inside Plate

Plate is a members-only application. Content is visible as follows:

• —Visible to any logged-in Plate member: your username, profile picture, city, who invited you and how many people you have invited, visit history, ratings, notes, photos, wishlist, follower and following counts, upvotes, and badges.
• —Never visible to other members: your email address, password, IP address, how you use the app (the usage information in section 2.3), your two privacy switches and when you changed them, your answers to the welcome questions, your invite code, the reports you send (the member you report never learns who reported them), and who you have blocked (a blocked member is not told).
• —Visible to us, the operator: reports, together with the visit or profile they are about, so that we can review them. If we hide a visit after a report, you still see it yourself, marked as hidden; nobody else does.
• —Not visible to logged-out visitors: nothing, with one exception you control. Profiles require a Plate account to view. The exception is your personal invite link: anyone you send it to sees your username, profile picture, number of meals logged, average score and your three highest-rated places before they have an account — so only share it with people you are happy to show that.

Photos you attach to a visit are stored at unguessable public links. They are not searchable or listed anywhere, but anyone who has a photo's exact link can open it.

If you do not want a visit to be visible to other members, do not log it, or delete it — deletion is immediate and permanent. The "your plate" card is an image you create and share yourself; nothing is posted anywhere unless you post it.

5. Sharing information with restaurants

This section describes how we may share information with restaurants featured on Plate. Please read it carefully.

5.1 Aggregated and anonymised insights (no consent required)

We produce and may sell to restaurants, hospitality groups, and industry partners reports and analytics derived from Plate data in aggregated and de-identified form. These may include:

• —The number of Plate members who logged a visit to a venue over a period
• —Average ratings, rating distributions, and category breakdowns (food, service, ambience, location, value)
• —"Would go back" percentages
• —Most-rated and highest-rated dishes, and how often each dish is ordered
• —How often a venue's page is opened and from which part of Plate, how often it is searched for, saved to wishlists, or suggested by "for you"
• —What members search for across Plate, including dishes searched for and not found
• —Where a venue's guests also eat, and their stated taste preferences, as group totals
• —Comparative and benchmarking data across venues, cuisines, and areas
• —Trends across the Plate catalogue generally

Data in this category is aggregated and stripped of identifiers so that individual members cannot reasonably be identified. As a further safeguard, any figure that would rest on fewer than a minimum number of different members (currently three) is withheld from every report — averages, percentages, dish scores, guest overlaps and search terms alike — and dates are shown no more precisely than the month until that many members have been. You can stop contributing usage information (section 2.3) at any time with the "usage data" switch on your profile page. Figures derived from your visits and ratings — which you share with other members by logging them — continue to feed these aggregates, because once de-identified they no longer constitute your personal data.

5.2 Identifiable information shared with restaurants (opt-in only)

Separately, we may offer restaurants access to identifiable member-level information: your username, the dates you visited that restaurant, your ratings of it (overall and the five category scores), your "would go back" answer, your written notes about it, and the dishes you ordered there with any ratings you gave them. This is only ever about the restaurant receiving the report — a restaurant never sees your ratings of anywhere else.

This means:

• —Sharing is off by default. We will not share identifiable data about you unless you actively turn it on.
• —The control is the switch "Put my name to my ratings" in the "restaurants" section of your profile page. It is asked for there, separately from this policy, and it states what would be shared.
• —You may withdraw consent at any time by turning the switch off, with no loss of access to Plate's core features. Withdrawal stops future sharing; it cannot retract a report already sent.
• —Refusing does not restrict your use of Plate in any way.
• —We keep a record of when you turned sharing on or off.

Where you have consented, restaurants receiving your information are contractually required to use it only for the stated purpose, to protect it appropriately, and not to resell it.

5.3 What we will never do

• —We will never sell or share your email address, password, or IP address to restaurants or other third parties for marketing purposes.
• —We will never share identifiable information about you without the opt-in consent described in 5.2.
• —We do not permit third-party advertising networks to track you inside Plate.

6. Other parties who process your data

We use the following service providers, who process data on our behalf or receive it because your browser fetches something from them directly:

We may also disclose data where required by law, court order, or a lawful request from a competent authority, or to protect our rights, safety, or property.

7. International transfers

Plate's database is currently hosted on servers located in Australia, and application hosting is distributed globally. This means your personal data is transferred outside the United Arab Emirates.

Where such transfers occur, we rely on contractual protections with our service providers requiring an appropriate level of data protection. By using Plate, you acknowledge this transfer.

8. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• —Access the personal data we hold about you
• —Correct inaccurate or incomplete data
• —Delete your account and associated data
• —Withdraw consent for identifiable restaurant sharing at any time, on your profile page (see section 5.2)
• —Object to or restrict certain processing
• —Request a copy of your data in a portable format
• —Lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority — in the UAE, the UAE Data Office

To exercise any of these, contact hello@plateguide.ae. We aim to respond within 30 days.

You can delete individual visits at any time inside the app.

9. How long we keep your data

• —Account data: for as long as your account is active.
• —Usage information (section 2.3): 13 months. The deletion runs on the first day of each month, so a record lives at most one month beyond that.
• —Consent records: when you turned either switch on your profile on or off, for as long as your account exists.
• —Reports and blocks: reports, for as long as we need them to keep Plate safe; a block, until you remove it or your account ends.
• —After deletion: deleting your account in the app removes your personal data at once (section 8); by email request, within 30 days. Either way we keep only what we are legally required to retain. Usage information is anonymised at once: the link to your account is removed.
• —Aggregated, anonymised data: may be retained indefinitely, as it no longer identifies you.
• —Data already shared with a restaurant under section 5.2: cannot be recalled by us once transferred.

10. Security

We protect your data using:

• —Encrypted connections (HTTPS/TLS)
• —Hashed password storage — we never see or store your password in readable form
• —Row-level database security restricting each account to its own records
• —Access controls on file uploads: only you can add or remove your own photographs and profile picture

No system is completely secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security, and you share information at your own risk.

11. Children

Plate is not intended for anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect data from children. If we learn that we have, we will delete it. If you believe a child has provided us data, contact hello@plateguide.ae.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. If we make a material change — particularly to how data is shared with restaurants — we will notify you in the app or by email before it takes effect.

13. Contact

Questions, requests, or complaints: