BallparkPrivacy policy
Ballpark is a photo-first calorie app. This policy explains what data the app handles, where it goes, and what never leaves your phone. It is short because the app is simple: there are no accounts and no ads, and we do not sell data.
The short version
- Your food log (photos, notes, meals, calorie numbers) lives in a database on your phone. We do not have a copy.
- When you ask for an estimate, the photo and your note are sent to an AI provider to produce it, then discarded. We do not store them.
- We collect anonymous usage statistics (which screens get used, not what you eat). You can turn this off in Settings.
- Deleting the app deletes your data.
What stays on your phone
Everything you log: meal photos, dish names, notes, calorie estimates, your daily target, your history and streak. All of it is stored locally on your device. There is no account and no cloud copy, so we cannot see it, restore it, or hand it to anyone.
What is sent when you ask for an estimate
To produce an estimate, the app sends your meal photo (if you took one) and your note (if you wrote or spoke one) to our server, which passes them to an AI provider, currently OpenAI or Google, to identify the food and guess the calories. To make the reply feel less robotic, the request also includes a little context: the local time and weekday, the names of your last few logged dishes, your streak length, and your rough total for the day.
- The photo and note are used only to produce the estimate. Our server does not store them and does not write them to logs.
- Our server logs one technical line per request: an anonymous device ID, which AI model answered, token counts, response time, the confidence level, and whether a photo was included. Never the photo, the note, or what the food was.
- The AI providers process the request to return the estimate. We use API access, where providers state they do not use the data to train their models. Their own privacy terms apply to that processing (OpenAI and Google publish theirs).
Voice notes
If you say what you ate instead of typing it, the microphone is on only while you are speaking, and the audio is turned into text by the phone's own speech recognition. On devices that support offline dictation that happens entirely on your phone; on others the operating system may send the audio to Apple to transcribe it, under Apple's privacy terms. Either way the recording is never saved anywhere, we never receive it, and only the resulting text travels with your estimate request, exactly as if you had typed it.
Anonymous usage statistics
The app sends anonymous product analytics to PostHog, hosted in the EU. Events cover things like: the app was opened, onboarding was completed, an estimate was requested or saved or undone, the paywall was viewed, a purchase happened, a notification permission was answered. Events are tied to a random device ID, not to you, and they never contain dish names, notes, calorie values, photos, or any free text. What you eat stays on your phone.
You can turn analytics off in Settings. The switch takes effect the next time the app launches.
Purchases
Subscriptions are processed by Apple and managed through RevenueCat, which links your purchase to the same anonymous device ID so Pro works without an account. We never see your payment details; Apple handles those. Apple and RevenueCat keep purchase records under their own policies.
Notifications
The optional daily reminder is a local notification, scheduled on your phone. Nothing about it is sent anywhere. It only exists if you say yes to the permission prompt, and you can turn it off in Settings or in iOS Settings at any time.
What we never do
- No accounts and no sign-up. We never ask for an email address.
- No ads and no ad tracking.
- No selling or sharing data with data brokers.
- No health data used for advertising, ever.
Your identity in all this
The only identifier is a random UUID generated on your device. It is used for three things: rate-limiting estimate requests, linking your Pro purchase, and anonymous analytics. It is not your name, email, or Apple ID, and we cannot connect it to you.
Deleting your data
Delete the app. That deletes your entire food log, because your phone is the only place it exists. The anonymous device ID and the technical logs on our side contain nothing about your food and expire from our systems in the normal course of operation. If you want anything checked or removed, email [email protected].
Legal basis (GDPR)
We are based in Lithuania and follow the GDPR. Processing your estimate request (sending the photo and note to the AI provider) is done under legitimate interest: it is the one thing the app exists to do, you initiate each request yourself, and nothing is retained. Notifications are sent only with your consent. Anonymous analytics rest on legitimate interest in understanding whether the app works, and you can switch them off.
You have the usual GDPR rights (access, correction, erasure, objection). Since your data lives on your device, most of these you can exercise directly, but you can always email us. You can also complain to the Lithuanian State Data Protection Inspectorate (vdai.lrv.lt) or your local supervisory authority.
Age
Ballpark is for people aged 13 and up. Calorie estimates are rough guesses, not medical or dietary advice.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will say so in the app's release notes and update the date at the top.