DinnerCountPrivacy Notice
Last updated 15 October 2026. This is the same document the app shows, at a plain address. The Terms of Use are beside it.
Who We Are
DinnerCount is made by Human Messenger LLC, a Virginia company. This notice explains what DinnerCount keeps, why, and what you can do about it. Questions go to [email protected], and a person answers.
The Short Version
DinnerCount keeps what you enter so that it can plan your dinners: the people in your household and how much each one eats, your week, your shopping list, and your notes and recipes. It is stored on your devices and in your shared household on our servers, so that your devices show the same information. You sign in with a code that we email to your household address, and that address is how we recognize your household. We use what you enter only to run DinnerCount for your household. DinnerCount shows no ads, and we never sell or rent your information. Nothing you put in the app is shared with anyone for advertising, and nothing in the app records your screen or your sessions.
What We Keep
What you enter. Your household’s people and portion sizes, your plans, your list, and your notes, ratings, and recipes. Names are optional, and a nickname or an initial works. DinnerCount has no place to enter a diet, an allergy, or any health information, and it never asks for one. If you choose to write something like an allergy into a note or a recipe, it is stored like the rest of your household’s information and used only to run DinnerCount for your household.
Your household account. The email address you start your trial or buy with, when your trial started, a name for each signed-in device and when it was last used, whether product emails are on or off, and which version of our Terms of Use and Privacy Notice you agreed to, and when.
Your purchase. That your household bought DinnerCount, when, and the payment processor’s reference. Your card number goes to the payment processor and never to us. The processor also collects your billing country and postal code, and we can see them in its records. The payment processor handles your payment under its own privacy notice, which is shown at checkout.
Messages you send us. If you send feedback or a recipe request from the app, we receive what you wrote and your household email, so we can reply. We keep them only as long as they are useful in improving DinnerCount, and we never use them for advertising.
Recipes you add. When you add a recipe from a web address, that address passes through our servers so we can fetch the page, and we do not keep it. Reading a recipe from a photo happens on your device, and the photo is never sent to us. If you add a photo to a recipe you wrote, a small copy sized for a phone screen is stored with your household’s information, on your devices and encrypted on our servers. It is removed when you remove the photo, the recipe, or your household. The original stays on your device.
Basic technical information. Like any website, our servers see your IP address and browser type when a page loads. We use it only to run DinnerCount and to protect it from abuse. Backup files are created by you and are stored wherever you put them.
Anonymous step counts. The app counts, each day, how many times certain steps happen, such as starting a trial, setting up a family, planning a first dinner, opening the list, and buying. We keep only the daily totals. They carry no names, no recipes, nothing you typed, and nothing that identifies your household. We use them only to find where DinnerCount is hard to use.
Our Public Pages
Our public pages are the start page, the recipe pages, the Mealime page, the accessibility page, the Terms and Privacy pages, and the thank-you page after a purchase. They use Google Analytics to count visits, to see which links bring people to DinnerCount, and to see whether a visit led to a purchase. Google Analytics collects standard web information: the pages you visit, the link that brought you, your device and browser type, and an approximate location from your IP address. Google sets its own cookies on those pages for this purpose, and it may collect information about your visits over time and across other websites. See how Google uses information from sites that use its services. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control, those pages load none of this. In the EEA, the UK, and Switzerland, these cookies stay off. We also count visits to those pages ourselves, without cookies. We do not send Google your name, your email address, or anything from inside the app.
Inside the app there are no ads, no tracking cookies, and no third-party scripts, and there are no analytics apart from the anonymous step counts described above. DinnerCount keeps your household’s copy in your browser’s own storage on each device, and not in cookies.
Who Can See It
Your household’s information is stored on your devices and, encrypted, on our servers in the United States. We share it only with the companies that help us run DinnerCount: hosting and database, email delivery, and payment. Each one sees only what its job requires and may not use it for anything else. Within Human Messenger LLC, access is limited to running and supporting the service. We may also disclose information where the law requires it, or to protect the security of the service or the rights of others. Apart from a sale of the business, described next, that is the whole list. There are no advertisers, no data brokers, and no one else.
If Human Messenger LLC or DinnerCount is ever sold or merged, your information may pass to the new owner, who must keep the promises in this notice. We will email the household address before it happens, and we will ask for your agreement before your information is used in any materially different way.
Email From Us
We email your household address to sign you in, to confirm your trial or purchase, and about your account.
Sign-in codes come from [email protected].
During your free trial, we send a few short emails to help you get started, and one before the trial ends. After you buy, we send occasional product news, such as a new batch of recipes, a few times a year at most.
Every one of these emails has a one-click unsubscribe, and you can also switch product email off in the Account card. Sign-in codes and receipts still arrive, because the app needs them. We never share or sell your address.
Your Free Trial
Your trial includes everything in DinnerCount, and your household is stored the same way. If the trial ends and you have not bought DinnerCount, the app keeps showing your household on your device, and Backup still exports everything, but planning and sharing stop. We delete your household’s copy on our servers 30 days after the trial ends, unless you buy before then. To keep to one trial per email address, we keep a record that the email address has already had a trial, even after the household is deleted. We use that record for nothing else.
Your Choices
Everything you have entered can be seen and exported with Backup, corrected in the app, and deleted with Delete household in the Account card. Deleting the household removes your shared household from our servers and signs out every device. The Account card also lets you see and Remove devices, Sign out on this device, Change household email, and switch product emails off. Erase Everything on This Device, under What DinnerCount Stores, removes the copy on the device you are using. If you cannot use the app, email us from your household address and we will delete your household from our servers. Copies on your devices stay until you erase them. If a control does not do what you need, email us.
How Long We Keep It
We keep your household’s information while your household exists, with a short history of recent changes so that a mistake can be undone. When you delete your household, it is removed, and our routine system backups expire on a rolling schedule after that. If a trial ends without a purchase, we delete the household from our servers 30 days after the trial ends. Sign-in codes expire within minutes. A device’s record ends when the device is removed, signed out, or unused for about a year. If no device in a household has been used for 12 months, we may delete it after emailing you at least 30 days beforehand. Purchase records are kept as long as tax and accounting rules require.
Security
We use encryption in transit and at rest. You sign in with single-use codes instead of passwords, and access is limited to what running DinnerCount requires. No system is perfectly secure, so keep your household email account secure, because anyone who can read it can sign in. If a security problem affects your information, we will tell you as the law requires.
Children
DinnerCount is for adults. You must be 18 or older to start a trial, buy, or hold a household account. An adult may enter household members’ names and portion sizes, and is responsible for what is entered on the household’s devices. We do not knowingly collect information directly from children under 13. If you think a child has sent us information, email us and we will delete it.
Your Rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to see, correct, delete, or export your information, or to appeal a decision about it. The controls above already provide access, correction, deletion, and export. For anything else, email us and we will respond within 45 days. We sell no personal information, we use nothing from inside the app to target ads at anyone, and we make no automated decisions about anyone. Our public pages do not respond to “Do Not Track”. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control, they do not load Google Analytics. DinnerCount is offered in the United States, and your information is processed there.
Changes to This Notice
When this notice changes, the new version appears in the app and at dinnercount.com/privacy/ with its date. If a change matters, the app asks you to agree again before you continue.