Effective date: September 11, 2026
Shortbread ("the app") saves recipes you point it at. It is developed and operated by Lee Richardson, an individual rather than a company. This describes what that involves holding about you, which is not much.
When you sign in. Shortbread uses Sign in with Apple and stores two things from it: the subject identifier Apple issues for you, a string unique to this app, and the email address Apple relays — for most people a private @privaterelay.appleid.com forwarding address rather than their real one. Your name is not requested and not stored. Apple's own handling of the sign-in is covered by Apple's privacy policy, not this one.
When you save a recipe. The URL you submitted, the canonical URL of the page, and the date you saved it. Separately, the recipe content fetched from that page: title, ingredients, instructions, timings, author and publication, and the structured data the page published.
That recipe content is stored once and shared. If two people save the same URL there is one copy of it and two records of who saved it. Nobody can see anyone else's library, and there is no feature that would let them — that is a deliberate constraint on the design, not a limitation waiting to be lifted.
While you are signed in. A session token, kept on your device in the iOS Keychain and held on the server only as a SHA-256 hash. Sessions expire after 90 days. Signing out deletes the session immediately, on both sides.
Server logs. Each import writes one line recording the host of the recipe site — for example example.com — along with your user identifier, the outcome, and how long it took. The path is deliberately excluded: which particular recipe you read is not worth keeping. Separately, the web server writes ordinary request logs holding the HTTP method, the API path, the status code, and the IP address the request came from. Logs are not exported anywhere and roll off with the hosting provider's retention.
No analytics, no advertising, no tracking, no crash reporting, and no third-party SDKs of any kind. Nothing is sold, rented, or shared for marketing, because there is no mechanism by which that could happen.
The application runs on Fly.io in San Jose, California. The database is Neon, in AWS us-west-2 (Oregon). Both are in the United States. Sign in with Apple involves Apple. Those three are the only processors.
You can delete your account from inside the app, using the account menu on the recipe list. It removes your account, your saved recipes, your sign-in identity and every active session, immediately and permanently. There is no recovery and no soft-delete.
Recipe content fetched from publishers is not deleted along with your account. It is not personal data — it is a copy of a public web page, shared with anyone else who saved the same URL. What was personal, that you saved it and the URL you used, goes.
Expired sessions are cleared automatically. Nothing else is deleted on a schedule, because nothing else accumulates.
Deleting your account from within the app covers erasure. For access, correction, or a copy of your data, email lee@leerichardson.net. Depending on where you live you may have further rights under the CCPA/CPRA, the GDPR, or similar law; that address is how to exercise them.
Shortbread does not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under the CCPA, and has no mechanism to do so.
Shortbread is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect information from them.
If this policy changes, an updated version will be posted at this same URL with a revised effective date.
Questions about this policy can be sent to lee@leerichardson.net. See also the Terms of Service and copyright and DMCA notices.