Privacy Policy

Overview

Allerio helps travellers show restaurant staff what they can't eat. This website, allerio.app, displays an allergy card that someone created in the Allerio app so that staff can read it. This policy explains what information we do — and mostly don't — collect.

No account, no ads, no profiles

We don't require an account and we don't ask you to sign in. We don't show ads, we don't use advertising or tracking cookies, we don't track you across other apps or websites, and we don't build profiles or sell data. What the app does record — usage data and crash reports — is described in the next section, and those records never include what you wrote on a card. Text you write on a card does leave your device: it travels with the card you share, and the parts you type yourself are sent to be translated so that staff can read it. Both are set out below.

Usage data and crash reports

So that we know what to improve, the Allerio app records usage data that carries no personal information: which features get used, how many allergens a card has, whether it has notes, the language a card is shown in, and when the app is installed, updated, or opened. It also reports crashes and freezes so that we can fix them — a crash report is the technical trace of what failed, plus a short trail of what the app was doing just before. Separately, on a small share of sessions the app sends timings that show us where it is slow.

None of these records include the contents of a card — not the allergens you selected, not your notes, not the card's label. All a record ever says about a card is a count, a flag, or a language code. Like any app, Allerio also sends the ordinary technical details that come with each record: your device model, its iOS version, the app version, your language and time zone, your screen size, and whether you were on Wi-Fi or mobile data. Using the network address your device connects with, PostHog works out roughly where a record came from — the country, give or take a hundred kilometres, never a precise position.

Usage data is processed on our behalf by PostHog and crash reports by Sentry, both on servers in the European Union. These records are attached to a random identifier that the app generates for itself and keeps on your device — and, for usage data, in your iCloud as well, so it survives a restore. It isn't derived from your Apple Account, your name, or your device's advertising identifier, and it can't be connected to you or to anything outside Allerio.

You can turn usage data off at any time in the app, under Settings → Privacy → Share usage data. Crash reports aren't covered by that switch: they carry no card content, and we rely on them to keep an app people depend on from breaking.

Allergy cards

An allergy card is created in the Allerio iOS app and shared through a link or QR code. A card contains what its creator entered — a label, the allergens to avoid, and any notes they added — and is not tied to your name, contacts, or location. Short links point to a card stored in our database, where it stays for as long as the service runs — we don't delete cards on a schedule. Token links carry the whole card in the address instead, so those we never save to our database. Either way, the custom allergens and notes you typed by hand also reach the shared translation dictionary described under Translating what you wrote, below.

This website reads a card and shows it. It doesn't change a card and keeps no copy of the card itself, beyond the request logs described below; on its own it only fetches the translations a card needs to be readable in another language — and has them created in the dictionary if they aren't there yet.

This website runs no analytics of any kind, and we don't track who opens a card on it. As with any website, though, the host that serves it — Vercel — keeps ordinary technical request logs, such as the address requested, the visiting IP address, and the time, to keep the site secure and reliable; how long it keeps them is set by its own retention policy. For a self-contained link the card's contents are part of the address itself, so they appear in those logs. We don't analyse those logs.

When a card link is opened in the Allerio app rather than on this website, the app records that a card was opened and whether the link was a short one or self-contained — never the card's contents, and never anything about the person reading it.

Translating what you wrote

A card is only useful if staff who don't share your language can read it. Allergens you pick from Allerio's own list are translated by us in advance and are never sent to a translation service. Text you type yourself — a custom allergen of your own, or a note about how a dish must be prepared — can't be translated in advance, so it is machine-translated into the languages a card can be shown in.

The translation is done by DeepL, a translation service run by DeepL SE in Cologne, Germany; it processes the text on its infrastructure in the European Economic Area. The text passes through our own server on its way there. What we send is exactly what you typed: the name of a custom allergen, or the full text of a note. Nothing about you travels with it — not your name, not the rest of the card, no account or device identifier — and the card's label is never sent to DeepL. We currently use DeepL's free API tier, and under its terms for free services DeepL may keep the text sent to it for a limited period to train and improve its translation models. Its privacy policy explains what it does with the text.

Each translation is then stored in a shared dictionary in our database, hosted by Supabase in the European Union, so that the same wording normally only needs to be sent to DeepL once, for everyone. An entry holds the wording itself and its translations. A custom allergen is looked up by the term; a note by a fingerprint of its wording, never by the wording itself. Nothing in the dictionary records who wrote an entry, which card it came from, or who has read it, and identical wording from two different people becomes the same single entry. These entries are kept for as long as the service runs.

The app translates while you build a card. This website does the same when it opens a card that doesn't already carry its translations: it looks them up in the dictionary, and if they aren't there yet, the text is sent to DeepL at that moment. If translation fails or takes too long, the card is simply shown in the words you originally typed. If you'd rather a piece of text never left your device, leave it off the card and use the built-in allergens instead.

Contacting support

If you write to us through the support page, we receive the email address and the message you choose to send, only so that we can reply. Messages are delivered through Web3Forms, a form-to-email service that processes your submission solely to forward it to us. We don't use your message for anything other than responding, and we won't add you to any mailing list.

Children's privacy

Allerio is not directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect information from them.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, we'll update the date at the top of this page.

Contact

Questions about this policy? Email us at support@allerio.app or use the support page.