Privacy notice

Who is responsible

Max Eats Out is run by Max Williamson, an individual based in the United Kingdom, who is the data controller for the personal information described here. For anything in this notice, write to max@maxeatsout.club.

What is collected, and how

If you only read the guide, no account information is collected. The pages, the public API and the MCP server are open to anyone and need no sign-in.

If you ask for access, the request form collects your name, your email address and any message you write.

If you have an account, Max Eats Out holds:

• your display name, email address and a hashed password;
• your role and account status, and when you last signed in;
• your preferences — home city and light/dark appearance — and your active sign-in sessions;
• what you have saved, marked visited (with any note you add), rated or reviewed;
• dish recommendations and change suggestions you submit, and an edit log recording who changed what in the guide.

Usage analytics. Max Eats Out records its own product events — which filters get used, which venues get opened — so it can tell which parts of the guide earn their place. An event row holds a random session identifier, the event type, the thing it happened to, the surface it came from, and your account id if you are signed in. It does not hold your IP address or your browser user-agent, and there is no third-party analytics service.

Server logs. Vercel, which hosts the site, keeps short-term request logs of its own. These are standard infrastructure logs and can include IP addresses.

Cookies

There are three, all first-party. No advertising cookies.

• A sign-in cookie — keeps you signed in. Only set if you have an account.
• meo_city — remembers the last city guide you opened, so the app knows where to take you.
• meo_sid — a random identifier that ties product events into a session. It rolls forward for 13 months from your last activity. It is not linked to any advertising network.

Why, and on what legal basis

• To run your account and the service — signing you in, saving what you save, sending the emails the service depends on (invitations, password resets). Basis: performance of a contract with you.
• To keep the guide accurate and accountable — the edit log, moderation, and reviewing contributions. Basis: legitimate interests, in running a guide that can be corrected and whose changes can be traced.
• To understand how the guide is used — first-party product analytics, in aggregate. Basis: legitimate interests, in improving a small personal project without tracking anyone across the web.
• To keep the service up and safe — logs and rate limiting. Basis: legitimate interests, in security and availability.

What members write, and what becomes public

Dish recommendations (“Don’t leave without trying”) are published on the venue’s page and are also served through the public API and the MCP server, so other people’s software can read them. They are published without the author’s name or account id. Please do not put personal information into one.

If member profiles are switched on in future, your display name would appear next to recommendations you have written on the website. That change would be announced before it happened.

The following are never exposed through the public API or the MCP server: your name, your email address, your account id, what you have saved, visited, rated or reviewed, and any internal database identifier.

Who else is involved

Max Eats Out runs on a small number of services. They process data on its instructions.

• Vercel — hosting, request logs and the CDN.
• Neon — the Postgres database where everything above is stored. It runs in a London region.
• Resend — sends the service’s emails, and therefore handles your email address and name.
• OpenFreeMap — serves the map tiles. Your browser connects to it directly when you open a map, so it sees your IP address as any website you visit would.

Google Places, OpenAI and GeoNames are also used, but only for venue information — addresses, coordinates, neighbourhood and cuisine suggestions. No member’s personal information is sent to any of them.

Nothing is sold, rented or shared for advertising. Information would only be disclosed otherwise if the law required it.

Where data goes

The application and the database run in the United Kingdom. Some of the providers above are based in the United States or operate globally, so limited personal information — principally your email address, through the email provider, and IP addresses in infrastructure logs — is transferred outside the UK. Those transfers rely on the data protection terms each provider offers its customers.

How long things are kept

• Account information — while your account exists, and then deleted on request.
• Raw analytics events — at most 13 months, after which they are deleted. Day-level totals are kept indefinitely, but they hold no identifier and are not personal information.
• The edit log — kept permanently and never deleted, even when the underlying content is. It is what makes changes to the guide traceable. It records who made a change and when.
• Server logs — kept by Vercel for its own retention period, which is short.

Security

Traffic is encrypted in transit. Passwords are stored hashed, never in readable form. Accounts are invite-only, and administrative areas are restricted by role. No service can promise perfect security, and this notice does not.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask for a copy of your information, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, ask to restrict or object to how it is used, and ask for it in a portable form. You can also object to the analytics described above, which are processed on the basis of legitimate interests.

Email max@maxeatsout.club and say what you would like. There is no charge, and no automated decision-making or profiling to worry about. One limit worth stating plainly: the edit log is kept even after an account is deleted, because it is the record of how the guide came to say what it says.

If you are unhappy with the response, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk. Raising it here first is appreciated but never required.

Changes

If this notice changes, the date at the top changes with it. Anything that materially affects members will be flagged rather than slipped in.

See also the Terms and Support.