Last updated November 1, 2026
Privacy policy
Combined Cooks is a family recipe book run by Colton Mathews for family and friends. This page explains, in plain language, what it stores, why, and what you can ask us to do with it.
What we collect
- Your Google account basics. When you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address, and whether Google has verified that email. We don't receive your Google password, contacts, files, or anything else, and we only ask Google for these basic profile details.
- What you add. Recipes, notes, photos, comments, ratings, cook logs, favorites, and your personal recipe books, along with who added each one and when.
- Photos. When you upload a photo we re-save it and strip its hidden metadata, including GPS location, before storing it.
- Sign-in records. A session cookie that keeps you signed in, and, if you connect an AI assistant, the access tokens that let it reach the recipe book for you. We store these only in scrambled (hashed) form.
We don't use advertising, analytics, or tracking cookies, and we don't build profiles of you.
How we use it
- To show the recipe book to you and the people you've chosen to share it with.
- To decide who can see or change what (for example, who can edit a recipe).
- To credit you for recipes, photos, comments, and ratings you add.
We never sell your information or share it for advertising.
Who else handles it
We use a few service providers to run the site. They process data only to provide their service to us:
- Google Cloud hosts the app and stores photos and secrets (United States).
- Neon hosts the database of recipes and accounts (United States, on Amazon Web Services).
- Google Sign-In confirms who you are when you sign in.
- Anthropic (the company behind Claude): the text of comments may be sent to Anthropic's Claude API to label them automatically (for example "tip" or "substitution"). Anthropic doesn't use API data to train its models by default.
AI assistants you connect
You can choose to connect Claude or ChatGPT to the recipe book. When you do, that assistant can read and change the recipe book on your behalf, with the same access you have, and what you share in that chat is handled under that company's own privacy policy (Anthropic, OpenAI). You can disconnect at any time from the assistant's settings.
Sharing links
If someone creates a share link for a recipe, anyone with that link can view that one recipe, including its photos, without signing in, until the link is turned off. Upload links let anyone with the link add photos to one recipe for 24 hours.
Keeping and deleting your information
We keep your information while the recipe book is running. Recipes are archived rather than erased, so mistakes can be undone. You can ask us to send you a copy of your information, to correct it, or to delete your account and the content you added. Email the address below and we'll take care of it within 30 days.
Security
All traffic is encrypted with HTTPS. Secrets are kept in Google Secret Manager, and sign-in tokens are stored only in hashed form. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable steps to protect your information.
Children
Combined Cooks isn't directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their information. Families may let kids use it under a parent's account and supervision.
Changes
If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top and, for meaningful changes, let members know in the app.
Contact
Questions or requests: mathews.colton@gmail.com