Jaywok privacy policy

Effective October 27, 2026.

Jaywok is a small app for eating every country's cuisine in New York City, passport-style. It's built and run by one person through Jaywok LLC, in New York. Jaywok doesn't sell your data, doesn't run ads, and doesn't share what you do in the app with anyone outside the people you add as friends, and, for a stamp one of your friends comments on, their friends (you can turn that off).

Who runs this

Jaywok is a one-person project. Questions, requests, and account deletions all go to one inbox: hello@jaywokapp.com.

What Jaywok collects, and why

• Your account. How you sign in decides what Jaywok receives. With an email code: your email address. With Google: the email, name and profile photo Google shares. With Apple: your name and either your email or a private relay address Apple creates, as you choose. Plus the display name you choose. Email sign-in sends a one-time code to confirm it's you.
• What you do in the app. The countries and restaurants you mark as eaten, any notes and scores you attach, restaurants you save, adventures you plan and finish, and the friends you connect with. This is the whole point of the app, so it's stored for as long as your account exists.
• Photos. Photos you attach to a stamp or a finished adventure day are shrunk to a smaller size and stored privately. Only you and friends you've connected with can view them, through links that expire after an hour; a stamp one of your friends comments on can also be seen, photos included, by that friend's friends (see "Sharing with friends"). Your profile photo is different: its job is to be seen next to your name, so anyone who can see your name in Jaywok can see it. If you signed in with Google, your Google profile photo is used unless you pick another or remove it in Settings.
• Phone number. Sign-up asks for your phone number, so friends who have it in their contacts can find you on Jaywok. The number isn't verified and isn't shown on your profile. You can change or remove it any time in Settings. If someone signs up with a number that's already on an account, Jaywok tells them how that account signs in (Apple, Google or email) and shows its email partly hidden, like w•••k1@gmail.com, so a person who made a second account by mistake can find their first one. It never shows a name.
• Comments. Comments and replies you write on a stamp, with who wrote them and when. Everyone who can see that stamp can read them (see "Sharing with friends"). You can delete your own comments, and you can delete any comment on your own stamp.
• Messages. Messages you send in Jaywok, one to one or in a group chat, including stamps and places you share (and plans, one to one). A one-to-one conversation is visible only to the two of you, and only your friends can start one with you. A group chat is visible to the people in it (up to 10), who see each other's names and profile photos and needn't be friends with each other; only a friend can add you to one, someone added later sees only what's sent after they join, and if you leave a group you stop seeing it, while what you sent there stays unless you delete it first. Messages are stored like the rest of your account, not end-to-end encrypted, and are read only to review one that was reported. Deleting your account deletes the messages you sent and your one-to-one conversations, and takes you out of every group.
• Want to go. Tapping Want to go on someone's stamp saves the place to your list and tells them you want to go.
• Plans with a friend. If you plan a meal with a friend in Jaywok, the app stores who the plan is with, the place, day and time either of you set, and whether it was booked. Only the two of you can see a plan. Booking itself happens on the restaurant's booking service or Google Maps, not in Jaywok. Deleting your account deletes your plans.
• Contacts, if you choose to match them. If you use "find friends from contacts," the app reads your address book on your device, turns each phone number and email into a one-way scrambled fingerprint (a hash), and sends only those fingerprints to check which belong to existing Jaywok accounts. Names and everything else in a contact never leave your phone; numbers and emails leave only as those fingerprints, used only to check for matches and never stored. The server holds only the phone number or email you chose to add to your own account, which is what makes matching possible on the other end.
• Location. Jaywok uses your device's location, or the part of the map you're looking at, to show restaurants nearby and measure distances. Those coordinates go along with each search, and to Google for ratings and photos (see below), but they are never saved to your account, and Jaywok keeps no location history.
• Analytics. Jaywok records which screens and features you use, tied to your account by an internal id (never your email or name), so the app can be improved. This can include recordings of how you tap and scroll through screens; anything you type into a text field, your contacts' names and photos, and phone numbers are blanked out before they're recorded. None of this is sold or used for advertising.
• Device and connection details. The standard technical details that come with any app or website: device type, operating system and app version, and your internet (IP) address, from which the analytics service estimates a rough location such as your city. Jaywok's hosting services also keep short-lived server logs of requests, as every website's do.
• Push notifications, if you turn them on. The iPhone app asks before sending any. If you say yes, Apple gives Jaywok an address for your phone (a device token) so messages reach it; that token is stored with your account and deleted when you sign out, or as soon as Apple reports it no longer works (for example after you turn notifications off in iPhone Settings or delete the app). Jaywok uses it only for the notifications you can switch in Settings: friend requests and accepts, friend activity, comments and messages, tips and reminders, and a Sunday recap.
• Reports and blocks. If you report someone, Jaywok keeps a record of the report so it can be reviewed. The record holds who sent it, who it's about, the reason you picked, any note you add, the person's name and photo as they were at that moment, and when; a report about a comment or a message also keeps a copy of what it said. If you block someone, Jaywok keeps the block so it keeps working. Both are deleted when either account is deleted.

What Jaywok does not collect

Your location history, your actual contact list, your photo library beyond images you deliberately attach, financial or payment information (there's nothing to pay for today), or any data for advertising. Jaywok has no ad network and builds no advertising profiles.

Who else touches your data

Jaywok uses a small number of outside services to run. Each gets only what it needs to do its job:

• Supabase, the database and sign-in system. Holds your account, stamps, saves, friend connections, comments, messages, and photos.
• Vercel, hosts the app and its server-side code.
• Resend, sends the sign-in code emails. It receives your email address and the code, nothing else.
• Google Maps Platform, supplies restaurant ratings and photos. Your search terms and the map area you're searching go to Google to fetch these; Google never receives your name, email, or account id.
• Apple Maps (MapKit), supplies the map you see.
• Apple Push Notification service, delivers notifications to your iPhone if you turn them on. It receives your device token and the notification text, nothing else.
• PostHog, receives the analytics described above, tied to your internal account id only, routed through Jaywok's own domain rather than straight to a third-party address.

Jaywok is maintained with the help of an AI coding assistant (Anthropic's Claude), which can read database records while fixing or checking the app, on Jaywok's behalf only. If you sign in with Google or Apple, that company also knows you signed in to Jaywok, under its own privacy policy. None of the services above may use your Jaywok data for their own purposes, and none receive it to sell or advertise with.

Where your data is stored, and for how long

Your account and everything in it (stamps, photos, friend connections, saved places, comments and messages) is stored on Supabase's servers in the United States (the us-east-2 region, in Ohio) and kept for as long as your account exists. If you delete your account, it is deleted with it right away; copies in Jaywok's encrypted safety backups roll off within 7 days, except one monthly snapshot kept for up to 12 months in case the database ever needs rebuilding. Analytics events are kept by PostHog under its standard retention settings, tied only to your internal account id.

Sharing with friends

Jaywok has no stranger search; the only way to become friends is an invite link, a contacts match, or a friend request the other person accepts, including one sent from the Global board. Once you're friends with someone, they can see your full passport: every stamp with its score and note, your photos, your saved places, and your adventures. This is mutual. Either of you can end the connection at any time.

Friends of friends. When one of your friends comments on a stamp of yours, that friend's own friends can see that one stamp, with its score, note, photos and comments, and can comment on it too, under a line saying which friend commented. They can't see the rest of your passport. This is on by default; turn it off in Settings with "Let friends of friends see stamps my friends comment on," and your stamps stay with your friends only. Comments on a stamp are visible to everyone who can see the stamp.

The Global board ranks every account by country count, regardless of friendship. It's on by default, showing your display name, profile photo, and count, and anyone on it can send you a friend request. Turn it off any time in Settings and all three disappear from it. People who aren't your friends never see your stamps, notes, or stamp photos through the Global board, or anywhere else except a stamp one of your friends commented on, as described above.

Your choices

• Delete your account: Settings, then Delete account. Your account and everything in it is deleted right away. You can also email hello@jaywokapp.com.
• Remove your phone number: Settings, then Remove number.
• Remove your profile photo: Settings, then Remove photo.
• Leave the Global board: Settings, then turn off "Show me on the global board."
• Keep your stamps with your friends: Settings, then turn off "Let friends of friends see stamps my friends comment on."
• Delete a comment or a message: press and hold it, then Delete.
• Turn off contacts or location access: both go through iOS's own permission system, so you can review or revoke either any time in iPhone Settings, then Jaywok.
• Unfriend someone: removes their access to your passport immediately.
• Block someone: from their row on the Global board, their friend request, the ⋯ menu on their page, or their name on a comment. Unblock in Settings, then Blocked.

Security

Jaywok's database provider encrypts data in transit and at rest, and access is restricted by row-level permissions so one account cannot read another's private data outside of friend connections. No online service can promise perfect security, and Jaywok is a one-person project without a security team. If something ever goes wrong, you'll hear about it plainly and quickly.

Children

Jaywok is not directed at children under 13, and doesn't knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has created an account, email hello@jaywokapp.com and it will be removed.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a way that matters, the effective date above will change, and for any significant change Jaywok will make an effort to tell you inside the app.

Contact

hello@jaywokapp.com. See also the terms of service.