Privacy Policy

MoodBite is a service provided by Xium Labs Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 16702035, with its registered office at 124 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX.

Xium Labs Ltd is the controller of the personal data described in this policy. MoodBite is the name of the service, not a separate legal entity. Where this policy says "we" or "us", it means Xium Labs Ltd.

Write to us at [email protected], or by post at the registered office above. Requests about your rights under section 10 should be sent to the same address and will be recognised however they are worded.

You do not need to use a particular form of words, quote this policy, or state which law you are relying on. If your message can reasonably be read as a request about your personal data, we will treat it as one.

Xium Labs Ltd is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office, the United Kingdom's supervisory authority for data protection.

When you create an account we collect your email address and, if you provide one, your name. If you sign in using an external identity provider, we receive your email address and display name from that provider, and no password.

The mobile app lets you describe what you want in three ways, and the last two are worth spelling out. A photograph is sent away to be read and is not kept. Speech is turned into text before it reaches us, so we receive the words and never a recording. Whichever way you start, what ends up in your history is the text, and it is deleted with the rest of your history.

Some information reaches us simply because you connected to the service. We use it to keep the service running, secure and usable, not to build a profile of you.

You can use the MoodBite app to search a couple of times before you create an account. To count those searches we need something to count them against, and it cannot be the guest account itself: a guest account can be replaced by clearing the app’s data, so a limit tied to it would not be a limit at all.

So the app generates a random identifier and stores it on your phone, in the iOS Keychain or the Android Keystore. It is a random string. It is not your advertising identifier, it does not describe your handset, and it is not combined with anything else about you. We use it for one thing: counting to two.

We keep it for 90 days from your last search and then delete it. If you create an account this stops, because your searches are then counted against the account and nothing further is written against the identifier. If you delete your account, the app clears the identifier and we delete our records of it at the same time, which restores the free searches.

Because the identifier lives on your phone and we hold no copy tied to your name, we cannot look it up for you. If you want to make a request about it under section 10, the app can show it to you and you should include it in your message.

Creating and maintaining your account, returning recommendations, managing your favourites, submitting reservations and operating business accounts are all necessary to perform our contract with you. The lawful basis is Article 6(1)(b) of the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR.

We use service records to prevent fraud and abuse, to enforce rate limits, to investigate incidents and to diagnose faults. The lawful basis is Article 6(1)(f), legitimate interests, being our interest and yours in a service that stays available and is not overrun.

The same basis covers the identifier described in section 2.5, which counts the free searches offered before you create an account. Without it that allowance could not be enforced at all, and the cost of offering it would be unbounded.

We have weighed that interest against your rights. The data involved is technical rather than intimate, it is kept for a limited period under section 8, and it is not used to make decisions about you as an individual. You may object at any time under section 10, and for the app identifier in section 2.5, creating an account ends the processing.

We rely on your consent, Article 6(1)(a) and Article 9(2)(a) where the information is special category, for device location, dietary and other sensitive preferences, marketing messages, push notifications, and non-essential storage on your device.

You can withdraw any of these at any time, and withdrawing is as easy as giving. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of anything done beforehand.

We retain records of transactions to meet accounting and tax obligations, and we may disclose information where we are legally required to. The lawful basis is Article 6(1)(c), compliance with a legal obligation.

MoodBite uses automated systems, including machine learning, to interpret what you describe and to rank the places we suggest. When you enter a mood or a description of what you want, that text is processed automatically to produce suggestions.

We tell you this because you are entitled to know when you are dealing with an automated system rather than a person.

We use a limited number of suppliers to operate the service. Each acts as our processor, is bound by a written contract meeting Article 28 of the UK and EU GDPR, may use the data only to perform the service for us, and may not use it for its own purposes.

We describe them by category rather than by name. Publishing a component-by-component map of the systems that hold customer data hands an attacker a target list, and we consider that a poor trade for our users. If you want to know the identity of a specific supplier, ask us at [email protected] and we will tell you.

Mapping and place information is deliberately absent from the list below. That supplier does not act on our instructions and is not our processor, so it is described separately in section 5.6.

When you request a reservation we pass the restaurant the details it needs to honour it: your name, the date and time, the size of your party, and any request you added. Once received, the restaurant handles that information as its own controller, under its own privacy policy.

We do not give restaurants your browsing history, your other bookings, your saved preferences or your contact details beyond what a booking requires.

We may disclose personal data where we are required to by law, court order or a binding request from a competent authority, or where disclosure is necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims, or to protect the safety of any person.

We review such requests and refuse or narrow those which are overbroad, defective, or not supported by the law relied on. Where we are lawfully able to notify you of a request for your data, we will.

If Xium Labs Ltd is involved in a merger, acquisition, restructuring or sale of assets, personal data may transfer to the acquiring party. Any recipient remains bound by this policy in respect of data received under it until it lawfully provides you with a replacement notice. We will tell you before your data becomes subject to a materially different policy.

We are established in the United Kingdom. Some of the suppliers described in section 5.2, and the mapping provider described in section 5.6, operate infrastructure outside the United Kingdom and the European Economic Area, including in the United States. Where that happens, your personal data is transferred internationally.

We transfer personal data outside the UK or EEA only where one of the following applies: the destination is covered by an adequacy decision or adequacy regulations; the transfer is governed by the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, together with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum where UK data is involved; or another lawful transfer mechanism applies.

Where we rely on contractual safeguards, we assess whether the law and practice of the destination country would undermine them, and apply additional technical and organisational measures where needed.

You may ask us at [email protected] for information about the safeguards applying to a particular transfer.

We apply technical and organisational measures appropriate to the risk, as required by Article 32. These include encryption of data in transit, access control enforced at the data layer so that a fault in the application cannot expose one user's records to another, restricted administrative access with a second factor, and logging of privileged actions.

We describe our measures in general terms deliberately. A detailed public description of a system's defences is useful mainly to someone trying to defeat them.

No system is immune. If a personal data breach occurs and it is likely to result in a risk to your rights and freedoms, we will notify the Information Commissioner's Office without undue delay and, where feasible, within 72 hours of becoming aware of it, as required by Article 33.

Where a breach is likely to result in a high risk to you, we will tell you directly and without undue delay, describing what happened, what it means for you, and what we are doing about it.

We keep personal data only for as long as it is needed for the purpose it was collected for, or for as long as the law requires us to. When neither applies, it is deleted or irreversibly anonymised.

These are the periods we work to. Where a legal claim or an investigation is live, the relevant records are preserved until it concludes, and then deleted under the same rules.

You can delete your account from your account settings. Deletion removes your profile, preferences, saved places and content. It is not a flag that hides you from view while your records remain.

Records we are legally required to keep, principally transaction records for tax purposes, are retained for the periods in 8.2 and are not used for any other purpose in the meantime.

We store a small number of items on your device. Some are required to sign you in and keep the service secure. The rest remember preferences such as your selected mood and how you set your location.

Our Cookie Policy lists every item individually, with its purpose and lifetime. You can change your choices at any time using Cookie settings in the footer of any page, and refusing a category removes what is already stored for it.

In the UK and the EEA we ask before storing anything that is not strictly necessary. Elsewhere, you can refuse at any time and we honour automated opt-out signals such as Global Privacy Control wherever they are sent.

If you are in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area you have the following rights in respect of your personal data.

Depending on your state of residence, you may have rights under laws including the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended, and comparable laws in Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, Texas, Oregon, Montana and other states.

We extend the following to residents of any US state that provides them, without requiring you to establish that a particular threshold applies to us.

Some United States laws, including the Washington My Health My Data Act and Nevada Senate Bill 370, treat information that can indicate a health condition as consumer health data. Dietary requirements and recorded moods may fall within those definitions.

We collect that information only where you volunteer it, use it only to filter and rank the places we show you, never sell it, and never share it for advertising. You may withdraw your consent and have it deleted at any time by removing it from your profile or by writing to [email protected].

Send your request to [email protected] from the email address on your account, or from any address if you tell us enough to find your records.

We respond within one month for requests under UK and EU law, extendable by two further months for complex requests, in which case we will tell you within the first month and explain why. For requests under United States state law we respond within 45 days, extendable once where the law permits.

We may ask you to confirm your identity before acting, because handing your data to someone impersonating you would be a worse failure than a delay. We ask for the minimum needed to be satisfied, and we do not use what you send for anything else.

You may use an authorised agent where the applicable law allows it. We will ask for evidence of their authority.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, please tell us first at [email protected] so we have the chance to put it right.

You can also complain to a supervisory authority. In the United Kingdom that is the Information Commissioner's Office. In the EEA it is the supervisory authority in the country where you live, where you work, or where the issue arose. You are not required to raise it with us before going to a regulator.

This policy carries a version number and the date it takes effect, both shown at the top of the page. When we change it we update both.

Where a change materially affects how we use your personal data or what your choices are, we will tell you directly before it takes effect, by email to the address on your account or by a prominent notice in the service. Where a change requires your consent, we will ask for it rather than assume it from your continued use.