Privacy policy

Last updated: 28 October 2026

This site collects a small amount of visit data so we can show accurate visitor numbers to potential sponsors. This page explains exactly what is collected, why, and for how long. An account is optional: only if you create one do we store your email address, your password (in scrambled form), the recipes you add and the ones you save.

Who is responsible

This website is run by Maria Letizia Fasci, who is responsible for the data described here (the "data controller" under the GDPR). You can reach us at contact@oursmartgreencookbook.com.

What we collect

• The page you viewed and the date and time of the visit.
• Your approximate country, derived from your IP address at the moment of the request, using a database stored on our own server, so your IP address isn't sent to anyone for this lookup. We do not store your IP address itself.
• If you accept cookies: a random, anonymous identifier stored in a cookie on your device, so we can count returning visitors instead of counting the same person as several different visitors.
• If you choose "Decline" (or don't choose): nothing beyond the page and the country. We don't store any identifier or fingerprint, so we can't tell whether two visits came from the same person, even on the same day.
• If you create an account: your email address, your password (stored only in scrambled form, which nobody can read back), when you signed up and last logged in, and the recipes you add to your cookbook, the recipes of ours you save, and any requests for missing ingredients you send us. Your recipes are private: only you can see them, and the people you invite if you share a cookbook. When you share one, or join one, you choose a name that the others in it see (for example your first name); they never see your email address. If you share a single recipe by its link, anyone with the link can read that recipe (with your chosen name, if you gave one) until you stop sharing it. Meal plans you save are separate from your cookbooks: only you see one, unless you share it by its own invite link; then the people who join it see its recipes (also your own recipes in it) and its shopping list and ticks, but nothing else of yours. In a plan, everyone can also write short notes on items of the shopping list and messages in the plan's chat. Everyone who is in the plan sees them, with the name you chose, including people who join later. We also note when you last had a shared plan open, to show which messages are new for you. We don't read the chats: we look at a message only if someone reports it to us, or if the law requires it. Private notes you write on our recipes are seen only by you. To confirm your email address when you sign up, we send you an email with a link; an account that isn't confirmed within 7 days is deleted. Apart from that, we email you only when you ask for it: a link to reset your password, or a link to confirm a new email address (with a note to the old address that it was changed). We send no newsletters or notifications.
• If you use the meal planners: the recipes and portions you pick, kept with your session (see sessionid below) so your plan and shopping list are still there when you come back.

Why, and on what legal basis

• Returning-visitor identifier (visitor_id): only with your consent (GDPR art. 6(1)(a)), given with "Accept". You can withdraw it at any time.
• Anonymous page views and country: our legitimate interest in showing sponsors how many people use the site (art. 6(1)(f)), using the least data possible: no identifier on your device, no fingerprint, no IP address stored. Your IP address is used only for the moment of the request: for the country lookup and, kept in memory for at most a day as a one-way code, to stop automated floods of requests.
• Your account, cookbook and meal plans (with their notes and chat): needed to provide the account and the features you asked for (art. 6(1)(b)). When you sign up, Cloudflare Turnstile checks that you're not a robot (art. 6(1)(f)).
• Meal planner, language and security cookies: needed to provide what you ask for and to keep the site secure (art. 6(1)(b) and (f)).
• Login protection: when anyone logs in (members or the site's administration), their IP address and browser are recorded to block password-guessing: failed attempts for up to 1 hour, successful logins for 90 days (art. 6(1)(f)).

What we never collect

• Your name or your email address, unless you create an account (and a name only if you share a cookbook or a plan, as you choose to write it).
• Your precise location — only your country.
• Anything sold, or shared with advertising networks or data brokers.

How long we keep it

Individual visitor identifiers are deleted after 13 months of inactivity. Aggregated statistics (page views and countries, with any identifier removed) are kept for up to 25 months to show trends to sponsors, after which they are deleted. The same goes for daily counts of how often each of our recipes is saved, copied or put in a meal plan, which say nothing about who did it. Meal-planner sessions expire after 2 weeks and are then deleted. Accounts and their recipes are kept until you delete your account, which removes them straight away; copies in our host's backups disappear within a few weeks. A cookbook you shared stays with the others in it, including the recipes you added to it, without your name. Messages and notes in a meal plan are deleted after 12 months, and before that when the plan is deleted, when you delete them (a note also when its item is ticked off), or when you delete your account. If you leave a plan, what you wrote in it stays for the others until then.

Your choice

You can choose "Decline" on the cookie banner to be counted only as anonymous page views, with no visitor identifier stored on your device (only a cookie that remembers your choice). You can change your choice at any time with the buttons shown at the bottom of this page, which is always linked from the footer of every page. Choosing "Decline" also deletes the identifier we stored for you.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask to access, correct or delete your data, to restrict or object to its use, to receive it in a portable format, or to withdraw your consent by writing to contact@oursmartgreencookbook.com. With an account, you can download everything we store about you and delete your account at any time, under Account. Without an account, we can usually only find data linked to your visitor_id cookie; choosing "Decline" deletes it straight away, and the anonymous statistics can't be traced back to you at all.

You can also complain to a data protection authority, in particular the one in the EU country where you live or work. In Sweden, where the site is run from, that is the Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection (IMY), www.imy.se.

Service providers

Like any website, this one relies on a few providers that necessarily see your IP address and the pages you request, only to deliver their service to us:

• Render hosts the website and its database.
• Cloudflare is the network in front of Render that delivers the pages to you.
• Cloudflare Turnstile checks that a visitor creating an account (or logging in to the administration) isn't a robot; it receives your IP address and browser details for this.
• mailbox.org (Germany) sends our emails, such as the link to confirm your email address and a password-reset link when you ask for one.
• Cloudinary stores the recipe photos; your browser loads them directly from Cloudinary.

Everything else, including the page styling and scripts, is served from our own site. Apart from mailbox.org, these providers are based in the United States and may process data outside the EU. Render (and Cloudflare, which works for Render) does so under Render's data processing agreement, which includes the EU's standard contractual clauses. Cloudflare (for Turnstile) and Cloudinary, which only receives the requests for the photos, transfer data under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.

Cookies

All but visitor_id are needed for the site to work or for something you asked for, and don't identify you; visitor_id is the only one that depends on your choice on the cookie banner.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the new version is published here with a new "Last updated" date.

This product includes GeoLite Data created by MaxMind, available from https://www.maxmind.com.