Privacy Policy

Data controller

Sips is operated by Michael Novak, PO Box 118, Hopewell Junction, NY 12533, United States ("we", "us" or "our"), who is the controller of your personal data for the purposes of the GDPR.

Information we collect

• Account information. If you sign in by email, your email address. If you use Sign in with Apple, the account identifier Apple provides and the email address Apple shares, which may be a private relay address.
• Profile information. Your username and, if you provide them, your display name, bio and profile photograph, and whether your account is private.
• Sips. For each sip, one to three photographs, the drink, the place, your score, an optional note, the date you had the drink, and whether the sip is public or private.
• Places. Each place is obtained from Apple Maps and includes its name, coordinates, city and country. A sip recorded at a place indicates that you were there on that date.
• Activity. Your comments, cheers, follows and follow requests, the lists you create and save, the cocktails you add to the catalog, the members you block, and the reports you submit, including the content reported and the reason selected.
• Invitations. The member who invited you, the invite codes you hold, and, if you join the waitlist, your email address.
• Age verification. Whether you passed the age check, and the date of the check. You enter your birth date in the app, and it is used once for the check and never stored. We also use your device's region setting to determine the legal drinking age that applies to you.
• Notifications. If you enable notifications, a push token for your device, associated with that sign-in.
• Location. When you post a sip, Apple Maps on your device uses your location to suggest nearby places. When you use Nearby, your location is sent to us rounded to approximately 1 km in order to find sips near you, and it is not stored.
• IP address. When you request an email sign-in link, we store a keyed hash of your IP address with the request to limit abuse. Our firewall also counts requests by IP address.
• Server logs. The part of the service that was called, the result and the time taken. Logs do not contain your posts, email address, tokens or location.

Your recent searches and certain app settings are stored only on your device. We do not collect your contacts, advertising identifiers, location history or birth date. The app contains no analytics or crash-reporting tools. If you enable sharing with app developers in iOS settings, Apple may provide us with crash reports.

How we use information

• To provide Sips, on the basis of our contract with you: your account and sign-in, posting, your profile, feeds, search, lists, follows, comments and cheers, invitations, and the place and cocktail averages calculated from public sips.
• To keep Sips safe and limited to adults, on the basis of our legitimate interests and any applicable legal obligation: the age check, the screening of photographs and text, the review of reports, account suspensions and rate limits.
• To send notifications, on the basis of your consent. Each type of notification can be turned off in Settings, and all notifications can be turned off in iOS settings.
• To use your location and camera, on the basis of your consent, which you give and may withdraw at any time in iOS settings.
• To send email containing sign-in links and, if you joined the waitlist, an invite code. We do not send marketing email.

Every photograph is screened by Amazon Rekognition, an automated service, before anyone else can see it. A sip photograph flagged by the screen is held for review by a person on our team. A profile photograph flagged by the screen is rejected without review, and you may choose another. Notes, comments, list text, names and bios are screened by a word filter. A new sip whose note matches the filter is held for review. Other matching text, including an edited note, is not accepted.

We do not sell your personal data or share it for advertising purposes.

Information visible to others

• Public sips display your username and display name, the photographs, drink, place, score, note and date, together with their cheers and comments. If your account is private, only followers you approve can see your sips and lists.
• Your profile displays your username, display name, profile photograph, bio, public sips and lists, and the members you follow and who follow you. Your profile photograph, name and bio are visible even if your account is private.
• Private sips appear only in your Sips tab and are never included in averages.
• Averages for places and cocktails include public sips from public accounts, without names.
• Blocking hides you and the member you block from each other.

The app removes location and other metadata from photographs before upload, and Sips displays only the location of a place, never your own. Photographs are served from addresses that are difficult to guess. This includes the photographs of private sips, so anyone who has the exact address of a photograph can open it.

Service providers

• Amazon Web Services, in the United States, provides hosting, the database, photograph storage and delivery, email, photograph screening (Amazon Rekognition), the firewall and logging. Our AWS accounts are opted out of the use of content by AWS AI services to develop or improve those services, so Amazon Rekognition does not retain photographs for that purpose.
• Apple provides Sign in with Apple, push notifications, Apple Maps for place search on your device and place details on our server, and TestFlight and the App Store. For place details, we send Apple only the identifier of the place. Apple's privacy policy governs the information Apple receives directly from your device.

We disclose personal data where required by law, or to protect the safety of any person. If Sips is transferred to a new operator, your personal data will be transferred with it, and we will notify you beforehand.

Retention

• Account and content: retained until you delete them or your account.
• Sign-in links: valid for 15 minutes. The record, including your email address and hashed IP address, is deleted after approximately 24 hours.
• Sign-ins: end when you sign out, or after 90 days of inactivity. Associated push tokens are deleted with them.
• Photographs: the original upload is deleted within 7 days, and resized copies are retained. A photograph held for review is retained until it has been reviewed. When you delete a sip or a photograph, or replace or remove your profile photograph, the related files are deleted within approximately one day.
• Moderation records: reports and records of staff actions are deleted 2 years after they are created, except while they support a suspension that is still in effect. The result of a failed age check remains on the account.
• Waitlist: your email address is deleted 12 months after you join the waitlist.
• Logs: 30 days. Database backups: 7 days, so deleted data is removed from backups within 7 days.

Account deletion

You may delete your account in the app from Settings. If you use Sign in with Apple, you confirm the deletion with Apple, and we revoke Sips' access to your Apple ID. Deletion takes effect immediately and cannot be reversed.

On deletion, we remove your email address, Apple ID, username, display name and bio, and delete your sign-ins, push tokens, follows, cheers, comments, lists, blocks, unused invites and any waitlist entry. Your sips are removed, and their photographs and your profile photograph are deleted within approximately one day. An empty record is retained so that redeemed invites, reports and moderation records remain consistent. You may later join again as a new member. If the account was suspended or failed the age check, we retain a one-way code derived from its email address and Apple ID, solely to prevent a new sign-up from undoing that outcome, until the suspension is lifted or the age check is reset.

We may also remove content or suspend an account under the Community Guidelines. The content of a suspended account is hidden from everyone. A suspended member cannot sign in, but may request deletion of the account by writing to hi@getsips.app.

Security

All data is transmitted over HTTPS. Sign-in tokens are stored only as one-way hashes, the database is not accessible from the internet, and your session token is stored in your device's Keychain. No system is completely secure. If a breach affects your personal data, we will notify you as required by law.

International transfers

Your personal data is stored in the United States. Sips is offered only in the United States.

Your rights

In the app, you may edit your profile, edit or delete any sip, make sips private and delete your account. To obtain a copy of your personal data, or to exercise any of the rights below, write to hi@getsips.app. We will verify that the request comes from you and respond within one month.

• European Union, United Kingdom and similar jurisdictions. You have the right to access, correct, delete or receive a copy of your personal data, to restrict or object to its processing, and to withdraw consent at any time. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your data protection authority.
• California. You have the right to know what personal information we collect, and to correct or delete it. We do not sell or share personal information, and we use your sign-in details only to sign you in. You may act through an authorized agent, and we will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights.

Age restriction

Sips is only for persons of legal drinking age where they live, and never for anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone younger. An account that does not pass the age check cannot use Sips, and we retain the result and its date on the account so that the check cannot be retaken. The account may still be deleted. If we learn that a member is under age, we close the account.

Changes to this Policy

We will post any changes to this Policy on this page with a revised date. For material changes, we will notify you in the app or by email before the changes take effect.