Food Scan Wise

Privacy Policy

Last updated · September 2026

Food Scan Wise scans barcodes and shows you a plain-language rating for food, cosmetics, and household products. This page explains, in full, what the app does and doesn't do with your information.

The short version

Everything Food Scan Wise stores lives only on your own device. There is no account, no sign-in, and no company server that your name, scans, or favorites ever pass through. The only data that leaves your device is the barcode number itself, sent to the open product databases that answer "what is this item," which is how the app is able to work at all.

What's stored, and where

The app saves a small amount of information locally on your device, using standard on-device storage. None of it is transmitted anywhere, backed up to a server, or visible to us in any form. Uninstalling the app deletes all of it immediately, since none of it exists anywhere else.

First namePersonalizes the greeting on the home screen. Never leaves your device.
Profile photo (optional)Only if you add one. Stored on your device. Never leaves your device.
Scan historyLets you reopen a past scan without rescanning it. Never leaves your device.
FavoritesProducts you've starred, for quick reference. Never leaves your device.
Allergy & diet preferencesThe allergens and dietary rules you pick, used to personalize results on your device. Never leaves your device.
My Shelf itemsProduct names and best-before dates you add to track freshness. Never leaves your device.
Custom watchlistIngredient terms you choose to flag. Never leaves your device.
Appearance settingRemembers your Light / Dark / System preference. Never leaves your device.
Barcode numberSent to product databases to identify the item you scanned. See "Third-party lookups" below.

Camera, barcode & label scanning

Food Scan Wise asks for camera access to scan barcodes in real time and, when you choose to, to photograph an ingredient label. Both the live barcode feed and any label photo are processed entirely on your device — barcode detection and label text recognition (OCR) happen on-device to read the code or the text, and are never recorded, uploaded, or shared. Label photos are not saved to your history. If a barcode doesn't scan, you can also type it in manually; the same rule applies either way.

Third-party lookups

Once a barcode is captured, the app sends that number — and only that number, nothing that identifies you — to Open Food Facts (an open, non-commercial product database used as the primary source for ingredients, Nutri-Score, and NOVA data) and, as a fallback, UPCitemdb (used only to identify a product by name when the primary source can't be reached or doesn't have a listing).

These are independent services with their own privacy practices, which apply to requests we send them on your behalf. We don't control, and this policy doesn't cover, how they handle that traffic on their end.

Ads

Food Scan Wise is free, with no purchases or subscription — it's supported by ads shown via Google's AdMob: a banner and an inline card on the home screen, and an occasional full-screen ad when the app opens or returns to the foreground (never more than once every few hours, and never on your very first time opening the app). Ads are requested as non-personalized: the app doesn't use Apple's Advertising Identifier (IDFA) and doesn't show an App Tracking Transparency prompt.

Serving and measuring an ad still requires Google's Mobile Ads SDK to make a network request, which — like any ad SDK — can involve technical identifiers (such as IP address) needed to pick and deliver the ad. That happens under Google's own privacy policy, which governs how it handles that request; we don't control or see that data ourselves.

What we don't do

No account creation, login, or password of any kind. No data is sold, rented, or shared. No location data is collected. We don't use Apple's Advertising Identifier (IDFA) or show ads personalized to you. There's no server-side database of your activity — everything about your scans, favorites, and preferences stays on your device.

Your control over your data

Scan history can be cleared at any time from Settings. Removing a favorite removes it immediately. Because everything is local, there's no "request my data" process to go through — it's already entirely in your hands, on your device.

Children's privacy

Food Scan Wise doesn't knowingly collect information from children, and since the app collects no personal data beyond what's described above (stored locally, never transmitted), there's no server-side data to be concerned about regardless of a user's age.

Changes to this policy

If what the app collects or how it works changes, this page will be updated and the date at the top revised accordingly. Continued use of the app after an update means you accept the revised policy.

Contact

Questions about this policy or how the app works can be sent to rohitgautam131191@gmail.com.