Privacy Policy

Effective date: 15 September 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how Wise Platform Limited, the company that operates HeySifu ("HeySifu", "we", "us" or "our"), collects, uses, stores, shares and protects your personal data when you use the HeySifu website and services (the "Service"). We are committed to handling your data in accordance with the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (Cap. 486) of Hong Kong and, where applicable, other data protection laws of the places where our users live.

By using the Service you acknowledge that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with it, please do not use the Service.

1. Who we are and how to contact us

The Service is owned and operated by Wise Platform Limited. For any question, request or complaint about your personal data, contact us at [email protected].

2. What we collect

2.1 Information you give us

• Email address — required to create an account. We use passwordless one-time-code login, so your email is the only credential we hold. We never store a password.
• Display name — optional. If you do not set one, we default it to the part of your email address before the "@" sign. You can change it at any time.
• Language preference — one of Cantonese (Traditional Chinese), English, Filipino or Bahasa Indonesia.
• Notification preference — whether you want an email when a video you submitted finishes processing.
• Personal cooking notes — short notes (up to 200 characters each) you attach to recipe steps on videos you have saved. These are private to your account unless you create a share link (see Section 5.3).
• YouTube links you submit — when you submit a YouTube video for recipe analysis, we record the YouTube video ID and that your account submitted it.

2.2 Information collected automatically

• Usage interactions — when you open a video page, start playing a video, watch past the halfway point, or share a video, we record these events. If you are logged in, they are linked to your account so we can personalise your "Recommended" feed. If you are not logged in, they are only added to anonymous daily totals per video — we do not use cookies or any other identifier to track visitors who are not logged in.
• Saved-video library — which videos you have bookmarked, and when.
• IP address — used transiently for security rate-limiting (for example, limiting how many login codes or video submissions can be requested in a short period). Rate-limiting counters are processed by our infrastructure provider and expire automatically; we do not build profiles from IP addresses.
• Coarse region — our content delivery network resolves the country your request comes from and passes that country code to our server; we do not receive or store your IP address for this purpose. If that signal is unavailable, we fall back to your language preference as a rough proxy for region. We use this only to show regionally relevant sponsored or affiliate content (for example, products available in your country) — not to build a location history or profile of you.
• Error reports — if the Service encounters a technical error, technical details about what went wrong (such as the page you were on, your browser type and your IP address) may be sent to our error-monitoring provider so we can diagnose and fix the failure. We do not use error reports for advertising or profiling.
• Aggregate site statistics — we use Umami, a privacy-focused analytics service, to count page views and understand which pages people arrive on and which country and device type they use. Umami sets no cookies and assigns you no persistent identifier: your IP address is converted into an irreversible hash that is used only to count you once within a single day, and is never stored. The resulting data is aggregate statistics only and cannot be traced back to you or linked to your account. Data is stored in the European Union. If your browser sends a "Do Not Track" signal, we collect nothing at all.
• Cookies — see Section 6.

2.3 What we do not collect

We do not collect phone numbers, physical addresses, payment details, government identifiers, precise location, contacts, photos, or microphone/camera input. The Service's voice features use your browser's built-in text-to-speech to read steps aloud — nothing is recorded. We do not use advertising SDKs or tracking pixels (no Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, or similar), and we do not use any analytics tool that sets cookies, assigns you a persistent identifier, or tracks you across other websites or apps. Our only analytics tool is the cookieless, aggregate-only service described in Section 2.2.

2.4 The HeySifu mobile app (Android and iOS)

If you use HeySifu through our Android or iOS app, we collect the same information described in Sections 2.1 and 2.2, with the differences below. The app contains no advertising, analytics or crash-reporting SDK and uses no cookies, so Section 6 does not apply to it.

• Signed-in devices — for each device you sign in on, we record the platform (Android or iOS), the app version and when it was last used, so that you can see and sign out of your devices from the You tab.
• Push notification token — only if you turn push notifications on. Your device’s operating system (Google on Android, Apple on iOS) issues a token that lets us deliver a “your recipe is ready” notification to that device. The token identifies the app installation, not you, and we cannot use it for anything other than sending notifications. It is stored together with the platform, the app version, a device name and your language, so the notification is sent in the right language.
• Clipboard — the app reads your clipboard only when you tap a “Paste” button, to fill in a YouTube link or a login code. It never reads the clipboard on its own.

The app asks for no other device permissions. It does not access your location, camera, microphone, contacts, photos or files.

3. How we use your data

• To operate your account and log you in (email, one-time codes, session cookie).
• To provide core features: saving videos, personal notes, language settings.
• To personalise your "Recommended" feed and show related videos, using your saved videos, notes and usage interactions.
• To process YouTube videos you submit into structured recipes using AI (see Section 5.1).
• To send you transactional emails: login codes, and (if you opted in) processing-complete notifications.
• To protect the Service: rate limiting, abuse prevention, and diagnosing processing failures.
• To show regionally relevant sponsored or affiliate content, using your coarse region (see Section 2.2) and the content of the video you are viewing. We do not share your personal data with third-party advertising networks, and we do not build cross-site or cross-app advertising profiles.

We do not sell your personal data.

4. Legal bases

Where a legal basis is required, we rely on: performance of a contract (providing the Service you signed up for), our legitimate interests (securing the Service, improving recommendations from usage data, and showing regionally relevant sponsored content), and your consent (optional email notifications, which you can withdraw at any time in your account settings).

5. Sharing with third parties

5.1 Service providers (processors)

We share your data with service providers only to the extent needed to run the Service. They are bound by contract to process it solely on our instructions and to keep it confidential, and some of them are located outside Hong Kong (see Section 11). The categories of provider we rely on are:

• Hosting, database and content delivery providers — store the account data described above and serve our pages to you. Our content delivery network also resolves the coarse country your request comes from (see Section 2.2).
• Queueing, caching and rate-limiting providers — receive your IP address and internal account ID transiently so that we can limit abuse. These records expire automatically.
• Email delivery providers — receive your email address in order to send you the transactional emails described in Section 3.
• Artificial-intelligence providers — when a YouTube video is submitted, receive the public YouTube URL and its public metadata (title, description, category, duration) in order to check that it is a cooking video and to generate the recipe. We do not send your email address, your name or your notes with these requests. Some AI providers may use the content sent to them to improve their own services.
• Error-monitoring and analytics providers — receive the technical details of a failure (which may include your IP address and browser information) and the cookieless aggregate statistics described in Section 2.2. They receive no account data and no persistent identifier for you.
• Push notification delivery — Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) on Android and Apple (Apple Push Notification service) on iOS receive your push token and the text of the notification (the title of the video that finished processing) in order to deliver it to your device. They receive no email address or name from us.
• Professional advisers — such as auditors and lawyers, where they are under a duty of confidentiality to us.

We may change the individual providers within these categories from time to time without amending this policy. We do not share your personal data with third-party advertising networks.

5.2 YouTube and Google embeds

HeySifu uses YouTube API Services to look up the public metadata of the videos you submit and to play them back. By using the Service you are also agreeing to be bound by YouTube's Terms of Service.

Recipe videos are played through YouTube's privacy-enhanced embedded player (youtube-nocookie.com). On most devices, the player only loads after you press play. On Apple iOS devices (iPhone and iPad), however, the player is loaded in the background — paused and hidden — as soon as you open a video page, before you press play. This is a technical requirement of iOS: without it, starting playback would require two taps instead of one. Loading the player sends your IP address and basic device information to Google/YouTube, so on iOS this happens when the page opens rather than when you press play. The privacy-enhanced player does not set advertising or tracking cookies until you actually start playback; once you do, Google/YouTube may set its own cookies and collect data under its own privacy policy, which we do not control. Our pages also load an icon font from Google Fonts, which means your browser sends your IP address to Google when fetching it.

Because these embeds and fonts are served by Google, that processing is governed by the Google Privacy Policy, and your use of the embedded player is also subject to YouTube's Terms of Service. You can review and control the data Google holds about you at Google My Account.

5.3 Content you choose to share

If you create a share link for your cooking notes, anyone who has that link can see those notes and your display name. You can delete your share links at any time from your account page. If someone accepts your shared notes, a copy is saved into their own account and is not removed when you later delete the link.

5.4 Legal requirements

We may disclose personal data if required by law, court order, or a lawful request by authorities, or where necessary to protect the rights, safety or property of HeySifu or others.

6. Cookies

The Service sets only the following cookies. We do not set marketing or analytics cookies.

Your browser's local storage may also cache your email and display name after login so pages load faster; this stays on your device and is cleared when you log out.

Both cookies above are strictly necessary: without them we cannot keep you signed in or remember your language. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings. If you block them, you will be signed out and will not be able to use the parts of the Service that require an account.

7. How long we keep data

• Account data is kept for as long as your account exists.
• One-time login codes expire within minutes and are deleted once used.
• Rate-limiting records expire automatically within minutes to hours.
• Anonymous per-video usage totals (daily view/play/share counts) are aggregate statistics not linked to any person and may be retained indefinitely.
• Aggregate site statistics held by Umami are deleted within 6 months.
• When you turn push notifications off or sign out of a device, we stop sending to that device's push token and mark it as disabled. Push tokens and signed-in-device records are deleted when you delete your account, and a token is deleted automatically when the operating system reports that it is no longer valid.

8. Your rights and choices

• Access and correction — you can view and edit your display name, language and notification settings in your account page. For anything else, email us.
• Deletion — you can delete your account yourself from the account page. This permanently removes your profile, saved videos, notes, share links and usage interactions. Recipes generated from videos you submitted remain available to other users, but are no longer attributed to you.
• Withdraw consent — turn off notification emails at any time in settings, and push notifications in the app’s You tab or in your device’s notification settings.
• Complaints — you may contact us first at [email protected]; users in Hong Kong may also complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD).

9. Security

We use industry-standard measures to protect your data: passwordless login (no password database to breach), HttpOnly session cookies, encrypted connections (HTTPS), server-side-only database access, and rate limiting on sensitive endpoints. No system is perfectly secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security, but we work to protect your data proportionately to its sensitivity.

10. Children

The Service is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 13. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.

11. International transfers

Our service providers (listed in Section 5.1) may store or process data in data centres outside your home jurisdiction, including outside Hong Kong. Where we transfer data internationally, we rely on our providers' contractual and security commitments to protect it.

12. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will update the effective date above and take reasonable steps to notify you (for example, a notice on the Service). Continued use after changes take effect means you accept the updated policy.

13. Language

This Privacy Policy is prepared in English. Translations into other languages are provided for convenience only; if there is any inconsistency between the English version and a translation, the English version prevails.