ChiCa Privacy Policy

Please read this policy carefully before registering, signing in, or using the services. If you do not agree with this policy, do not continue to register, sign in, or use the services. You may refuse or withdraw permission for optional features such as camera access, photo access, phone verification, and AI reviews. Unless the processing is necessary for a requested feature, refusing optional processing will not by itself stop unrelated features.

1. Scope

This policy applies to the ChiCa iOS app, the ChiCa website, and related services provided directly by us. Personal information processed independently by a third party through its own website, app, or service is governed by that third party's privacy policy. This policy identifies the main third-party services connected to ChiCa features.

2. How We Collect and Use Personal Information

We process personal information lawfully, fairly, and only for clear, reasonable purposes directly related to the services.

2.1 Account registration, sign-in, and session security

When you sign in with or bind a phone number, we may process your phone number; verification result, purpose, and time; device identifier, client platform, and operating-system version; sign-in time; session status; token summaries; IP address or an irreversible digest of it; request identifiers; and records of unusual requests. We use this information to register and sign in accounts, bind phone numbers, maintain sessions, prevent verification-code abuse, credential replay, credential stuffing, and other account attacks.

When you choose Sign in with Apple, we may process the stable identifier provided by Apple, the name you choose to provide on first authorization, Apple identity tokens, authorization codes, one-time nonces, and encrypted credentials used to maintain or revoke the Apple sign-in relationship. ChiCa does not currently request your email address from Apple and does not automatically merge an account solely because Apple supplied a private relay email. Identity tokens, authorization codes, and nonces are used only for authentication, security checks, and replay prevention and are not written to business logs in plaintext.

2.2 Coffee records, recipes, and preferences

You can record coffee beans, brewing recipes, actual brewing parameters, equipment, taste evaluations, flavor descriptions, drafts, preferences, and AI suggestions locally on your device. For signed-in users, coffee beans and completed brew records, together with pour segments, evaluations, necessary equipment snapshots, and valid review results stored with those records, are saved in the cloud through offline-first synchronization to support recovery on another device. Ordinary cloud synchronization requires a valid signed-in session; it does not require a bound phone number.

In-progress brew drafts, equipment libraries, custom recipes, app preferences, and original bean-intake photos are not included in the initial ordinary cloud-synchronization scope. The device keeps local caches and accepts offline writes. Ordinary synchronization and AI reviews are separate paths; signing in does not automatically upload content outside the synchronization scope.

2.3 AI reviews and personalized suggestions

When you actively submit an AI review, our backend builds the task input from the synchronized current brew record and valid, still-retained brews for the same coffee bean. The model service may receive:

• bean name, origin, processing method, variety, altitude, roast level, and other bean information;
• dose, water amount, water temperature, grind setting, brewing method, pour stages, timing, and other brewing information;
• equipment information;
• your overall evaluation, next-cup intent, current adjustment target, and free-form text;
• still-retained factual history for the same bean, client bean identifier, and task identifier; and
• AI-generated review content, next-cup suggestions, and necessary context summaries.

We process this information to generate and improve brewing suggestions for the same bean, display task results, prevent duplicate submission or charging, and maintain necessary service security and quality records. The app creates a review task only after the current brew has completed ordinary cloud synchronization and the backend has confirmed it.

The current review input does not include historical model answers, historical suggestions, compressed memory, or old experiment goals. Our current production configuration identifies Alibaba Cloud Model Studio / DashScope as the AI provider. Both reviews and bean-photo visual recognition use qwen3.8-flash (Qwen) through a mainland-China-compatible endpoint; billing records identify the Beijing region. This endpoint information describes the current runtime and billing configuration. It is not a substitute for the provider's formal disclosure of processing location, retention, model-training use, or cross-border processing. We will update this policy based on the applicable account agreement, service terms, and configuration review.

2.4 Bean intake by camera or photo library

When you actively use bean intake by camera or photo library, we process the coffee-package photo you select after receiving the relevant camera or photo permission. Granting photo-library access does not cause us to upload photos you did not select.

The JPEG image you select is uploaded to access-controlled cloud storage and may be provided to a visual model to identify the bean name, origin, processing method, variety, altitude, flavor, roast level, and other information printed on the package. The result is returned to the app and saved in your local bean library. Please avoid uploading faces, contact details, addresses, order information, or other personal information unrelated to bean identification.

2.5 Support and rights requests

When you contact us by email or another support channel, we may process your email address, contact details, issue description, screenshots, device or error information, and communications. We use this information to verify identity, investigate issues, handle complaints, and respond to privacy-rights requests.

2.6 Service security, operations, and troubleshooting

To keep the service secure and reliable, we may process IP address, network type, device model, operating system and app version, request time, endpoint path, response status, request and task identifiers, duration, crash and error information, failed sign-in counts, rate-limit status, and security-event records. Unless necessary for troubleshooting and lawfully authorized, we do not record complete phone numbers, verification codes, Apple tokens, Alibaba Cloud authentication tokens, photo contents, or free-form user text in business logs.

3. Device Permissions

You can manage camera, photo, and network permissions at any time in iOS Settings. Withdrawing permission does not affect processing lawfully completed before withdrawal, but the related feature may no longer work.

4. Third-Party Services and Processing

We do not sell your personal information or use it for third-party advertising or cross-app tracking. To provide necessary features, we may entrust or disclose the information required for those features to the following third parties. This table reflects the current release and production service chain; we will update it when the chain changes.

If we replace a third party, or a third party materially changes its purposes, methods, or information types, we will update this policy and obtain new consent where required by law.

5. Storage, Retention, and Deletion

5.1 Storage locations

Recipes, active drafts, equipment libraries, and preferences that are not signed in or not included in ordinary cloud synchronization remain on your device. Original bean-intake photos are uploaded to access-controlled cloud storage as described above and are managed under a separate retention process. For signed-in users, beans, completed brews, and necessary child resources included in the first ordinary cloud-synchronization scope are stored by the backend in MySQL; the app also keeps a local cache.

Cloud accounts, authentication, AI tasks, necessary context, and photos currently run through mainland-China ECS, RDS, OSS, and Model Studio configurations; the Model Studio runtime and billing endpoint is recorded as Beijing. These are deployment observations and are not a complete commitment by each provider about actual storage, backups, cross-border processing, or subcontractor locations. We will update the disclosure of actual locations, provider training use, and cross-border processing based on account agreements, service terms, and configuration review. If personal information must later be provided outside mainland China, we will complete the notices, separate consent, personal-information-protection impact assessment, and other procedures required by applicable law.

5.2 Retention periods

We retain personal information only for the shortest period necessary for the purposes described in this policy:

• Local coffee records and caches remain on your device until you delete them in the app, delete the related user data, uninstall the app, or the system removes them. Copies in iCloud or device backups follow your Apple backup settings.
• Ordinary cloud brew history is retained on a rolling basis for the most recent 365 days for free / trial accounts. pro / admin accounts are not automatically cleaned by record age while the account remains valid. Bean assets are not automatically removed merely because the latest brew is older than 365 days. User deletion, account deletion, and legally required processing are separate.
• Accounts and sign-in identities are normally retained until account deletion is completed. Records needed to prevent fraud, resolve disputes, or satisfy legal obligations are deleted or anonymized when no longer necessary.
• Sessions and security credentials are retained until expiration, sign-out, rebinding, account deletion, or security revocation. Expired summaries may remain for the necessary security-audit period.
• AI task requests and result payloads are retained briefly while a task is processed, including facts read from current cloud records, your current request, and the frozen task input. Review and bean-intake database result payloads are currently normally cleaned after 24 hours. A review result written into a cloud brew record and matching that record's version follows the retention policy for that cloud record. Minimal task-audit metadata is retained only as necessary for security, billing, and disputes and is then deleted or anonymized.
• Original coffee-package photos and recognition traces are stored under OSS paths such as upload/{yyyy}/{mm}/{dd}/{user_id}/{timestamp}.jpg and task_tmp/bean-intake/.... As of this policy update, the 24-hour database-payload cleanup does not automatically delete these OSS objects; account-deletion cleanup deletes objects associated with the account. We therefore do not promise that an original photo or trace is automatically deleted within 24 hours. We will update this section when independent expiry rules for originals, traces, and failed-task objects are defined and deployed.
• Service logs and security records, including HTTP, authentication, task, and provider metadata, are kept for the shortest period necessary for security, billing, troubleshooting, and dispute handling. Bean-recognition traces may also contain prompts, raw model responses, structured recognition results, provider request identifiers, and token counts. We reduce retention through access controls, log redaction, and backup rotation, and delete or anonymize information after it is no longer necessary.
• Support communications are retained only as necessary to handle the request, a dispute, or a legal obligation.

After a retention period ends, we delete or anonymize personal information unless applicable law requires otherwise. Information in backups is deleted or anonymized through the backup-rotation cycle, and approved deletions continue to apply when a backup is restored.

6. How We Protect Personal Information

We use measures appropriate to the risks, including HTTPS transmission, access controls, token summaries, encryption of sensitive credentials, least-privilege cloud identities, upload-scope restrictions, rate limiting, log redaction, and necessary security audits. No internet environment is absolutely secure. If a personal-information security incident may harm your rights, we will take remedial measures and notify you through the app, email, website notice, or another appropriate method, and report to regulators when required by law.

7. Your Rights

To the extent provided by applicable law, you may access and copy your personal information; correct or supplement inaccurate or incomplete information; request deletion when legally available; withdraw consent-based processing; delete your ChiCa account; ask us to explain this policy and our processing rules; request portability where legally and technically available; and complain about personal-information processing.

You can exercise relevant rights through the account and privacy settings in the app or by emailing support_chica@yeah.net. To protect account and data security, we may verify your identity before processing a request, but we will not ask for information unrelated to the request. We will process or respond within 15 business days after receiving the request and completing necessary identity verification, except where another legal rule applies or the request cannot lawfully be fulfilled because it affects another person's rights, trade secrets, national security, or public security.

After receiving an account-deletion request, we first stop account sign-in and ordinary brew synchronization. A backend worker then deletes or anonymizes account-associated personal information that the law does not require us to retain, including cloud beans, brews, synchronization records, AI tasks, and the local user container. Approved deletions continue to apply when backups are restored. Deleting the app, signing out, or merely stopping use is not the same as deleting an account.

8. Children

ChiCa is primarily intended for adults and is not directed to children under 14. We do not knowingly identify or collect children's information. If you are the guardian of a child under 14 and believe the child provided personal information to us without your consent, please contact us using the details below. After verifying the situation, we will handle the information as required by law.

9. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy when our features, processing methods, third-party services, or applicable law changes. The updated policy will be published on the website and in the app. If the purposes, methods, information types, retention periods, third-party recipients, or your rights change materially, we will provide a prominent notice through the app or another appropriate method. Where new consent is required, we will obtain it before carrying out the affected processing. We keep historical versions available for reference.

10. Contact Us

If you have questions, suggestions, or complaints about this policy, our processing, or a rights request, contact us at the email above. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to a competent personal-information, cyberspace, telecommunications, or market-regulation authority, or bring a legal action before a competent court as permitted by law.