The Open Food Facts Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

This privacy policy describes how Open Food Facts collects and uses your personal data as part of its Services.

“Services” means the provision of websites: openfoodfacts.org, openbeautyfacts.org, openproductsfacts.org, openpetfoodfacts.org, and corresponding mobile applications on Android and iOS (Open Food Facts, Open Beauty Facts, Open Pet Food Facts et Open Products Facts), contribution websites hunger.openfoodfacts.org, wiki.openfoodfacts.org, as well as the sites of new projects that could be added.^[1]

Open Food Facts, as defined by the law of July 1st 1901, whose head office is located at 21 rue des Iles, 94100 Saint-Maur-des-Fossés (France), is responsible for the processing of personal data within the framework of the Services.

Email : contact@openfoodfacts.org

Our philosophy

Open Food Facts assures its visitors and contributors that it does not profile people based on their age, behaviors or habits without their explicit consent. Likewise, it does not communicate your personal data to third parties for commercial purposes.

Thus, Open Food Facts only collects the personal information strictly necessary to achieve its objectives and under no circumstances uses this information for purposes other than those for which it is collected.

Concerned about the confidentiality of your data, Open Food Facts not only strives to comply with the legislation in force in Europe^[b], it also takes into account other international regulations.

2. Your personal data and their use by Open Food Facts

3. Personal data processed by OpenFoodFacts

Non-sensitive personal data

From you, Open Food Facts only collects data strictly necessary for the operation of its various services.

Regarding the user name (which may be a pseudonym) and email address, contributors are required to provide them to register and/or connect to their accounts via the mobile applications and the website. Therefore, refusing to provide this data will only allow you to use Open Food Facts services as a visitor.

Your personal data processed for one of the Open Food Facts services is automatically transferred for the use of other services (mobile applications, Open Food Facts websites, Wiki, Forum, Hunger Games, etc.). You can object to this by deleting your account knowing that this deletion only allows you to access Open Food Facts services as a visitor.

Sensitive personal data

Based on your consent and in order to help you sort and identify products corresponding to your dietary preferences, the following user preferences, which may relate to your health, are collected:

• Nutritional quality (amount of salt, sugar, fat, fatty acid);
• Food processing;
• Allergens and ingredients contained in foods;

This data is stored in your browser and mobile applications (secure storage). They are neither communicated nor transmitted to third parties. 

4. Public and private information:

The username and user ID can be visible to other users of our services unlike email which is confidential. The country in which the contributor added and/or modified a product is also visible and can be cross-referenced with their username.

The database is published in its entirety under an open data license, which is one of the primary goals of the project. It only contains the user's identifier as well as the products he added and modified, products possibly located in a country.

When deleting the user account, the user ID is replaced with a random but unique username for that user. All other personal data is deleted.

5. Cookies and other terminal identifiers

Cookies are small files that a site or its service providers transfer to your computer's hard drive through your browser.

These cookies are used to authenticate you, understand and save your preferences for future visits to our sites and compile aggregate data for traffic and interaction on our websites. These cookies are among those that do not require your consent.^[e][f]

Open Food Facts does not transfer these cookies to third parties.

6. Security measures

For the security of your personal data, Open Food Facts has implemented good security practices:

• Password hashing;
• Monitoring good practices in development;
• Authentication by SSH key, access to servers limited to a small trusted group, limitation of the attack surface, use of firewalls, etc.

7. How to exercise your rights? 

To exercise one or more of your rights , you can contact us by email: privacy@openfoodfacts.org. In order to avoid identity theft, Open Food Facts will authenticate and control your email address using its internal technical processes.

In certain circumstances, particularly in the event of a judicial and/or administrative investigation, Open Food Facts may transmit your personal data to authorized public authorities. We will endeavor to within the strict limits of the law, to inform you in the event of transmission of your personal data and will attempt to decline any abusive or unfounded request.

8. Dispute resolution

In the event of a dispute between you and Open Food Facts regarding the processing of your personal data, please contact us by email at the following address privacy@openfoodfacts.org. We will respond as soon as possible.

However, in the event of an unsatisfactory response or no response within a maximum of three months, you have the right to contact the CNIL via the following link https://www.cnil.fr/fr/saisir-la-cnil or https://www.cnil.fr/fr/plaintes 

9. Updates to this policy

To ensure a better protection, Open Food Facts reserves the right to modify and/or adapt this confidentiality policy following regulations and internal best practices. For each substantial modification, Open Food Facts will inform you at least thirty days before their application.

As a collaborative project, Open Food Facts remains available to receive your suggestions regarding this privacy policy, which you can send by email to privacy@openfoodfacts.org

10. What are your rights ?

The right of access and to information

You have the right to ask whether Open Food Facts processes your personal data and to request the communication of a copy if necessary. You can also request the portability of some of this data in a readable format.

You have the right to be informed about the purposes for which your data is collected, the way in which they are processed, used and stored.

The right to object

You can object to your data being used for a specific objective provided that this data is not mandatory to achieve this objective.

The right to rectification of data

You have the right to request the rectification of your inaccurate or incomplete information in order to avoid the processing of any incorrect data or to complete missing data.

The right to erasure of data

You have the right to request the deletion of one or more of your personal data, specifying which data it concerns.

For personal data that is not technically erasable, Open Food Facts will use the scrambling technique when it is the subject of an erasure request.

The right to erasure is waived if the retention of the data is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal rights.

The right to restriction of data processing

This right allows you to ask Open Food Facts to temporarily stop the use of certain of your data for a specific reason that you should specify.

However, this data may be used subject to your agreement or for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal rights; the protection of the rights of another natural or legal person or for an important reason of public interest.