Privacy policy

Short version: CookTheReel is a recipe site, not a data business. We collect the minimum needed to run accounts and submissions, we don’t run third-party analytics trackers, and we never sell personal data.

What we collect

• Account basics. If you sign in, we store your email address and name — provided by Google when you use Google sign-in, or just your email when you use a sign-in link. That’s the whole profile.
• Your activity here. Videos you submit and recipes you save, tied to your account so you can manage them.
• Standard server logs. Like nearly every website, our server briefly logs requests (IP address, user agent) for security and debugging. Logs rotate; we don’t build profiles from them.

What we don’t collect

No third-party analytics scripts, no advertising trackers, no fingerprinting, no buying or selling of personal data. Recipe pages work the same whether you’re signed in or not.

Cookies

Signed-in visitors get a single session cookie so you stay signed in — that’s a strictly-necessary cookie, and it’s currently the only cookie we set. If we introduce advertising (see below), advertising cookies will only ever load behind a consent banner where the law requires one.

Embedded videos

Every recipe embeds its source video using the platform’s own player. YouTube embeds use YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com), which avoids tracking cookies until you press play. TikTok and Instagram embeds are governed by those platforms’ own privacy policies once you interact with them. We never rehost video.

Advertising

The site is ad-supported by design. Today the “Sponsored” slots only show our own house promos — no ad network is live. When a network such as Google AdSense goes live, its ads may use cookies to personalize; where required (for example in the EU/UK), you’ll get a consent choice first, and non-personalized ads are served without consent-based cookies.

Who we share with

• Google — only if you choose Google sign-in.
• Resend — delivers sign-in link emails; sees the email address you enter.
• Video platforms — via the embeds described above.

That’s the list. No data brokers, ever.

Your rights & controls

You can ask for a copy of your data or ask us to delete your account and everything tied to it — email privacy@cookthereel.com from the address on your account and we’ll handle it within 30 days (usually much faster). Depending on where you live (GDPR, UK GDPR, CCPA and similar), these are your legal rights; we honor them for everyone regardless.

Creators

Recipe pages credit and link the creator whose public video they’re written from. If that’s you and you want your page claimed or removed, see your videos, your call.

Children

CookTheReel isn’t directed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has an account, email us and we’ll delete it.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, we’ll update the date at the top and, for significant changes, note it on the site. We won’t quietly expand what we collect.

privacy@cookthereel.com