What we store
| Your email | Only to send sign-in codes. You appear everywhere as “User #N”. |
|---|---|
| Product ratings | Public: your answers about a probiotic you take, your note, how long you've taken it and “Got it free”, under User #N, with their earlier answers when you change them. See Product ratings. |
| What I take | Private: the probiotics you say you take (the same list as Your usual in the gut log). |
| About you | Private and optional: age band, gender, diet and what you avoid, and anything you type for diet “Other” or “Something else”. Never on a rating; only in group totals of 10 or more, and what you type is never counted. |
| Early access | Which features you've turned on in Account before they open to everyone (today, the gut log and lab notes). Turning one off hides it again and deletes nothing. |
| Photos | Kept privately with your log, with location and camera details removed, to read them and to improve how we read photos. The site never shows them, to you or anyone. |
| Specimens | In the gut log: Bristol type, an approximate color, the outline of its shape (traced on your phone; no colors or pixels from the photo), and the specimen we draw from them. |
| Your answers | What you tell us about your day, the chips we read from it, and your usual. |
| Reminders | Only if you turn them on, per device: the time, your time zone, and your phone's push address. The reminder carries no data (your phone shows a fixed “Time for today's log”), so nothing about your log passes through Apple's or Google's push services or shows on your lock screen. Off or account deleted: all of it is deleted. |
| Feedback | Thumbs up or down you give on a rating, a chip or a day. |
| Consent | What you agreed to, which version of the wording, and when. |
| Connected apps | Which app, when you connected, what it may do. |
| Server logs | Errors and basic request records (which page, when), kept by our hosting provider for 7 days. Never your photos or answers. |
No ads, no third-party analytics, no selling data. Sign-in uses a cookie the site's scripts can't read; there are no tracking cookies.
If you turn on an early-access feature, it works like the rest of Probiome and this notice covers it.
Product ratings
Ratings are public. When you rate a probiotic, your answers (would you take it again, value, side effects and whether they settled, how long), your note and “Got it free” show on the product page under User #N, for anyone to read. Your email is never shown. All your ratings carry the same handle, so they're linked to each other. Every rating shows, good or bad; we never hide, reorder or remove a rating for being negative, and store links never touch them. Anyone can report a rating; one that breaks the rules says “Removed for breaking the rules” in its place.
The rules (ratings terms v1). One rating per person per product; changing it keeps your earlier answers readable under it. Rate only what you've taken yourself. People the brand pays, or who work for it, can't rate its products: we don't store that answer, we just don't take the rating. Up to 10 new ratings a day. You agree to this once, before your first rating, and we keep which version you agreed to and when.
Notes are health information. A note you write about how a probiotic went for you is about your health, and we treat it as health data. Before it's public, it's checked by an AI model Probiome runs (no cure or treatment claims, no names, links or handles); if the check can't decide, a person on our team reads it first. Keep anything that identifies you out of it.
About you is private. Age band, gender, diet and what you avoid are optional and live on your account, never on a rating. They're never shown to anyone, and never in what the site, the API or AI apps send about a rating. We use them only to count group totals (“Among vegans who rated it”), and only for groups of 10 or more; smaller groups fold into “Other or not said”. Group totals are worked out once a day, so a new rating can't be matched to a change in a group. The boxes for diet “Other” and “Something else” are never shown or counted: we only read and search them to decide which options to add. Change or remove them anytime in Account › About you.
What I take is private. It's never shown to anyone. It feeds “In use on Probiome” (only from 10 people, never who) and the “Still taking it?” question on your own ratings, which we only ever show on the site, never by email or notification.
Totals elsewhere. Totals show from 10 ratings. AI apps that use Probiome's public tools get only everyone's totals for a product (from 10 ratings), never a single rating, a note, a handle or a group.
Your photos
Photos are optional: you can rate by picking a type. When a photo is added, we keep it to read it again when the analysis improves, and to test and improve how Probiome reads photos, using models Probiome runs. That's part of using the gut log, and the consent you give before your first specimen says so. People on our team may look at some photos to check how they were read.
Photos sit in private storage that only our server can reach; there is no public link to them, and the site never displays them. Before a photo is stored, we remove its location and camera details. Photos are never sold, never shared outside Probiome, and never sent to other AI companies to train their models.
Deleting a specimen, a day or your account deletes its photos, and they leave our future test and training sets. A model we've already improved with a photo can't fully forget it.
When you tell us what type a photo was, that answer is kept with the photo to teach the models we run, and it goes when the photo does. You can delete just a photo and keep its specimen.
Photos are never part of the research pool (below), which is only ratings and chips.
If a photo isn't of poop, we delete it right away: nothing from it is added to your log.
Who processes it
- Our hosting and AI infrastructure providerHosting, private photo storage, the bot check on sign-in, and the AI models that read photos and answers and check rating notes and share captions, with prompt logging off
- Our database providerStores your account, log and ratings, and handles sign-in
- Our email providerSends your sign-in codes, so it sees your email address
- Our typeface providerServes the site's fonts, so it sees your IP address like any web request
- The AI provider that drafts research summariesWrites probiome.ai's summaries from published papers. It only ever gets the papers, never your data
The AI models that read your data run for Probiome on infrastructure we rent from our hosting provider, under contract. The provider processes your data only to run them for us. It doesn't keep it for its own use or train its models on it. Before your data goes to a new provider, we update this page. Your photos help us test and improve the models (above); we don't train models on your answers. Probiome doesn't send your photos or answers to any other AI company, including the one that drafts research summaries; only an AI app you connect yourself gets what you ask it to read (below).
AI apps you connect. If you connect an AI app such as Claude or ChatGPT to your gut log, what you ask it to read (your ratings, chips and answers) is sent to that app's company and kept in that conversation under its privacy policy, not ours. We send only what each request needs. Photos never go to it through Probiome. Disconnect anytime in Account; the app keeps any conversations you already had, so delete those there.
Your log is stored in the United States.
Deleting things
- Delete a rating: it leaves the product page and its totals right away, with its earlier answers. Group totals are counted once a day, so it leaves those at the next count.
- Remove About you, or take a product off What I take, in Account: it's gone right away.
- Delete a specimen: its photo goes with it.
- Delete just a photo (on How we read it): the photo, how we read it and your answer about it go; the specimen stays.
- Delete a day: its specimens, photos, answers and chips.
- Delete your account: every photo first, then everything else, right away: ratings, What I take, About you and anything in the gut log.
- Disconnect an AI app in Account: its access stops at once.
Deleting your account asks you to sign in again first, so nobody else can do it.
Deleted photos leave our future test and training sets too (see Your photos).
Nothing is deleted on a timer: your log stays until you delete it.
Deleted data can stay in database backups for up to 7 days, then it's gone for good.
Products and store links
“In use on Probiome · N people” counts the people whose What I take, log or usual names that product. It's only shown at 10 people or more, and never says who.
Some product pages link to stores, and some of those are affiliate links: the store knows Probiome sent you and may pay us a commission. We count clicks per link per day, never who clicked. Once you're on the store's site, its own privacy policy and cookies apply.
“Can't find your product?” keeps the brand, name and link you send. If you're signed in, it's tied to your account so we can limit how many requests come in; deleting your account removes that tie.
The research pool
Optional, and off unless you turn it on. If you join, your ratings and chips (never your photos) can be used for population-level gut research, without your email or anything else that names you. That's separate from using photos to improve how we read them (Your photos), which is part of the gut log and never puts a photo in the pool. Groups are only shown when they're large enough that no one stands out (at least 10 people). Leave anytime in Account: from then on, your log is no longer included.
Only Probiome uses the pool, to publish group-level findings on this site. We never sell it or hand over anyone's records. If we ever want to work with outside researchers, such as a university study, we'll ask you first, separately: nobody's log is shared with them unless they say yes to that.
Questions
Ask about your data, or ask us to delete or export it, at hello@probiome.io. We'll answer within 30 days.