Privacy Policy

You can browse the whole catalogue without an account. The items below are stored only once you sign in or contribute something — except the server logs and usage measurement, which apply to every visit.

• From Google sign-in: your email address, display name and the URL of your Google profile picture. We never receive your Google password. Your Google name is never shown to other people, and your Google picture is shown only if you choose it as your avatar.
• From email sign-up: your email address and a password. The password is stored only as a bcrypt hash and is never stored in plain text.
• Your nickname and avatar, which you choose in Settings. Your nickname is unique, is part of your profile address, and is how you appear everywhere on the site. New accounts start with a random nickname (such as ramen-482913) and a noodle picture as the avatar.
• Profile details, if you add them: your country, state or region, city, birth year and ethnicity (using the US federal categories). Every one is optional and private unless you mark that field public. We use them only to show the public ones on your profile and next to your name on the leaderboard — not for advertising, and not to infer anything about you. Birth year and ethnicity are sensitive; leave them blank if you prefer. Clearing a field in Settings deletes it. If we ever want to use these details in another way, such as aggregate statistics, we will update this page before we do.
• What you save: the packs on your shelves, and whether each shelf is public. This includes Ramen I've Tried, a shelf we create when you sign in; reviewing a pack adds it there, and you can add or remove packs yourself.
• Places I've been: the stores you mark with I've been here or review, when you added each one, and whether you share the list. We do not ask when you went. The list is private until you make it public, because the places you go can hint at where you live or work.
• Your reviews: the star rating, the review text, and the language the review was written in. Store reviews keep the star rating and the text, one review per store.
• Taste answers: your Taste Battle answers — which of two packs is stronger on one attribute, and which of the two you prefer — and the optional taste sliders on a review. When you are signed in these are stored against your account, along with whether each pack was on your Ramen I've Tried shelf at the time. You can also answer without an account; those answers are stored against a random browser identifier instead (see the browser cookie below), and if you later sign in on the same browser we ask whether to move them to your account. Answers are only ever shown to other people as part of an aggregate figure — nobody sees how you answered a particular question.
• Edit suggestions: when you use "Suggest an edit" on a ramen, store, review or recipe, we keep the reason you picked, anything you wrote, and which page it was on. If you are signed in it is stored against your account; if not, against the random browser identifier described under the browser cookie below. We ask for no name or email. We use it only to check and correct the page, and a copy goes to our team's Slack so we see it quickly.
• Ask NoodleIndex: when you use the assistant on the Ask page, we keep your conversations — the questions you type and the answers — in your account so you can open them again later. They stay until you delete them: you can delete one conversation or all of them on the Ask page, and they are deleted with your account. Nobody else can see them. We also record when you asked and how much processing each question used, to apply the daily limit and watch costs. We may read conversations to fix wrong answers or missing data.
• Basic account activity: when you registered and a count of your visits.
• Server logs: like any website, our servers record your IP address, browser user-agent and the time of each request. We use these to keep the site running and to investigate abuse or faults.
• Usage measurement: Google Analytics records how visitors use the site, whether or not they are signed in. What it records, and how to opt out, is set out under "Measurement and advertising" below.

We do not ask for your address, phone number or any payment details, because the site sells nothing.

Recipe and review photos. If you add photos to a recipe or a review, your browser shrinks them before sending, and we store resized copies with the location and camera details removed. Review photos are visible only to you until our team approves them; we record who approved or declined each one and when. Approved review photos appear with the review, credited to your nickname, and may also be shown in the photo gallery of that pack or store.

The Stores page can sort places by how close they are to you. If you press Use my location, your browser asks for permission and hands the coordinates to the page. Those coordinates stay in your browser. The distance is worked out on your device, we never receive the coordinates, and nothing about your location is stored or logged by us.

You can refuse, and the page still works — the list is then ordered by state and city. Map links open Google Maps or Apple Maps, and those services then see your request under their own privacy policies.

The map at the top of the Stores page is drawn from OpenStreetMap data served by OpenFreeMap. When the map comes into view, your browser downloads map tiles from OpenFreeMap, so OpenFreeMap receives your IP address and which part of the map you are looking at. It sets no cookies, and it says it does not log IP addresses except temporarily during a security incident. Use my location never moves this map — your coordinates only sort the list.

A store page can show a Google map, but only after you press Show map. Until then nothing is loaded from Google. Once the map opens, Google receives your IP address and may set cookies, under Google's own privacy policy.

Some of what you contribute is public by design. Please assume anything in this list is visible to anyone on the internet.

• Your reviews, with your nickname and avatar, on the pack's page and on the Reviews page — and your store reviews on the store's page, where they also make up its average rating. Review photos appear once approved, with your review and possibly in that page's photo gallery, credited to your nickname.
• Recipes you publish, with their photos, your nickname and avatar, on the recipe's page, the Recipes page and the pages of the packs they use. Drafts and recipes waiting for review are visible only to you and to us.
• Your public profile at /u/your-username, which shows your nickname, avatar, review count, average rating, public shelves and any profile details you marked public — and, if you share them, your NoodleIndex and your Places I've been list (each store with the stars you gave it).
• Your NoodleIndex and leaderboard rank, only if you make your Ramen I've Tried shelf or your Places I've been list public. Your NoodleIndex is one point for each different pack on Ramen I've Tried and five for each store in Places I've been. Only a list you have made public counts: once it is public, what is on it, its count and your rank appear on the leaderboard at /leaderboard and on your public profile, next to your nickname, avatar and any profile details you marked public. While both lists are private none of that is shown, and you are not on the leaderboard. A public profile page can take up to an hour to catch up after you make a list private again.
• A shelf, only if you mark it public. Shelves are private until you do.

Your email address and your sign-in name are never shown to other members, and neither is any profile detail you keep private.

• Sign-in cookie. Set when you sign in so you stay signed in, and it expires after about 30 days. Removing it signs you out.
• Browser cookie (ni_anon). Set the first time you use Taste Battle or send an edit suggestion without signing in. It holds a random identifier — not your name or email — so the same browser is not shown the same pair twice, so we can limit how many answers and edit suggestions one browser sends, and so you can move your Taste Battle answers to your account if you sign in later. It expires after a year. Deleting it starts a fresh identifier, and the answers made under the old one stay anonymous.
• Local storage. Keeps your language choice and the packs held in the side panel, so they survive a refresh. This never leaves your browser.
• Session storage. Holds your scroll position, a cached page of search results, and — on our pre-release test site only — a flag noting you entered the access password. It is cleared when you close the tab.
• Analytics cookies (_ga and _ga_…). Set by Google Analytics so that repeat visits from the same browser count as one visitor. They hold a random identifier, not your name or email, and expire after up to two years. Blocking them does not affect how the site works.

We use Google Analytics to understand how the site is used — which pages people read, how they find us, and where they give up. It is loaded through Google Tag Manager, and only on noodleindex.com; our test and development sites load neither. Google Analytics records:

• the pages you view, the site that sent you here, and actions it detects on its own, such as scrolling to the end of a page, searching the catalogue, or following a link to a retailer
• your device type, browser, screen size, language, and an approximate location (city or region) that Google estimates from your IP address. Google states that Analytics does not store IP addresses
• the random identifier in the analytics cookies described above
• if you are signed in, a pseudonymous identifier generated from your account number, so that your visits from a phone and a computer count as one person. It is not your email, name or username, and Google cannot work out who you are from it. We can match it to your account, which is how we find and delete that data when you close your account

We have not turned on Google signals or any advertising feature in Google Analytics, and we have not linked it to an advertising account. Nothing it collects is used to show you ads.

To opt out, block cookies for this site or install Google's Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The site works the same either way.

Google Analytics is the only tag we run. Before we add another, we will name it on this page and update the date. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. If that ever changes, we will say so here and provide the opt-out the law requires.

The services below process data on our behalf or are contacted directly by your browser. Each can see your IP address and basic request details.

• Vercel — hosts and serves the site, and keeps the server logs described above.
• Neon — hosts our database, where your account and contributions are stored.
• Amazon Web Services — stores the product images the site displays and the recipe photos members upload.
• Resend — delivers the emails we send you: a welcome email when you create an account and, only if you turn it on in Settings, the NoodleIndex newsletter. It receives your email address, first name and nickname for these. The newsletter is off by default; if you signed up with email and password, you confirm it from a link we email you first. Every issue has a one-click unsubscribe link. We keep your newsletter choice with the wording you agreed to and when, and a record of each email we send you — the address, subject and whether it was delivered or bounced and, where the email service reports it, opened or clicked. Both are deleted with your account.
• Slack — our team's messaging tool. When someone sends an edit suggestion, Slack receives the page, the reason and the text they wrote, and whether they were signed in (as an account number, not a name or email).
• Anthropic — writes the answers on the Ask page with its Claude AI model. When you ask a question, Anthropic receives the text of your question, the earlier messages in that conversation, and the NoodleIndex catalogue data looked up to answer it. It does not receive your name, email or nickname.
• OpenFreeMap — serves the map on the Stores page. It receives your IP address and the map area you view when the map loads, and sets no cookies.
• YouTube, TikTok and Instagram — only if you press play on a video in a recipe or a blog post. Until then no player is loaded. Once it opens, that service receives your IP address and may set its own cookies under its own privacy policy.
• Google — sign-in; Google Fonts, which your browser loads directly from Google; and Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics, as described above.
• Retailers we link to — we send them nothing about you, but they will see you as a visitor once you follow one of our links to their listing.

We do not sell your data and we do not share it with advertisers.

• Account data — for as long as your account exists. When you ask us to close it, we act within 45 days.
• Server logs — kept short-term for security and fault investigation, and not used to build a profile of you.
• Analytics data — Google Analytics keeps data tied to a cookie or signed-in identifier for 14 months, then deletes it automatically. Summary reports with no identifier in them, such as a monthly visitor count, can be kept longer.
• Backups — our database backups rotate, and a deleted record can persist in them for up to 90 days before it ages out. We do not restore deleted data from a backup except to recover from a failure.

You can ask us to:

• tell you what we hold about you, and give you a copy of it
• correct anything that is wrong
• delete your account and the data tied to it
• stop processing your data

Email support@noodleindex.com from the address on your account — that is how we confirm the request is yours. We will not treat you differently for exercising any of these rights.

There is no self-service delete button yet, so email is the only route today.

When we close your account we:

• delete your account record, including your email address, name and profile picture
• delete your shelves, your saved packs, your Places I've been list and your Taste Battle answers
• delete your Ask NoodleIndex conversations
• delete the photos you added to reviews, including any shown in a pack's or store's gallery
• delete the Google Analytics data tied to your signed-in identifier
• keep your reviews but remove you from them. The review text and rating stay on the pack's or store's page, with the author shown as "Former member". Deleting reviews outright would remove catalogue content other readers rely on, so we anonymise instead.

Two exceptions apply to everything above: data already written to a backup ages out on the schedule described earlier, and we keep anything we are legally required to keep for as long as that obligation lasts.

If you want your reviews removed rather than anonymised, say so in your email and we will remove them.

Traffic to the site is encrypted in transit. Passwords are stored as bcrypt hashes, never in plain text. Access to the database is limited to the people who operate the service.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.

The site does not set a minimum age for creating an account, and we do not ask your age.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have, we delete it. We do not sell the personal information of anyone under 16 and we do not use it for targeted advertising. If you believe a child's information is here, email us and we will remove it.

When we change this policy we update the date at the top of the page. If a change materially affects what we collect, who can see it, or what we do with it — enabling a measurement tag, for example — we will email account holders and ask you to accept the change rather than treating your continued use as agreement.

NoodleIndex is operated by Myko Soft Inc. For anything in this policy — a copy of your data, a correction, a deletion, or a question — write to support@noodleindex.com.

Myko Soft Inc is based in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. The law governing this policy will be named here once the company's registration is complete — we would rather leave that gap visible than print something that turns out to be wrong.