Privacy policy

Who we are

Wane is an app for ranking the places you eat and sharing them with friends. It is run by Amr Al Kozbari, based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates ("we", "us"). We are responsible for the personal data described here.

Questions or requests: hello@gowane.com

What we collect

We collect only what the app needs to work.

• Account: your email address and a password. The password is stored by our sign-in provider in scrambled form; we never see it. When you reset your password, we email you a one-time code. If we ask you to confirm your email address, we send you a one-time code too.
• Profile: username, display name, photo, bio, phone number (optional), language, home city and country, time zone, whether your account is private, and any social handles you add (Instagram, TikTok, X).
• What you create: places you log, your ratings and the this-or-that answers behind them, notes, photos you attach, lists, follows and friends, replies, reactions and group plans. If you add a place that is missing, we keep its name, its category and the spot on the map you chose. We also record that you added it; no one else can see that. The cuisines you say you love, or that are not for you, are stored with your account and deleted with it. Only you see them, and no one is shown your choices; we use them to shape what we suggest to you and the places offered in group plans you start or are invited to.
• When you pick a place with a game and tap Let's go, we remember it until the next morning so we can ask you to rank it.
• Location: when you allow it, your device location is used to find places near you and to suggest your home city. The place search sends your position to our servers with the search, so nearby places come first; it is not passed on to anyone else. The home-city suggestion uses Apple's map service on your phone to turn your position into a city name and does not send it to us. When you scan a table code or collect a stamp, we check your location once to confirm you're at the place. We keep only whether the check passed. When you add a place, we store the spot you choose. When you add a menu, we check your location once so the reviewer can see whether you were at the place. We keep only that yes or no, never your position. Location is never tracked in the background.
• Contacts: if you choose to find people you know, your phone turns each contact's phone number and email address into a scrambled code (a SHA-256 hash) before anything is sent. Names, numbers and email addresses never leave your phone. You can do this up to three times a day, and we keep only the codes from the latest time. Clear uploaded contacts in Settings deletes them. To limit lookups, we also keep for 30 days how many new codes each upload added, a number and never the codes.
• Notifications: a push token for your device, so we can send the notifications you choose. While a group plan you started is open, a second token Apple gives us for its Lock Screen card, deleted when the plan closes.
• Loyalty cards: the stamps you collect and the rewards you redeem. If you add a card to Apple Wallet, we keep the device and push token Apple gives us so the pass can update.
• Membership: if you become a member, Apple takes the payment and tells us the membership's product, status, whether it renews, renewal dates and a transaction number, which we link to your account through a random code or, for a purchase made outside the app, the account that confirms it. We never see your card or your Apple Account. You can cancel in Settings, your name, Subscriptions. Apple also sends us a notice when your subscription renews, changes or ends; we keep these notices as described under How long we keep it. We also keep whether you chose to show the Pro mark and, if you have one, your founding number. The app icon you pick is set on your phone and is not saved to your account; which one you chose is counted in our usage statistics.
• Perks: each perk you use, the place, the time and a four-digit confirmation code, and any wrong staff PIN, kept for about two days. When you use one, we check your location once to confirm you are at the place, and keep only whether the check passed. If you have not scanned the table code that day, using a perk records the scan, marked as used with a perk; no one is shown that mark.
• Usage: which screens and features you use (for example, that you logged a visit), your device and app information (model, operating system and app version), crash reports (which part of the app's code failed and the error it raised, not your posts or messages) and your IP address, linked to your account, so we can improve the app; our providers also use device information and IP address for approximate location and security logs.
• Restaurant owners: if you claim a place, the contact name, role and phone number you give us. To confirm the claim, we may send a code by text message or call to the phone number in the place's listing, through Twilio, or by email to a work address you give us on the domain of the place's website, through Resend. For each code we send, we keep the number or address only partly hidden and as a scrambled code, and delete that record 30 days after the code was sent if it was never confirmed, or 90 days after it was confirmed once the claim is decided. The claim also keeps the place's listed phone number and website as they were when you claimed it.
• Menus: when you add a menu, its photos are kept privately for 30 days after we check it, and only the typed menu is shown. If you cancel, or never send the menu, we delete the photos. We look at the photos ourselves before a diner's menu is published. Menus are read by an AI service (Anthropic) under contract; your photos are not used to train models. A published menu shows no one's name. A menu you added stays after you delete your account, without your name. We delete your menu photos straight away when you delete your account.
• Ask your history (Pro): when you ask a question about your own history, the question and that history (your ranked places, your visits and their dates, notes, dishes and labels, the names of friends you tagged, and your lists) are sent to an AI service (Anthropic) under contract to write the answer, and are not used to train models. We keep neither the question nor the answer: the conversation stays on your phone until you leave the screen.
• Ask Wane (Pro): when you ask in plain words where to go, your request, the places that match it (their names, cuisines, prices, labels, Michelin distinctions and the community's scores) and your own tiers, scores, predictions and To try marks for those places are sent to an AI service (Anthropic) under contract to pick a few and say why, and are not used to train models. If you have allowed location, your position is used only on our own servers to find places near you; the AI service learns at most a rough distance band (under 1 km, 1 to 3 km, or farther). We keep neither the request nor the answer: the conversation stays on your phone until you leave the screen. The first time you use Ask Wane, Ask your history or Ask the menu, the app asks your permission before anything is sent, and you can change your answer on the Membership screen.
• Ask the menu (Pro): when you ask what to order at a place, your question, that place's menu (its dishes, prices, calories and what we estimate each dish contains), the dishes people love there, your own ratings of its dishes and the dietary needs you saved are sent to an AI service (Anthropic) under contract to write the answer, and are not used to train models. We keep neither the question nor the answer: the conversation stays on your phone until you leave the screen.
• Dietary needs: if you say what you do not eat (vegetarian, no gluten, no pork and the like), we keep those choices with your account and delete them with it. Only you see them, no one is shown your choices, and they never change your scores or what we suggest. They are used to mark dishes on menus on your phone, and, only when you use Ask the menu, they are sent with your question as described above. To mark menus we also estimate what each dish contains from its name and description, with an AI service (Anthropic) under contract, which receives the dish names and descriptions and the restaurant, never anything about you. These are estimates, and the menu says to check with the restaurant.
• Birthday: if you add your birthday, we keep the month and the day, never a year, with your account and delete it with it. Only you see it: no member and no restaurant is ever shown it. We use it for one thing, to send you a birthday wish on the day, which you can turn off in Settings.
• Invites and referrals: if you join through an invite link or a link someone shared, we keep which kind it was, the date and who shared it, and whether you went on to rank enough places to count. We use it to credit the person who shared, to show them a count, and to give out the reward described in the terms. If you earn a reward we keep its record, and the offer code we issue, with your account and delete it with the account.
• Safety checks: new notes, comments, restaurant posts and replies, photos, favourite dish names, profile bios and photos, and list names are checked by an AI service (Anthropic) under contract, to find content that breaks our rules, such as threats, hate, sexual content or scams. It receives the text or the photo and nothing else: not your name or account, and not the place. It does not use them to train its models. We do not send the text of members with a long record of no problems, only their photos. If a check flags something, or cannot read it, it may be held, which hides it from everyone but you until a person has looked (a note or dish names hold their whole post). Bios, profile photos and list names are never held, only flagged for us to look at. You see in the app when something of yours is held, and you can appeal once for each hold. A person decides every appeal. When something is flagged, up to 140 characters of the text, or a note that it is a photo, shows in our private review inbox.
• Reports and ideas: when you use Report a problem or Suggest a feature, we keep what you write, the screen you were on, your app version, your phone model and your system version, and a screenshot if you add or keep one. Screenshots are stored privately and only we can see them. Our team reads what you send. It is not sent to any AI service, and neither is a screenshot.
• Bug and idea groups: a group of reports can become an issue in our private GitHub tracker. Only a short description that we write, with personal details removed and any code or links made harmless, goes there, never your report as you wrote it, your name or a screenshot. Our AI coding assistant (Claude, from Anthropic) may read that issue to write a fix; it never receives your report. Ideas we choose to show appear on gowane.com/roadmap with a title written by us, with personal details removed, and a count of votes, never who voted. Your votes are kept with your account.
• Help and support: when you ask a question in Help, we keep the conversation. Our team reads and answers every question. Support questions, problem reports, feature suggestions and support emails are read by our team and are not sent to any AI service.
• Emails to support@: our server reads the support@ mailbox. Our team reads every email and writes the reply; no AI service reads or drafts them. If an email comes from a verified sender with the address of an account, we link it to that account; otherwise it is not linked. We keep the subject, the text, a partly hidden version of the sender's address and a scrambled code made from the address, so we can tell whether a later email in the conversation comes from the same sender. The email itself stays in our team's mailbox.
• App Store reviews and TestFlight: Apple gives us the reviews of the app (title, text and star rating, never the reviewer's name or email) and, from TestFlight, the comments, device, system version and crash logs testers send. An AI service (Anthropic) under contract reads them, with email addresses, phone numbers, links and handles taken out, to sort them and to draft a public reply to a review. We read every draft and send it ourselves.
• Reels: when you add an Instagram reel to a place, we keep the code from its link and record that you added it. Opening a reel loads Instagram's own player from Meta, as described under Service providers. Each reel opens in a fresh player that starts without Meta cookies from earlier reels.
• Website: if you join the waitlist on gowane.com, your email, language, device type and the link you came from. The pages for group plans and table codes keep a small code, and for group plans the name you typed, in your browser's local storage so you can come back to your answer. The website sets no cookies.
• Website, for restaurants: if you use Talk to us on gowane.com/restaurants, the name, restaurant, city, number of branches, role, email, WhatsApp number and message you type, what you tick that you'd like to hear about, the place if you picked it from the search, and the link you came from. Find your restaurant sends what you type and your approximate area, worked out by Cloudflare from your internet address and rounded to about 10 km, to search our list of places; we do not keep either.
• Guests: if someone shares a group plan with you and you answer without an account, we keep the name you type and your answer, and a random code your browser creates so you can change your answer. If you scan a table code without an account, we keep your answers and a scrambled version of your browser's code, not the code itself.

How we use it

• To run your account and show your lists, rankings and scores.
• To find places: your search text and, if you allow it, your location are used on our servers to find matching places. Place details come from open map data (Overture Maps) and from places members add. The price ranges that tell cheap from expensive in each country are set from World Bank price level and exchange rate data (CC BY 4.0).
• To email you the code to reset your password, and a one-time code to confirm your email address if we ask you to.
• To connect you with friends and people you know, when you choose to.
• To send the notifications you have turned on.
• To keep the service safe, prevent abuse and fix problems.
• To understand how the app is used and improve it.
• To reply to restaurants that contact us through gowane.com/restaurants.
• To confirm that you run a restaurant you claim.
• To check posts, photos and names against our rules, with the help of an AI service, and hold what breaks them.
• To read and answer the reports, ideas, questions and emails you send us, and to reply to App Store reviews, with the help of an AI service for the reviews only.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not use it for third-party advertising.

What other people see

Your username, display name, photo, bio, home city and country, and when you joined are visible to other users. If your account is public, your visits, the lists you share and your social handles are too. If you make your account private, only the people you approve see your activity.

Shared lists can be opened by anyone with the link, except someone you have blocked or who has blocked you. If your account is public, your profile address on gowane.com (gowane.com/@username) shows your display name, username, photo and bio, how many places you have ranked, how many followers you have, up to four favourite places and your best top-three rank in your home city. A private account's address shows only the username.

A post or place you share, or someone shares, opens as a web page anyone with the link can see, including the note and photos. Posts by private accounts can't be shared. In Settings, Let others share my posts starts switched on; turn it off and other people can no longer share your posts from the app (links already out keep working until you delete the post).

Your invite page shows your display name and username, even if your account is private. If your account is public, it also shows up to three of your favourite places and how many places you have ranked.

If you invite someone, or a link you shared brings someone in, you see how many people joined through your links and, when their account is visible to you, that they joined and whether they ranked enough places to count. If you join through someone else's link, they see the same about you when your account is visible to them. If you join through a link someone shared and leave the Follow switch on, you become one of their followers. Separately, whatever the switch says, the person whose link you used is told that someone joined from a link they shared, with your name unless your account is private. If you join with someone's invite link instead, you become friends (or they get a friend request, if their account is private), and they are told that you joined, with your name.

If you answer a group plan, including as a guest on the web, the name you give and your answers are visible to everyone in that plan.

A place you add shows to everyone straight away.

A reel you add shows on the place page to everyone who can see the place, with your username beside it for people who may see your account, and without a name for everyone else.

On a loyalty card, the restaurant sees your collector code, never your name.

When you use a perk, the restaurant sees the day and a four-digit confirmation code, never your name. The restaurant tools never show who is a member.

If you are a member, a Pro mark shows beside your name on your profile, your posts and your comments, to the people who can already see them. If you are one of the first 500 people to buy a membership, your founding number shows on your profile with it. Show Pro on my profile in Settings switches both off.

gowane.com/transparency shows, for each month, how many things we removed or held for review, how many decisions were appealed and how many automatic decisions a person reversed. It shows totals only and names no one.

People who have your phone number or email address in their contacts can find your account through contact matching only if you turn on Findable by contacts, in Settings or when you look for people you know. It is off for new accounts unless you turn it on, and turning it off again deletes those codes.

Service providers

We use a small number of companies to run the service. They process data for us and only as we instruct.

• Supabase: our database, sign-in, file storage and server functions. Data is stored in Mumbai, India. Until 6 October 2026 it was stored in Seoul, South Korea. We keep a frozen copy there, as it stood that day, only until every beta tester runs build 23 or later of the app, and then delete it. An older build still connects to Seoul until it is updated, and what it sends there is not moved to Mumbai.
• PostHog: usage analytics and crash reports, hosted in the European Union.
• Expo and Apple: delivering push notifications and the app itself, and Apple's map service for the home-city suggestion. Newer builds of the app ask Expo's update service, when they open, whether a newer version of the app's code is ready. The request carries your IP address, your platform, the app's version identifier, the update channel, the ids of the update the app is running, and a random number Expo's software makes on your phone to tell installs apart, which is not linked to your account. If the app failed to start after an update, it also sends a short error message about that. Expo's update service does not receive your name, email or account.
• Resend: sends our account emails: your password-reset and sign-in codes, a confirmation code if we ask you to confirm your email address, and a notice when your password changes. It receives your email address and the email it sends, and, when you use Talk to us, the details you send, emailed to our team, and, when you claim a place by email, the work address you give, the place's name and the code we send.
• Twilio: sends claim codes by text message or call. It receives the phone number in the place's listing and the code typed back.
• Cloudflare: runs gowane.com.
• Google Workspace: our team's email at gowane.com addresses, including what you send to hello@, support@ and business@. Our server reads the support@ mailbox there, and sends our replies from it, as described above.
• Google Maps: when a place has few photos of its own, our server asks Google Maps for a few photos of that place, sending only the place's name and location and never anything about you. Your phone then loads each photo from Google's servers, so Google receives your IP address and device information, under Google's own privacy policy (https://policies.google.com/privacy). The photos show with their authors credited. We keep only Google's identifier for the place and whether it matched, never a photo. If you report a Google photo, we also keep that you reported Google photos at that place, which place and not which photo, so they stay hidden for you; when several members report the same place, they are hidden there for everyone.
• Anthropic: reads the menu photos you add and types out the menu. It receives the photos and the name of the place, and does not use them to train its models. It also answers the questions you ask in Ask Wane, Ask your history and Ask the menu, receiving the request or question and the places, history or menu described above, and estimates what menu dishes contain from their names and descriptions, under the same terms. It also checks new posts, photos and names for content that breaks the rules; sorts TestFlight notes; drafts replies to App Store reviews; and a coding assistant (Claude) reads the issues described above to write fixes, receiving only what is described above, under the same terms.
• GitHub: holds our private list of bugs and ideas. It receives only the short descriptions described above, never your report as written, your name or screenshots.

Apple sells membership as an independent company under its own privacy policy.

Meta, the company behind Instagram, plays the reels on a place page as an independent company under its own privacy policy. Opening a reel loads Meta's own player, so Meta receives your IP address and device information. Wane does not send Meta your name or account.

International transfers

Your data may be processed outside the United Arab Emirates, including in India, in South Korea until the Seoul copy is deleted, in the European Union and in the United States. We rely on our providers' safeguards for these transfers.

How long we keep it

We keep your data while your account is open. When you delete your account, we delete your profile, visits, ratings, the lists you own, the cuisines you chose, your dietary needs, your birthday, your photos, your contact codes and your notification tokens straight away, and the replies you left on other people's visits. Places you added to someone else's shared list, places you added to the map, menus you added, restaurant photos and table codes you created for a restaurant you manage, and the posts you published for it, stay without your name. Reels you added are deleted with your account, and you can remove one yourself at any time. If a reel is removed after a report, we keep its Instagram code for that place so it cannot be added again. Anonymous visit confirmations from table codes are also kept without your name. Deleted data can remain in our hosting provider's backups for a limited time before they are overwritten.

We keep waitlist emails until we have told you about the launch. We keep usage analytics only as long as they help us improve the app; ask us and we will delete yours.

We keep what restaurants send through Talk to us, in our database and in our team's email, for two years, then delete it; ask us and we will delete it sooner.

Your membership record, the Apple notices we linked to it and the perks you used are deleted with your account. Apple keeps its own record of your purchase. Apple keeps sending us notices about a subscription until it ends, so notices that arrive after you delete your account are not removed with it. We also keep notices about an earlier purchase of yours that a later one replaced, and about a purchase that was never linked to an account. Each holds Apple's notice id and type, the transaction number, whether it was a test purchase, when we received and processed it and any processing error, with no name, email or account link. We delete them about 90 days after they arrive.

The queue of items waiting for a safety check is emptied 30 days after they are checked. We keep a record of each check, the scores for each kind of risk and what we did, never your text or photo, for 30 days when nothing was flagged and for about 13 months when something was. These are deleted when you delete your account. The short excerpt shown in our private review inbox when something is flagged is removed 30 days after we close the item, and within a day after you delete your account. The same applies to what that inbox shows of an appeal, of your name on a restaurant claim and of a perk request; for a restaurant lead from the website, which has no account, only the 30 days apply. Outside that inbox, your appeals and the contact details on a restaurant claim are kept until you delete your account, a perk request stays without your name after you delete your account, and a restaurant lead is kept for two years as described above.

We delete a screenshot 90 days after its report was sent, or 30 days after it was sent once the report is closed. We delete a support conversation two years after its last message once it has been answered or closed, and a report, idea, App Store review or tester note two years after it was sent once it has been closed or the problem or idea it belongs to is fixed, shipped or closed. Reports, reviews and notes we have not closed are kept until we delete them. When you delete your account, your reports, ideas, votes, conversations in the app and screenshots are deleted straight away.

Support conversations linked to your account are deleted with it. The emails themselves stay in our team's mailbox until we delete them.

Your rights and choices

• Access: ask us for a copy of your data.
• Correction: edit your profile in the app, or ask us.
• Deletion: delete a photo post from its "..." menu, or your rating of a place (with its notes and photos) from the place's "..." menu; delete your account in Settings; or ask us.
• Private account: turn it on in Settings.
• Contacts: Findable by contacts is off for new accounts unless you turn it on. Turn it off in Settings to stop being found, and tap Clear uploaded contacts to delete the codes of your contacts.
• Location, camera, photos, contacts and notifications: change these permissions in your phone's settings at any time. The camera is used only when you photograph a printed menu to add it or scan a QR code; a scanned code is read on your phone and what it holds is never sent to us.

Write to hello@gowane.com for any request. We answer within 30 days. Depending on where you live, including under the UAE Personal Data Protection Law and the EU General Data Protection Regulation, you may have further rights, such as objecting to how we use your data or complaining to a data protection authority.

Deleting your account

In the app, tap the settings (gear) icon on your profile, then Delete account. Your account and the data listed above are removed straight away and cannot be recovered by you or us. If you cannot open the app, email hello@gowane.com from your account's address and we will delete it for you.

Deleting your account does not cancel a membership bought through Apple. Cancel it in Settings, your name, Subscriptions, or it keeps renewing.

Children

Wane is for people aged 13 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, tell us and we will delete it.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit. Access to our database is limited by strict rules for each user, and contact codes and notification tokens cannot be read by other users at all. No system is perfectly secure, so please use a strong password that you do not use anywhere else.

Changes

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top, and tell you in the app if the change is significant.

Contact

Amr Al Kozbari, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. hello@gowane.com