Privacy policy

Jerome Schramme (“the Operator”, “we”) handles the personal information of users of the sake, shochu and awamori label-scanning service “KIKI (利き)” in accordance with the Act on the Protection of Personal Information of Japan (“APPI”), other applicable laws, and this privacy policy (“this Policy”).

Terms used in this Policy:

• “the Service”: the whole of KIKI (利き), app and website
• “the App”: the iPhone and Android apps and the app used in a browser
• “the Website”: the website at kiki-sake.com
• “users”: everyone who uses the Service; “registered users” are those with an account
• “user content”: text and images users send or post to the Service (ratings, reviews, photos, scan photos and so on)

1. Name, address and representative of the operator

Item	Details
Name	Jerome Schramme (operated as an individual)
Address	given without delay on request (admin@kiki-sake.com)
Contact	admin@kiki-sake.com

2. Information we collect

We collect the following information, feature by feature. Besides what you enter or send, some information is collected automatically when you use the Service (2.9).

2.1 Account and profile

Information	Details
Account	With e-mail sign-up: your e-mail address and password (stored in a form that cannot be reversed). With Google sign-in: the e-mail address, name and profile picture Google sends us. With LINE sign-in: the display name and profile picture LINE sends us (no e-mail address).
Profile	First name, KIKI ID, profile photo, public / private account setting, display language, invite code
Age confirmation	When you confirmed you are 20 or older

2.2 Ratings, reviews and records

Information	Details
Ratings and reviews	Ratings (1–10), review text, review photos (up to 2 per bottle)
Favourites and other records	Favourites, watchlist, My Cellar (bottle, size, quantity, state, storage place, purchase date, price paid, shop, note), stamps, experience points (XP)
Price-alert settings	What to watch, the size of the drop, how to notify you (bell only, or bell and e-mail)

2.3 Social features

Follows, friend requests and friendships, blocks, reports (target, reason, optional note)

2.4 Label scans

Information	Details
Scan photo	The label photo you take or choose
Result	The text and details the AI read on the label, the bottle identified, candidates, confidence, an image fingerprint (the photo turned into numbers for matching)
Usage	How you scanned (live or photo), processing time, app version, measurements such as the phone’s movement and the camera’s detection result, your “right / wrong / not listed” answer

Finding the bottle or label happens on your device, and the camera picture used for it never leaves the device. Only the label photo taken when you scan is sent.

2.5 Menu scans

Information	Details
Menu photo	Sent through our server to the Gemini API to be read. We do not store it on our servers. It is kept on your device for 2 hours only and removed after that and when you sign out.
Result	Names, descriptions, prices and amounts of the drinks and dishes, estimated allergy-related ingredients (“Contains”, “Likely contains”), the bottles found, a summary of the menu (Premium)
Usage	Number of pages, measurements such as the phone’s movement, light and sharpness, processing time
Allergy and dislike settings	Stored only on your device, never sent to us

2.6 Premium features

Text you type as a pairing question (e.g. “chicken and ginger”), and your Premium / Travel Pass entitlement (type, start, end, how it was earned). Once paid plans are sold, payment is handled by Apple, Google or a payment provider; we never receive card numbers or other payment details.

2.7 Notifications and e-mails

Notices shown in the bell (price drops, restocks, friend requests, bottles added and so on), and the address and content of e-mails we send

2.8 Contact and feedback

Your message, an optional screenshot, the app version, the screen you were on, your device and browser type (user agent) and screen size. When signed in, your KIKI ID and e-mail address, so that we can reply

2.9 Collected automatically

Information	Details
Device ID	A random ID the App creates on first start. It is not an advertising ID or a hardware identifier. It groups ratings and scans made without an account on your device.
Value derived from your IP address	To prevent abuse and overuse, each scan turns your IP address, combined with a secret value, into a form that cannot be reversed (a hash), which we store. We do not store the IP address itself.
Server logs	IP address, time, request, browser information, recorded on our processors’ servers (Supabase, Cloudflare)
Website visits	On the Website only, Google Analytics (loaded through Google Tag Manager) collects the pages you view, where you came from, the time, actions on the page (scrolling, clicks on outbound links and similar), browser, OS and device type, screen size, language, an approximate area estimated from your IP address, and a random ID stored in a cookie. We see aggregated statistics only and do not receive your IP address. The App collects none of this. See section 13.

2.10 What we do not collect

• Location (GPS). The map shows breweries, not you.
• Contacts (address book), advertising IDs, card numbers or other payment details
• Advertising or tracking data. The App collects no analytics data either. Website analytics data (Google Analytics) is not used for advertising and is never linked to your account, e-mail address or anything else that identifies you. Before adding any new tool, we will update this Policy and the “External transmission” page.

3. Purposes of use

We use the information for the following purposes only.

Purpose	Main information used
① Providing the Service (identifying bottles, showing taste, prices and ratings, recommendations, taste match, pairings, the stamp book, My Cellar, the watchlist, reading and translating menus and so on)	2.1–2.6, the device ID in 2.9
② Creating accounts, sign-in, age confirmation, identity checks	2.1
③ Showing profiles, reviews and rankings to other users (section 8)	2.1–2.3
④ Sending price-drop and restock alerts and account e-mails (sign-up, password reset)	the e-mail address in 2.1, 2.2, 2.7
⑤ Checking and improving label and menu recognition, improving the catalogue (adding bottles reported as “not listed” or found on menus, using photos as reference images for matching)	2.4, 2.5
⑥ Preventing abuse and overuse, checking posts and images, handling reports and blocks, dealing with breaches of the Terms	2.2–2.4, 2.9
⑦ Answering questions and feedback	2.8
⑧ Improving the Service and developing new features (including statistics that do not identify individuals and analysing how the Website is used)	2.2–2.5, 2.9
⑨ Providing Premium and the Travel Pass and managing entitlements	2.6
⑩ Complying with the law and protecting rights	all

We will ask for your consent before handling personal information beyond these purposes. We never sell personal information or provide it to third parties for advertising.

4. Processing by AI

1. We use Google LLC’s Gemini API (paid plan) for:
   • reading label photos, making image fingerprints, telling similar bottles apart
   • researching bottles reported as “not listed” (with Google Search, together with the label photo)
   • reading, translating and summarising menu photos
   • checking profile, review and scan photos (whether they may be shown)
   • answering pairing questions
2. We send the Gemini API only the photos and text needed for the task. We do not send e-mail addresses, names or account IDs.
3. Under Google’s terms for the paid plan, Google does not use what we send to improve its products or to train models. Google logs requests and responses for 55 days to detect abuse, and authorised Google staff may review flagged content. For research that uses Google Search, the results are stored for 30 days.
4. AI readings and suggestions can be wrong. Allergy-related ingredient flags are guesses from the dish name and are not guaranteed to be accurate.

5. Provision to third parties

We do not provide personal data to third parties without your prior consent, except:

1. where required by law;
2. where needed to protect a person’s life, body or property and it is difficult to obtain your consent;
3. where specially needed to improve public health or promote the healthy growth of children and it is difficult to obtain your consent;
4. where we need to cooperate with a national or local government body, or someone entrusted by it, performing duties set by law, and asking for your consent would hinder those duties;
5. in other cases permitted by the APPI.

Entrusting personal data to processors within the purposes of use (section 6) and passing it on with a transfer of the business are not provision to third parties in this sense. Information you publish yourself or set to public (section 8) can be seen by other users of the Service.

When you tap a shop link and go to a shop’s website, we do not give your personal information to the shop. The shop’s own policy applies on its website.

6. Processors

We entrust the handling of personal data to the following companies, within what our purposes need. We set contractual terms on the security of the data with each and supervise them as necessary and appropriate.

Processor	Task	Information	Country
Supabase, Inc.	database, sign-in, file storage, server processing	everything in section 2	United States (the data is stored in a data centre in Tokyo, Amazon Web Services’ Tokyo region)
Google LLC (Gemini API)	the processing in section 4	the photos and text sent	United States (processing location not limited)
Google LLC (Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager)	measuring and aggregating Website visits	the website-visit information in 2.9	United States (processing location not limited)
Cloudflare, Inc.	delivering the App and the Website	IP address, requests, browser information	United States (processed on servers around the world)
Resend, Inc.	sending e-mails (sign-up confirmation, password reset, price-drop and restock alerts, forwarding contact messages)	e-mail address, the e-mail content (for contact messages including the text and screenshot)	United States

We fetch product prices and stock from Rakuten Ichiba and Yahoo! Shopping. We send them only search words such as product names, or product codes, never users’ personal information.

Sign-in services

If you choose to sign in with Google or LINE (LY Corporation), we receive the information listed in 2.1 from them. Their own privacy policies apply to how they handle your information.

7. Transfers to third parties in foreign countries

All processors in section 6 are US companies. We provide personal data to them after confirming that each has a system that meets the standards of the APPI (a system that continuously takes measures in line with the APPI through its data-processing terms, such as a data processing addendum). Under Article 28(3) of the APPI and its Enforcement Rules, we inform you as follows.

Item	Details
Country	United States of America
Measures taken by the recipients	Each company’s data-processing terms forbid use beyond the entrusted task and set out confidentiality, security measures, control of sub-processors, notice of breaches, and deletion at the end of the contract.
Our checks	We check the terms and each company’s published security information when we contract and at least once a year.
The US regime	The United States has no comprehensive federal law equivalent to the APPI, but personal information is protected by federal laws such as the Federal Trade Commission Act and by state laws (such as the California Consumer Privacy Act). Government bodies can obtain information for national security and similar purposes. For details, see the Personal Information Protection Commission’s survey of foreign data protection regimes.
Regimes that could affect the measures	We have not identified any regime that would hinder the continued implementation of these measures.

On request, we will provide the information the APPI requires about these points.

8. Information that is public

Some information in the Service is shown to other users.

1. Profile: public by default. All signed-in users see your first name, KIKI ID, profile photo, level, XP, stamps, taste summary, recent favourites, recent ratings (including ratings without review text), and your friend and follower counts.
2. Private account: with a private account, your profile content is shown only to your friends and to people whose follow request you approved. Others see only your first name, KIKI ID, profile photo and the friend and follower counts, also when they search for your KIKI ID.
3. Reviews: review text and photos appear on the bottle’s page and can be read by anyone, including people who are not signed in. Reviews by private accounts are shown without name and photo. Ratings without text or photos are not shown on bottle pages.
4. Rankings: only public profiles appear, with KIKI ID and counts.
5. Scan photos as bottle pictures: when a bottle reported as “not listed” has no other picture, we may show the scan photo as the bottle’s picture, only if the person who reported it agreed to its publication, after an AI check and our own check. It is never shown with the name of the person who reported it.

You choose public or private when you register and can change it in the settings at any time. Once information has been public, other users may have seen or saved it, so deleting it may not undo that completely.

9. How long we keep information

We try to keep personal information only as long as our purposes need it and delete what is no longer needed. Today the periods are:

Information	Retention
Account, profile, ratings, reviews and photos, favourites, watchlist, My Cellar, alert settings, notices in the bell, stamps and XP, social records, pairing questions, menu-scan records	Until you delete your account
Reports and how they were handled	Until the account of the person who reported or of the person reported is deleted
Label-scan photos, results and image fingerprints	As long as needed to improve recognition and the catalogue. When you delete your account, the link to your account is removed and they are kept in a form not linked to you. Photos that became reference images or bottle pictures are kept while the bottle is in the catalogue.
Ratings and reviews made without an account	Kept with the device ID and a value derived from the IP address; the value is deleted when you sign in and move them to an account
Overuse-prevention records (including the value derived from the IP address)	About 35 days
Contact messages and feedback	As long as needed to handle them; your e-mail address and KIKI ID are removed when you delete your account
Server logs	The processors’ (Supabase, Cloudflare) standard periods
Website-visit information (Google Analytics)	14 months (the Google Analytics data-retention setting); aggregated statistics are kept in a form that does not identify anyone
Google’s logs (Gemini API)	55 days (30 days for research with Google Search)
Information stored on your device	Until you sign out or clear the app’s or browser’s data; menu photos 2 hours

Where the law requires us to keep information, we keep it for that period. Before we change these periods, we update this Policy.

10. Security measures

We take the following measures to prevent leaks, loss or damage of personal data and to keep it secure.

Area	Measures
Basic policy	We have set this Policy, handle personal data in line with the law, and run a contact point.
Rules	We keep a list of what information is handled and how at each stage (collection, use, storage, deletion); the Operator is responsible.
Organisation	Only two people handle personal data: the Operator and one person who helps. Access to the admin page is limited to registered people, and actions on it are recorded. If a leak occurs, we report it to the Personal Information Protection Commission and inform the people concerned, as the law requires.
People	Everyone handling personal data keeps it confidential and follows this Policy.
Physical	We have no servers of our own and use our processors’ data centres. Devices used to handle personal data have screen locks and disk encryption, with precautions against loss.
Technical	All connections use HTTPS. Passwords are stored in a form that cannot be reversed. The database controls access per user, and non-public information is handled only through server functions. Scan photos and similar files are in non-public storage, and admin keys are used only on the server. Non-public photos are shown on the admin page through links valid for 10 minutes.
Understanding the external environment	We take our security measures knowing the regime of the processors’ country (United States; section 7). The data is stored mainly in Japan (Tokyo).

11. Requests for access, correction, suspension and similar

1. Under the APPI you can request, about your personal data we hold: notice of the purposes of use, disclosure (including records of provision to third parties), correction, addition or deletion, suspension of use or erasure, and suspension of provision to third parties.
2. In the App: you can change your profile (first name, photo, public / private), delete reviews, photos, favourites and similar, and delete your account at any time.
3. How to request: send to admin@kiki-sake.com ① what you request, ② your registered e-mail address or KIKI ID, ③ an e-mail address for our reply.
4. Identity check: we confirm your identity, for example by asking you to write from your registered e-mail address or to tell us something only visible when signed in to the App.
5. Agents: a legal representative or an agent you appoint can request with a document proving the authority (such as a power of attorney).
6. Form of disclosure: as a rule, electronically (by e-mail).
7. Fee: free of charge.
8. Answer: without delay as the law requires (as a rule within 30 days). If we cannot comply for a reason set by law, we tell you the reason.

12. Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time in the App under Profile → Settings → Delete account. The information linked to your account is then deleted as set out in section 9 and cannot be restored. For what is deleted and what is kept, and how to ask for deletion by e-mail without the App, see “Delete your account”.

13. Storage on your device (cookies and similar) and analytics

1. The App stores what it needs to work in your browser’s storage on your device (local storage and similar). Examples: your sign-in, the device ID, settings such as language, currency and appearance, a copy of your ratings and favourites, scan history, menu photos (2 hours). The App uses no cookies and no analytics, advertising or tracking tools.
2. To see how the Website is used and improve it, the Website uses Google Analytics from Google LLC, loaded through Google Tag Manager. Google Analytics stores a random ID in cookies (names starting with _ga and _ga_, valid for 2 years) and sends the visit information listed in 2.9 to Google. Visitors from the European Economic Area (such as the EU), the UK and Switzerland are asked for consent first; until they agree, Google Analytics stores no cookies (a minimal cookieless signal may still reach Google). Your choice is kept in your browser’s storage, not in a cookie. We look at it only as statistics. We do not use it for advertising or to follow you on other sites, and we never link it to your account, e-mail address or anything else that identifies you.
3. How Google handles this information: “How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services” and the “Google Privacy Policy”.
4. To stop Google Analytics measuring your visits, choose “Decline” under “Analytics settings” at the foot of the Website, turn off cookies in your browser, or use the “Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on”. The Website keeps working as before.
5. We use Google Search Console to see how often the Website appears and is clicked in Google Search and which search terms led to it. These are statistics Google compiles about its own search; the Website sends no user information for them.
6. Information sent from your device to other companies when you use the App or the Website is listed on the “External transmission” page.

14. People under 20

Because the Service is about alcohol, only people aged 20 or older may use it. The App asks you to confirm that you are 20 or older on first start and at registration. If we learn that someone under 20 is using it, we delete the account and related information.

15. Use from outside Japan

The Service is provided by a Japanese operator for users in Japan and visitors to Japan, and personal data is handled mainly in Japan. If you use it from outside Japan, your information is also handled under this Policy and Japanese law.

16. Changes to this Policy

1. We may change this Policy when laws or the Service change.
2. Before a change takes effect, we announce the new content and the date it takes effect in the Service. Important changes are also announced inside the App.
3. Changes that need your consent under the law (such as a major change of purpose) are made only after obtaining it.

17. Contact

For questions, consultations or complaints about how we handle personal information:

• Contact point: Jerome Schramme, personal information desk
• Address: given without delay on request
• E-mail: admin@kiki-sake.com

The Operator is not a member of an accredited personal information protection organisation.

End