Your privacy

What HelpingHand Meal Planner keeps about you and your household, why, who else sees it, and how to have it all deleted. Your plans and lists are yours. We never sell them.

HelpingHand Meal Planner is run by Prosper Technologies Limited, New Zealand. Questions go to our privacy officer, Nathan O'Hanlon, at nathan@helpinghand.nz. Last updated 24 October 2026.

What we keep

Your name, email address and password (stored scrambled, so nobody can read it).
If you sign in with Google or Facebook: your name, email address and that account's ID number, so we know it is you next time. We never see your Google or Facebook password, contacts or posts.
How many adults and children you are feeding (never their names), your food budget, your kitchen appliances, your cooking times and any food preferences you tell us.
If you tell us about an allergy or a food someone cannot eat, we keep that too, and use it only to leave those foods out of your plans.
Your meal plans, pantry, ratings, notes and shopping lists.
Recipes you add, the photos you put on them, and the web address of any recipe you ask us to bring in.
The supermarket store and products you choose. The postcode you give us to find your nearest supermarket is used for that search only and is not saved to your account.
If you set up a company: its name, your work email address and how many seats it pays for.
If you pay for Premium: your plan and payment history. Card details go straight to Stripe; we never see or keep your card number.
If you connect an AI assistant (such as Claude or ChatGPT) to your planner: which assistant, when it last connected, and a record of each thing it asked the planner to do. We keep only a scrambled copy of its access key.
If you use HelpingHand AI, our own AI: your conversation with it until 12 hours after your last message, so it can carry on, and your AI credit top-ups and what each answer cost.
Like most websites, our servers note your IP address, your browser and the pages you open, to keep the planner running and stop misuse.

What we use it for

To plan your meals, build your shopping lists and keep your pantry up to date.
To sign you in and email you about your account, such as confirming your email or a trial ending.
To charge for Premium if you choose it, and to keep the records the law asks for.
To help you when you contact us. HelpingHand staff look at your plan only to answer you or put a problem right.
To keep the planner and your account safe and stop anyone misusing it, for example by limiting how often the home page chat can be asked.
To fix problems and make the planner better. When we look at how the planner is used, we look at it across everyone, not at you.
We only email you about your account and your payments. No newsletters and no advertising.

We never sell your information or give it to advertisers.
If your employer pays for your Premium, whoever manages its seats sees your name, your email address and how and when you joined, and can take the seat back. If they do, you move to Free, keep everything you made and can pay for Premium yourself at any time. They never see your plans, pantry, recipes or lists.
Stripe takes card payments for us.
Google or Facebook, only if you choose to sign in with them. They learn that you used your account to sign in to HelpingHand Meal Planner.
Google, to place the postcode you give us so we can find the supermarkets near you. Only the postcode is sent.
PAK'nSAVE, only when you send your list to it. That happens in your own browser, signed in to your own PAK'nSAVE account, and we never see your PAK'nSAVE password. To show prices, our servers look PAK'nSAVE up as a guest, with nothing about you.
The AI assistant you connect, only if you connect one. It sees what it asks the planner for, under that company's own privacy policy.
Anthropic, which runs Claude for HelpingHand AI and for the chat on our home page, only if you use them. It gets your first name, your messages and what the planner tells it to answer them. The home page chat is not saved on our servers at all.
If you have replies read out, Amazon Web Services turns the reply into speech. If you talk instead of typing, your own browser turns your voice into words (in Chrome, Google does this) and we only get the words.
Amazon Web Services, which runs our servers in Sydney, Australia, and sends our emails from the United States.
Anyone you share a recipe with by email from the planner sees your name and email address.
Anyone you share your meal plans with by email sees your first name, your email address and all your meal plans, past and future, until you take their access away. If you let them change the meals, the changes they make are kept in your plan's history with their email address.
A court or government agency in New Zealand, only if the law requires us, and only what it asks for.
Some of these companies hold information outside New Zealand. We only use companies that protect it the way New Zealand law expects. Our data protection policy lists them all.

Cookies

We only use the cookies the planner needs to work. No advertising cookies, and nothing that follows you around other websites.

A sign-in cookie, so the planner knows it is you from one page to the next.
"Keep me signed in on this device" keeps a cookie for up to a year. On a shared device, untick it or sign out.
A cookie that lets your planner page update by itself while an AI assistant changes your plan.
On the card pages, Stripe sets its own cookies to protect payments from fraud.

How long we keep it

For as long as you have an account.
HelpingHand AI conversations: until 12 hours after your last message, or until you start a new conversation.
When you ask us to delete your account, we delete it and everything in it within 30 days.
Copies can stay in our encrypted backups for a while after that. Our data protection policy says how long.
Payment records are kept for seven years, because New Zealand tax law requires it.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of what we keep about you.
You can change most of it yourself in your account, or ask us to correct anything that is wrong.
You can have your account and everything in it deleted at any time. See "Delete my data" below.
You can disconnect an AI assistant, or switch HelpingHand AI off, at any time from your account.
We follow the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020. If you are not happy with how we handle your information, you can complain to the Privacy Commissioner at privacy.org.nz.

Children

Accounts are for people aged 16 and over. A parent or carer plans for the household.
We only ask how many children you are feeding, never their names or anything else about them.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we change the date at the top.
If a change affects what we do with your information, we email you before it takes effect.

Delete my data

You can have your HelpingHand Meal Planner account and everything in it deleted at any time, however you signed up, including with Google or Facebook.

Email support@helpinghand.nz from the email address on your account and ask us to delete your account.
We reply to check it is really you, and cancel any Premium subscription so you are not charged again.
Within 30 days we delete your account, your household details, plans, pantry, recipes and lists, any connected AI assistants and the link to your Google or Facebook account. Only payment records the law makes us keep are left.

support@helpinghand.nz

If you signed in with Google or Facebook, you can also remove HelpingHand Meal Planner from the apps connected to that account. That stops it signing you in, but it does not delete what we keep, so please email us as well.