Who We Are
Grocery Compare Ireland is operated by Info-Sphere Ireland Limited, a company registered in Ireland, which is the data controller for the information described here. You can reach us any time at support@infofinder.ie.
No User Accounts or Sign-In
Grocery Compare Ireland requires no account, registration, or sign-in of any kind. You open the app and use it immediately.
What We Do Not Collect
We do not collect, track, or store any of the following:
- Your name, phone number, or any account profile
- Location data or GPS tracking
- Browsing history, or search queries linked to you
- Advertising identifiers or tracking cookies
- The contents of your shopping list — names, quantities, or purchase behaviour
Shopping List — Stored on Your Device
Your shopping list is stored on your device using local storage. It is not uploaded to our servers or shared with any third party. If you uninstall the app, your shopping list is deleted along with it.
Optional price-drop alerts. If you switch on "Price-drop alerts" in Settings (off by default, and explained again in the app before anything is sent), the app shares only the product numbers of the items on your list — bare catalogue IDs, with no item names, quantities, or list titles — so our server can notify you when one of them drops in price. These numbers are linked to your device's anonymous notification token, never to you as a person. Switch alerts off at any time and the stored numbers are deleted immediately; they are also removed when the notification token becomes invalid (for example after you uninstall the app).
Photos You Send Us
Some features let you send us a photograph — a product picture through "Snap & Win", or a photo of an item and its shelf price label when you add a product we do not have. A photograph is only ever uploaded when you choose to send one, whether you take it there and then or pick an existing picture. We receive only the single image you choose: the app never reads, searches, or uploads anything else from your photo library.
A photograph you contribute is published in the app's catalogue, where it may appear against that product for any shop that sells it. It is stored with the device identifier that sent it, so we can recognise repeated contributions and act on misuse. Photos appear without your name and we do not ask who you are. Please do not photograph people, and do not include anything personal in the frame.
We keep a published photograph for as long as it is in use in the catalogue. If a photograph is rejected — the wrong product, or not a product at all — the image is deleted automatically after 14 days. A record of what happened to it stays, without the picture, so the app can tell you the outcome and so we have a basis for any later decision to block a device. You can ask us to remove a photograph you contributed at any time.
Receipts — Read on Your Device
When you scan a receipt, it is read on your device and the result is stored in the app's own database on your device. Receipts are not uploaded to us.
The one exception is when you choose to report a receipt that was read incorrectly. Reporting is a deliberate action with its own button: it sends us the receipt image and the text read from it, so we can find out what went wrong and improve the reader. We keep a reported receipt while we investigate and to test fixes against, and you can ask us to delete yours at any time.
A receipt can carry more than a shopping list — a loyalty card number, the last digits of a payment card, sometimes a name. Please cover or remove anything you would rather not send before you report one. If you have already sent one and want it removed, email us and we will delete it straight away.
Automated Reading of Photos and Receipts
To work out what a photograph shows, or to read a reported receipt, we use an automated service — Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service — which processes the image on our behalf and returns a description of what is in it. Microsoft acts as our processor: the image is used to answer that one request and not to train anyone's models.
Nothing about you is sent with the image — no email address, no name, no account, because there is no account. This processing happens on our servers, not in the app.
Vouchers — Email for Verification Only
If you claim a voucher from Match & Win or Snap & Win, we ask for an email address. It is used solely to send you a one-time code confirming the claim is genuine, and to record that the voucher was issued fairly — one per person per day, per game. We never use it for marketing, never share it, and you can ask us to delete it at any time.
To keep the games fair, a claim also records basic technical details: the device identifier, the network address the request came from, the country it resolves to, and the device model, operating system and app version. These are used only to detect and block abuse — for example one person claiming repeatedly under different identities. Where we do block, we store the email address, device identifier, or network address concerned so the block can be applied.
Push Notifications (Firebase Cloud Messaging)
Notifications are optional and only ever sent after you allow them. To deliver them, the app registers an anonymous notification token with Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging — the standard delivery service on iOS and Android. The token identifies your device for delivery purposes only; it is not linked to your identity and carries no personal data. We use Firebase for message delivery only — no Firebase analytics, advertising, or tracking features are used. Declining or disabling notifications never limits the rest of the app.
Basic Device & Network Information
For security and abuse prevention only — such as protecting our pricing API — our servers log basic technical request data including a device identifier, device type, operating system version, app version, network address, and the country it resolves to. This data is used solely to protect the service and is never used for profiling or marketing. These logs are deleted automatically after 90 days.
How the App Works
The app makes API calls to our servers to fetch product listings and pricing data from Irish supermarkets. These requests carry no account and no personal profile — we return product data based on your query, much like loading a webpage.
No Analytics, Ads, or Tracking SDKs
The app contains no analytics platforms, advertising SDKs, social media SDKs, or tracking libraries. Apart from Firebase Cloud Messaging for delivering the notifications described above, it communicates only with our own servers to retrieve grocery pricing data. The only third parties involved at all are the two named on this page: Google, for delivering notifications, and Microsoft, for reading photographs and reported receipts on our servers.
Your Rights
Under the GDPR you can ask us for a copy of any personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, or object to how we use it. In practice the only things we could hold are an email address from a voucher claim, a photograph or receipt you sent us, and abuse-prevention records tied to a device identifier — so a request usually just needs the email address you used or the photo concerned.
Email support@infofinder.ie and we will action it promptly and free of charge. If you are not happy with how we handle it, you can complain to the Irish Data Protection Commission at dataprotection.ie.
Deleting Your Data
Uninstalling the app removes your on-device data (lists, receipts, vouchers, loyalty cards). Turning off price-drop alerts deletes your synced product numbers immediately. Rejected photographs delete themselves after 14 days. For anything else — removing a voucher-claim email, taking down a photograph you contributed, or deleting a receipt you reported — contact us and we will delete it promptly.
Contact
For any privacy-related questions or deletion requests, please contact Info-Sphere Ireland Limited at support@infofinder.ie. We are happy to answer any questions about how the app works.