Terms of Service

Effective date: October 24, 2026 · Version 2026-10-24.3

These Terms are an agreement between you and William McLaughlin, an individual based in New York, United States, operating FridgeSpot ("FridgeSpot," "we," "us"). They govern fridgespot.com, the FridgeSpot iOS app and share extension, and related services (the "Service"). Contact: bill@fridgespot.com.

Please read these Terms before agreeing. They contain important content rules, cooking-safety warnings, warranty disclaimers and limitations of liability. If you do not agree, do not create an account or continue using the Service. You may still read our policies, log out, or deactivate or delete your account.

1. Accounts and eligibility

You must be at least 13, and meet any higher minimum age required by applicable law. If you are below the age of legal majority where you live, a parent or legal guardian must review and agree to these Terms and be responsible for your use to the extent permitted by law. Do not use the Service if you cannot meet these requirements.

Provide accurate account information, keep your password and Spot invitations secure, and notify us of suspected unauthorized access. You are responsible for activity you authorize through your account. Do not impersonate another person, share someone else's credentials, create accounts to evade restrictions, or access an account or Spot without permission.

2. Your content and permission to operate the Service

"User Content" includes submitted or imported recipes, ingredients, instructions, links, images, Spot names, shopping items, shared notes, reports and other material. You retain any ownership rights you hold. Other people's content remains theirs; importing it or crediting its source does not transfer ownership or itself provide permission to reproduce it.

For content you own or are authorized to license, you grant FridgeSpot a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, transmit, display and distribute it according to your sharing choices, and to make technical adaptations necessary to operate and maintain the Service, such as image resizing, WebP conversion, ingredient formatting and serving adjustments. We may authorize infrastructure providers to perform these functions for us. This permission does not authorize unrelated advertising, sale of your content, or artificial-intelligence model training. A transfer of this permission to a successor operating FridgeSpot remains subject to these purposes and the Privacy Policy.

The license lasts while the content is lawfully retained as described in section 6 and the Privacy Policy. Public recipes may remain available after account deletion without your account attribution. Permission for private content ends when it is removed from the Service, subject to legally required retention and independent copies already lawfully shared. No license grants rights you do not possess or overrides a copyright owner's rights or a mandatory privacy right.

3. Content you must not submit

You are responsible for what you add, import, publish or share. You represent that you own the content or have the permissions or other lawful authorization needed for the uses you request, and that your submission does not violate intellectual-property, privacy, publicity or other legal rights. The following violate these Terms:

• Unauthorized copyrighted material: copying, importing, uploading or distributing copyrighted photographs, recipe text, articles or other protected material without ownership, permission, a license or another valid legal basis. A publicly accessible website, import button, source link or attribution alone does not grant permission. Do not remove copyright notices or misrepresent authorship.
• Dangerous or deceptive food content: intentionally or recklessly adding unsafe ingredients, quantities, preparation steps or recipes to cause harm or expose others to a foreseeable serious safety risk; encouraging poisoning, food tampering or deliberate contamination; concealing known allergens; or knowingly falsifying cooking temperatures, preservation/canning instructions, toxicity information or other material safety information. Ordinary cooking risks and the presence of disclosed allergens do not excuse deliberately dangerous conduct.
• Illegal or inappropriate images and language: unlawful, sexually explicit, exploitative, obscene, graphically violent, hateful, harassing, threatening, abusive, discriminatory or otherwise inappropriate content for a food and recipe community. Sexual content involving minors is strictly prohibited. Recipe images must be relevant to food or recipes and respect other people's privacy.
• Abuse or deception: threats, stalking, bullying, doxxing, sharing another person's sensitive information without lawful permission, impersonation, fraud, scams, spam, deceptive promotion, or knowingly false or malicious reports. Do not make unsupported medical claims or knowingly misrepresent a recipe as safe for a particular allergy or health condition.
• Technical or access abuse: malicious code, attempts to steal credentials or data, bypass access controls or safety restrictions, exploit vulnerabilities, disrupt or overload the Service, scrape or redistribute protected or private content without authorization, manipulate reports, or circumvent an account ban. Lawful rights that cannot be restricted by contract remain unaffected.

You must not solicit, assist or encourage these violations. A Spot owner is not authorized to approve content that violates these Terms.

4. Reports, removal and account bans

Use Report Recipe for a recipe concern, or email bill@fridgespot.com for content, copyright, safety, account-abuse or other concerns. Include enough information to identify the content and explain the concern. Do not include unnecessary sensitive information.

We may investigate reports, restrict visibility or access, remove or correct content, preserve information where legally required, and cooperate with lawful requests. Accounts found violating the prohibited-content rules will be banned; repeated intellectual-property infringement is grounds for termination. We may temporarily suspend access while investigating serious concerns, and may remove content or terminate access without advance notice when reasonably necessary for safety, security, rights protection or legal compliance. Contact us if you believe a restriction was mistaken. Do not evade a ban.

New or edited public recipes are subject to automated screening. Server-verified imports from selected publishers may be allowed automatically. Flagged or uncertain recipe text, or text beyond automatic screening limits, waits for administrator review before public publication; it may remain available to its author and members of shared Spots while pending. When only a photo needs review, an otherwise approved recipe may be published without the photo. The photo remains hidden until approved; rejecting it does not by itself remove the recipe. Rejected recipe submissions must be edited and screened again before sharing. Screening and review do not certify safety, verify ownership or accuracy, or constitute an endorsement. You must have the rights required to submit content even when its source is a selected publisher. Nothing in these Terms excludes moderation or other duties imposed by law, and nothing prevents us from reviewing or removing content to meet those duties.

5. Recipes, health and cooking safety

The Service provides organizational tools and general recipe information, not medical, nutritional, allergy, food-safety or other professional advice. Recipes may come from users or third-party sites. Imports, formatting, ingredient interpretation and automatic serving adjustments can contain errors, omit information or produce unsuitable measurements. We do not guarantee a recipe's safety, accuracy, completeness, nutritional value or suitability for your circumstances.

Cooking and eating can involve foodborne illness, allergic reactions, choking, burns, cuts and property damage. Before using a recipe, check the original source, ingredients, product labels, measurements, substitutions, equipment, cooking and storage instructions, allergens and cross-contact risks. Use reliable food-safety guidance and appropriate cooking temperatures. Never treat a label such as "allergy friendly" or a software calculation as a substitute for your own checks or qualified advice. Do not follow content you believe is unsafe; report it.

You choose whether and how to prepare or consume a recipe and bear the ordinary risks of those choices, subject to the non-waivable rights and liability exceptions in section 9. This warning does not excuse intentionally dangerous content or unlawful conduct.

6. Sharing, account closure and retained recipes

Website imports are public within FridgeSpot by default; manually created recipes can be private. Spot content is shared under the Service's membership rules. Do not put information you wish to keep confidential in public recipes or shared content. We cannot retrieve copies another person has already saved.

Deactivation retains your information and disables access until permitted reactivation. Permanent deletion removes your account and private recipes, and their uploaded photos unless another retained recipe uses those photos. Public recipes you created or imported, their photos and original website credits remain without your recorded account attribution. Shared lists, plans and notes remain for other Spot members. You leave all Spots; ownership transfers to the longest-standing remaining member, and a Spot with no members left is deleted. The Privacy Policy explains these processes and their limits in detail.

Account deletion does not revoke rights already lawfully granted for retained public content or independent shared copies, but those rights remain subject to section 2, applicable law and valid removal requests. Contact us about specific personal information or infringing content that should be removed. We may discontinue features or the Service and cannot promise permanent storage or uninterrupted availability; keep your own copies of important information.

7. Third-party websites and software

Publishers, linked websites and other third parties control their own content, availability, terms and privacy practices. A link or import is not an endorsement or a guarantee that reproduction is authorized. Follow applicable third-party terms and legal restrictions. FridgeSpot's software, branding and other Service materials are owned by their respective rights holders; using the Service does not transfer those rights to you.

For the iOS software license, Apple's Standard End User License Agreement applies unless a separate custom EULA is provided through Apple. These Terms additionally govern your FridgeSpot account, content and use of the Service; they do not replace Apple's agreement or reduce rights it provides. Apple is not the operator of FridgeSpot. Direct FridgeSpot support and content complaints to us.

8. Warranty disclaimer

To the extent permitted by applicable law, the Service and content are provided "as is" and "as available," without express or implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement. We do not warrant uninterrupted or error-free operation, that content or calculations are correct or safe, or that all harmful content will be identified. This disclaimer does not remove statutory warranties or other rights that cannot lawfully be excluded.

9. Limitation of liability and mandatory exceptions

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, William McLaughlin and persons acting on his behalf in operating FridgeSpot are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or lost profits, goodwill, use or data, arising from use of or inability to use the Service, third-party conduct or content, or recipe errors, whether based on contract, tort (including ordinary negligence) or another legal theory, even if advised of the possibility.

Subject to the exceptions below, total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms is limited to the greater of US $100 or the amount you paid FridgeSpot for the Service during the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim. This limit includes claims concerning preparation, handling or consumption of recipes only to the extent a limitation is lawful.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for fraud, willful misconduct, gross negligence, death or personal injury where such liability cannot lawfully be limited, or any other liability or remedy that applicable law prohibits us from excluding or limiting. Mandatory consumer protections prevail. If an exclusion or limit does not apply in your jurisdiction or to a particular claim, it applies only to the extent legally permitted.

10. Responsibility for third-party claims

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to reimburse reasonable losses and legal costs finally awarded, or agreed in a settlement you approve, arising from a third-party claim caused by your unlawful content, intentional misconduct or material violation of these Terms. This does not cover losses caused by our own unlawful conduct or negligence, or impose obligations prohibited by consumer law. We will provide reasonable notice and an opportunity to participate in the defense. Neither party may settle a claim in a way that imposes an admission or non-monetary obligation on the other without that party's consent.

11. Changes, disputes and general terms

We may revise these Terms or the Privacy Policy by publishing the revised text and version. We require renewed agreement to the Terms and acknowledgment of the Privacy Policy before continued account access when a required version changes. Changes are not retroactive to disputes that arose before the change. A Privacy Policy acknowledgment is not blanket consent to unrelated processing or a waiver of privacy rights; we will obtain any separate consent the law requires.

New York law governs these Terms, except where mandatory law requires otherwise. You retain any non-waivable consumer rights and rights to bring a claim in a forum available under applicable law. These Terms do not require arbitration or waive class-action rights. Contact us to try to resolve a concern; this does not require you to delay a claim or give up a legal deadline.

If a provision is unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue to apply to the extent possible without defeating the agreement's essential purpose. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. Content licenses for lawfully retained content, applicable disclaimers and liability provisions, and provisions that by their nature should survive continue after account closure, subject to their stated limits and applicable law. These Terms and any applicable Apple software license govern their respective subjects; the Privacy Policy governs the data practices it describes.

Questions or notices: William McLaughlin, New York, United States; bill@fridgespot.com.