Privacy Policy
Last updated: September 2026 — updated to cover following, blocking, the following feed, profile highlights, the restaurant directory's "near me" search, map images from CARTO, quests, quest badges, seasonal challenges and challenge badges, kitchen notes, shared collections, notifications, "I tried it" on recommendations, reactions, people suggestions, sorting saved restaurants by distance, which locations of a multi-location restaurant you've been to, checked-off recipe ingredients and steps (now remembered for 24 hours), the US/metric choice on recipes, the signed-in homepage summary, and the option to hide your favorites from your profile
This policy explains what information Pancit.com collects when you visit the site — including if you create a free account — how it's used, and the choices you have.
Information we collect
Analytics. Pancit.com uses Google Analytics to understand how the site is used — pages visited, general location (city/country level), device type, and how you arrived at the site. Google Analytics sets cookies in your browser to do this. It does not collect your name or email address unless you provide it elsewhere on the site.
Contact form and email. If you use the contact form or email us directly (including sending in a recipe suggestion or a photo of a dish you made), we collect whatever you send us — typically your name, email address, and message content — so we can respond and, if you've offered to share a recipe or photo, potentially feature it on the site.
Account information. If you create a free Pancit.com account, we collect your email address and password (Pancit.com never sees or stores your actual password — our authentication provider, Supabase, stores it securely hashed on our behalf), plus whatever you choose to add: a display name, a username, an optional bio, and an optional avatar or accent color to personalize your profile. At signup, and anytime afterward from My Account, you can also independently opt in to two kinds of email: a newsletter (new recipes and restaurant features) and occasional product/account updates — both are off unless you turn them on yourself, and turning either on doesn't mean Pancit.com is currently sending that kind of email; it just means you'd be included if and when we do.
Activity you choose to track. An account lets you mark restaurants as "visited" and recipes as "cooked," including how many times, and optionally save items or add them to your favorites, create collections, and send or receive recommendations (which may include a short note you write). For restaurants with more than one location (like Jollibee or Red Ribbon), you can also mark which specific locations you've been to, and pick one location as your "favorite spot" for a restaurant in your favorites. All of this is created entirely by your own actions — we don't track your activity on the site beyond what you deliberately mark.
Kitchen notes. If you write a note on a recipe (and optionally mark "I'd make this again"), we store it with your account so you can see it on that recipe page, in Cooking Mode, and on My Account. Your notes are private: they're never shown on your public profile, in anyone's Following feed, or to anyone else, and we don't use them for anything else. You can edit or delete a note anytime from the recipe page, and deleting your account deletes all of them.
Your location (optional). If you use "Find Filipino food near me," or "Use my location" to sort your saved restaurants by distance on My Account, your location is used only inside your browser to measure distances to restaurants — it is never sent to Pancit.com or anyone else, and it is never stored. A city or ZIP code you type for either is matched in your browser the same way and isn't sent anywhere.
Referrals. If someone signs up using your personal invite link, we record that connection so it can count toward your Ambassador badge. We never make public who specifically referred whom — only your own total referral count and badge are shown, and only to you and (as a badge) on your public profile if you choose to keep it public.
Fonts and other third-party scripts. This site loads resources from a handful of external services as part of running normally: Google Fonts (typefaces), jsDelivr and unpkg (code libraries used to power account features and interactive maps), and Cloudflare Turnstile (a bot-detection check shown on sign-up and sign-in forms, similar to a CAPTCHA). Pages with a map — the regional pancit map, the map view on each state's restaurant page, and the small map on each restaurant's own page — load their map images from CARTO, a map provider, so your browser requests those images directly from CARTO's servers, which may log basic technical information like your IP address and which area of the map was displayed. These maps only ever show restaurant locations, never your own. Each of these involves your browser making a request to that service's own servers, which may log basic technical information (like your IP address) as part of operating that service — Pancit.com doesn't control what those providers do with that request beyond what's needed to serve the resource. If you sign up or reset your password, your new password is also checked against a public database of previously breached passwords (via the "Have I Been Pwned" service) — this is done by sending only a small, irreversible fragment of your password's cryptographic hash, never the password itself, so that service never sees or can reconstruct your actual password.
How we use information
We use the information above to operate and improve Pancit.com, respond to messages, run the account features described in this policy, and — only with your input — feature reader-submitted recipes or photos. We don't sell your personal information, and we don't share it with third parties except the service providers mentioned in this policy (Google Analytics, Google Fonts, Netlify, Supabase, Cloudflare, jsDelivr/unpkg, CARTO, and the Have I Been Pwned password-check service).
Public profiles
Every account gets a profile page at pancit.com/user/<your username>, and it's public by default. A public profile shows your username, display name, bio, avatar, accent color, your badges, and total counts (like how many restaurants you've visited) — but never your email address. The specific restaurants and recipes you've individually tracked stay private by default too, visible only to you — but unlike everything else on this list, that one is a choice you can change: My Account has two independent toggles, one for your visited-restaurants list and one for your cooked-recipes list, each off unless you turn it on yourself. Turning one on makes that specific list (names, not just the count) visible on your public profile; the other stays exactly as private as it was. A public list also powers a short Highlights section on your profile (your top three by visit or cook count, and for restaurants, how many states they're in) — worked out only from the list you've already made public, so it never shows anything that list doesn't. You can switch your profile to private at any time from My Account; a private profile shows as "not found" to other visitors rather than confirming it exists — and while it's private, neither of the two list toggles matters, since nothing on the profile is visible to begin with.
Recommendations you send to another user include your username and display name, since the recipient needs to know who sent it. Anything you save, add to your favorites and choose to keep public, or organize into a collection follows the same rule above: favorites appear on your public profile unless you turn off "Show my favorites" in My Account › Settings › Privacy, but your saved-for-later list is never shown to anyone but you, and collections stay private unless you share one with a link (see "Shared collections" below). If someone recommends something to you and you tap "I tried it!", they'll see that you tried it (in a notification and in their list of recommendations they've sent) — nothing else you mark visited or cooked is shared with them. If you dismiss a recommendation, it's deleted and disappears from their list too. When you're signed in, the homepage shows you a short summary of your own saved recipes, badge progress, and recently visited restaurants; it's loaded only for your signed-in session and isn't visible to anyone else.
Restaurant locations. Which locations of a multi-location restaurant you've marked follows the same rules as the restaurant itself: they appear on your public profile only if your visited-restaurants list is public. If you choose a favorite spot for a restaurant in your favorites, that location is shown with the favorite ("Favorite spot: …"), whenever your favorites are shown — leave it unset, or turn off "Show my favorites," if you'd rather not show a specific location. Locations never appear in the following feed and never include a date.
Quests and quest badges. Quest progress and quest badges aren't stored anywhere — they're worked out in your browser from the restaurants and recipes you've already marked, each time the page loads. On your public profile, a quest badge appears only when the list it's based on is public (a cooked-recipes quest needs your cooked-recipes list public; State Hopper needs your visited-restaurants list public), and is worked out from that public list alone, so it never reveals anything that list doesn't.
Seasonal challenges and challenge badges. A seasonal challenge uses the date you first marked a restaurant visited or a recipe cooked; that date is recorded by our server when you mark it. The challenge's progress card appears only on My Account. When you finish one, our server checks those dates and awards you a challenge badge (the first is "Filipino American History Month 2026"). That badge is stored with your account and, like an event badge, appears on your public profile (if your profile is public) and may appear in your followers' Following feed as "earned a badge." It shows the badge's name and the month you earned it, never which restaurant or recipe completed the challenge.
Shared collections. Collections are private unless you turn on "Share with a link" for one. Then anyone with the link can see that collection's name, the recipes and restaurants in it, and your display name, username and avatar with a link to your profile. A shared collection isn't listed on your profile, in search, or in any feed, and the link is a random code that can't be guessed. The link works only while sharing is on and your profile is public; turn off either one and it stops working immediately. Someone with an account who opens your link can copy the collection into their own collections — their copy is theirs, and isn't updated when you change yours. If someone creates an account from your shared collection, it counts as one of your invites toward your Ambassador badge, the same as your invite link.
Following, followers, and blocking
What's public. If you follow someone, that follow is visible: your public profile shows how many people you follow and how many follow you, and — unless you turn it off in My Account — the lists of those accounts' names and usernames. Only public, non-moderated profiles are ever counted or listed; if your own profile is private, you won't appear in anyone's public follower or following list, and you never appear in people search. Hiding your lists hides the names, not the totals. When a signed-in visitor looks at your profile and your lists are public, they may see a line like "Followed by Jojo and 2 others you follow" — built only from your public follower list and the visitor's own following list, so it reveals nothing they couldn't already see; with your lists hidden, the line doesn't appear.
The following feed. People who follow you can see a feed of your recent activity on My Account — but only things you've already made public on your own profile: favorites you've added (unless you've turned off "Show my favorites"), event badges you've earned, and your cooked recipes or visited restaurants only if you've turned on the matching "show this list publicly" toggle. Dates in the feed are shown by day only, never by time, and restaurant visits don't appear until at least a day after you mark them, so the feed can't be used to tell where you are in real time. The feed never shows which location of a restaurant you visited or chose as your favorite spot. Nothing older than 90 days appears.
Suggested people. My Account suggests people followed by the people you follow. They're built only from follow lists that are already public on those people's profiles, so if you hide your own follower and following lists, the people you follow won't be suggested to your followers through you. Private and moderated profiles, and accounts you've blocked, are never suggested.
Notifications. My Account shows you notifications when someone follows you, recommends something to you, tries something you recommended, reacts to your activity, or when you earn a badge. They're created by our system from those events, visible only to you, and never emailed. We keep your newest 200 for up to 180 days; you can't be sent a notification by someone you've blocked, blocking someone removes the ones they've already caused, and deleting your account deletes all of yours. If someone follows and then unfollows you before you've seen it, that notification is removed.
Reactions. When you react to something in your Following feed (😋 Sarap!, 🍴 Kain tayo!, or 🎉 Mabuhay!), the person who posted it can see that you reacted and which reaction you chose, through their notifications. Other people who can see that item see only how many of each reaction it has, not who reacted. You can only react to things the feed shows you, and you can remove your reaction anytime. Blocking someone removes any reactions between the two of you.
Blocking. Your blocked list is visible only to you. The account you block isn't notified. Blocking removes any follow between the two of you, prevents them from following you again, and discards recommendations they try to send you — we don't keep those discarded recommendations. If you've chosen to only accept recommendations from people you follow, someone you don't follow who tries to send you one is told that's your setting.
Cookies and local browser storage
Google Analytics sets cookies to distinguish visitors and sessions. You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings; doing so may affect how some site features work but won't prevent you from reading recipes or browsing the restaurant directory. Separately, if you sign in to a Pancit.com account, our authentication provider (Supabase) stores a session token in your browser's local storage to keep you signed in between visits — clearing your browser's site data will sign you out, and using "Sign out" in My Account clears it directly. Recipe pages also remember which ingredients and steps you've checked off, using your browser's local storage: it stays on your device, is never sent to us, and is forgotten after 24 hours (or right away with "Clear checkmarks"). If you switch a recipe between US and metric measurements, that choice is remembered in your browser's local storage too; it holds only that preference. If you hide My Account's "Get started" checklist, that choice is remembered in your browser's local storage so the checklist stays hidden on that device; it holds only that preference. While you're signed in, the number of unread notifications (for the dot next to "My Account") is kept in your browser's session storage for up to a minute so it doesn't have to be looked up on every page; it's cleared when you close the tab.
Children's privacy
Pancit.com is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. Creating a Pancit.com account additionally requires that you be at least 13 years old.
Your choices
You can use most of Pancit.com without providing any personal information at all — browsing recipes, the restaurant directory, and the glossary doesn't require it. Information is only collected if you choose to use the contact form, email us, or create an account. If you do create an account, you're also in control of it: your bio and avatar are optional, you can switch your profile between public and private at any time from My Account, you can hide your follower and following lists, remove followers, or block accounts, you can turn either of the two email opt-ins on or off whenever you like, you can remove anything you've saved, favorited, or organized into a collection, and My Account has a self-service option to permanently delete your account and everything tied to it — your profile, your tracked activity, your saved items and collections, your followers, following, and blocked lists, and any recommendations you've sent or received.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. The "last updated" date at the top of this page reflects the most recent revision.
Contact us
Questions about this policy? Email us at info@pancit.com or use our contact form.