What changed. This version adds location, weather and voice, names every company that receives any of your data, describes the community census as it really works, and drops subscriptions, purchases and crash reporting. PlantAdvocate has none of those.
This Privacy Policy explains what PlantAdvocate ("the App," "we," "us") collects, why, who else receives it, and what you can do about it. It covers the PlantAdvocate iPhone app and this website, plantadvocate.ai. PlantAdvocate is operated by Allison Bowman, a sole proprietor, based in the United States.
The short version: PlantAdvocate is free. It has no ads, no tracking, no analytics or crash-reporting software, no in-app purchases and no subscriptions. We don't sell your data, and we don't share it with advertisers or data brokers.
If you have questions about this policy or your data, contact us at [email protected].
Account information. You sign in with Apple or Google. There are no passwords. From Apple we receive an account identifier, your email address (or Apple's private relay address, if you chose Hide My Email; we respect that choice), and your name, but only the first time you sign in and only if you share it. From Google we receive an account identifier, your verified email address and your name. We don't keep your Google profile photo. We give your account its own random identifier, which ties your plants, care logs and growing areas to you. If you sign in with Apple and with Google using the same verified email address, both open the same account. For Sign in with Apple we also keep, encrypted, a token Apple issues to us. We use it only to end PlantAdvocate's access to your Apple ID when you delete your account. We use account information only to run the App. We never use it for marketing or advertising, and we don't send marketing email.
Plants and growing areas. The App keeps what you tell it about your plants: nicknames, species, how many, growth stage, the spot you describe (such as "by the south fence"), when you got each plant and what shape it was in, notes you write, a log of the care you give (watering, feeding, repotting and the like) with its dates and outcomes, and moves between growing areas. It also keeps your growing areas: their names and the way you describe them, such as their type, how sheltered and sunny they are, and an optional size and goals. All of this is stored on our server, so your garden survives a new phone and advice can account for what you've actually done. Care reminders are scheduled on your phone and are not sent to us.
Location. You can give a growing area a place, so the App knows the weather where your plants grow. You can type an address or, if you allow it, use your phone's current location. The App asks for location access only when you tap to use it, and only while you're using the App. Your phone's own map service (Apple's, on iPhone) turns that into a place. We store the place's city, region, country and coordinates with that growing area. We don't keep the address you typed. To get the forecast, our server sends the coordinates, rounded to about a kilometer, and nothing else about you, to a weather service. We ask Apple Weather first. If it doesn't answer, we ask the U.S. National Weather Service (for places in the U.S.), then Open-Meteo. Location is optional: growing areas work without it. Coordinates are never included in the community census.
Photos for identifying a plant. When you identify a plant from a photo, the App uses your phone's camera or photo library. Your phone's own AI (Apple Intelligence, on iPhone) reads the photo on the phone. The photo is never uploaded, to us or to anyone else.
Photo check-ups and questions in your own words. These 2 features are not switched on today, and the App doesn't show them. When they are switched on, a photo check-up sends that one photo, with any note you add, to our server and on to our AI provider, Anthropic, to read it. A question in your own words goes the same way. We don't store the photo. Only the written result of a check-up is saved, to that plant's timeline. A question and its answer are not saved. The App will ask you before it sends your first photo or question. "AI Processing" below lists exactly what goes with them.
Voice. In Walk the garden you can say what's planted instead of typing it. The App asks for microphone and speech-recognition access when you first tap the microphone. It listens only while the screen says "Listening," and stops when you tap stop or leave the screen. Your phone turns your speech into text, on the phone itself where it can. Where it can't, iOS sends the audio to Apple's speech service to be transcribed, and the screen tells you which is happening. PlantAdvocate never receives your audio or the transcript. Only the plants you confirm (the species, how many, and any spot you named) are sent to our server, and they are saved like any plant you add by hand.
Community census. The community census is off by default. Your plantings are counted only if you turn on "Join the community census" in Settings → Privacy & data. If you join, each of your plantings is counted with its species, how many, its growth stage, when you got it, its care history (which kinds of care, and when), its moves between growing areas, the type of growing area it's in and that area's city, region and country, and the starting condition you picked from fixed lists (soil moisture, leaves, pests). The census never contains your name, email address, account identifier, plant nicknames, notes you wrote, photos or coordinates. Each census export uses fresh random identifiers, so 2 exports can't be joined into the history of one garden. Only PlantAdvocate can export census data; other users can't see it. We use it to improve care advice for everyone. It is not sold and not shared with advertisers. Because it describes single plantings rather than totals, someone who already knew your city and exactly what you grow could in principle recognize your garden in it. If that matters to you, leave the census off. Turning it off leaves your plantings out of every export after that. An export made before you turned it off can't be called back.
Messages you send us. If you email us, or tap "Report this result" in the App (it opens an email already filled in with the result you're reporting and the App's version, which you see before you send it), we receive what you send and your email address. We use them only to reply and to fix problems.
Technical data. The App contains no analytics, advertising or crash-reporting software. It doesn't send us usage statistics, device identifiers or crash reports. Our server keeps operational logs so we can keep the service running: the time of each request, which part of the service it asked for, and the network (IP) address it came from, plus error details that can sometimes include a plant's nickname or a location rounded to about a kilometer. We don't use these logs to profile you.
On your phone. Identifying a plant from a photo, and the Gnome's way of talking, use your phone's own AI. Nothing is sent anywhere for them.
On our server. Care advice is built on our server, by fixed rules, from the catalog's cited care facts and your plant's own record. An outside AI service does not write it.
Not switched on yet. Photo check-ups and questions in your own words will use Anthropic's Claude to read the photo or the question. Today no feature of PlantAdvocate sends anything to Anthropic or to any other outside AI service. When these features are switched on, we will send only what the answer needs: the photo or question and any note you add, the species' care facts, and the plant's nickname and the spot you described. A question also carries the plant's growth stage and its recent care log, including notes you wrote, and for an outdoor plant, the growing area's name, how exposed it is, and the local forecast. We never send your name, email address, account identifier or coordinates. Anthropic handles this under its commercial terms, which don't allow it to train its models on what we send. The App will ask you before your first photo or question goes.
Care advice is informational and can be wrong. It is not a substitute for a professional's advice, and you should never rely on it to decide whether a plant is safe to eat or touch. You can report a result that looks wrong from inside the App.
We use the information described above to:
We don't use your information for advertising, and we don't build a profile of you.
Your data is stored in the United States, on servers run by our hosting provider, Fly.io, on storage that is encrypted at rest. It travels between the App and our server over encrypted (HTTPS) connections, and your sign-in is kept in your phone's secure storage. We take reasonable steps to protect your information, but no way of storing or sending data is completely secure.
We don't sell your personal information, and we don't share it for advertising. We share only what each of these service providers needs to do its job:
If you've joined the community census, your census data is used as described above. Before census data goes to any other organization, we will name it here. We may also disclose information if the law requires it.
We keep your data while your account exists. You can delete your account at any time in the App: Settings → Account → Delete account. That immediately and permanently erases your account, plants, care logs and growing areas from our live database. It also ends your sign-in sessions and, if you used Sign in with Apple, asks Apple to end PlantAdvocate's access to your Apple ID. Our hosting provider keeps automatic daily snapshots of our storage for up to 5 days, so a deleted account is gone from those within 5 days. A census export made before you deleted your account can't be called back. If you prefer, email us and we'll delete your account for you.
Wherever you live, you can ask us for a copy of your data, or ask us to correct or delete it. Email us at the address above. If you live somewhere with specific privacy laws, such as the EU, the UK or California, those rights are yours by law, including the right to complain to your local data protection authority. We won't treat you differently for using them.
The community census stays off unless you turn it on, and you can turn it off at any time in Settings → Privacy & data.
You can decline, or later turn off, camera, photo library, location, microphone and speech-recognition access in your iPhone's Settings. The features that need them will say so and offer another way, such as typing a plant's name or an address.
plantadvocate.ai has no analytics, ads or tracking. It is served by Cloudflare, which handles your network (IP) address to deliver the pages and protect the site from abuse, and may set a cookie for that protection. The pages load their fonts from Google Fonts, so your browser asks Google for them. The community garden demo saves your plots in your own browser; they never reach us. If you email us from the site, we use your address and message only to reply. If you joined our early-access list on an earlier version of this site, we use that address only to tell you about PlantAdvocate, and we'll remove it if you ask.
PlantAdvocate is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we'll delete it.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we'll change the effective date and the "What changed" line at the top. The current version always lives at this page. Continued use of the App after changes are posted means you accept the updated policy.
Allison Bowman, Sole Proprietor
Email: [email protected]