Privacy policy
This policy explains, in plain language, what the NeroPlant Android app collects, why we need it, who else sees it, how long we keep it and how you can wipe all of it. If anything here is unclear, email [email protected] and we will explain it properly.
The short version
- Your account holds your email address and, if you set one, a display name.
- The app stores the plants you add, their photos, your care schedule and history, and your Sprout conversation.
- Photos you submit for identification or a health check are sent to Plant.id to produce the result. Messages you send to Sprout are sent to Anthropic to produce the reply. If you choose Google sign-in, Google is involved in verifying who you are.
- There are no ads, no analytics SDKs, no third-party trackers, no push notifications and no in-app purchases. We do not sell your data or use it to profile you.
- You can delete your account and everything in it from inside the app: Profile → Delete account. It is immediate and irreversible.
Who we are
NeroPlant (“NeroPlant”, “we”, “us”) is the app described on this site, operated by the developer of NeroPlant. For anything to do with your data — questions, requests, complaints — write to [email protected]. We are the data controller for the information described below.
What we collect, and why
We only collect what the app needs to work. There is no hidden background collection.
| What | Why we need it | Required? |
|---|---|---|
| Email address | It is your sign-in identity and how we would contact you about your account. | Yes |
| Display name | So the app can greet you by name. You choose it and can change it any time. | No |
| Password | To sign you in. It is stored only as a salted, hashed value — never in readable form. If you use Google sign-in, we never receive a password at all. | Only for email sign-up |
| Your plants | Nicknames, species, room names, pot and light settings, notes, heights and growth entries — the collection the app exists to keep for you. | No |
| Plant photos | Two separate things: the photo you attach to a plant (stored on our servers so it shows in your collection), and the photo you submit for identification or a health check (sent to Plant.id for a result — see below). | No |
| Care history | Which tasks were due, which you ticked and when. It drives your schedule, your watering insights, your streak, XP and badges. | Generated by using the app |
| Sprout messages | The messages you type and Sprout’s replies, stored on your account so the conversation is still there next time you open it. | No |
| App settings | Your preferences, such as light or dark theme and reduced motion, so the app looks the way you left it. | No |
| Technical logs | Our servers keep ordinary access and error logs, which can include your IP address, the time of a request and error details. They exist to keep the service running and to spot abuse — nothing else. | Automatic |
What we do not collect
No precise location, no contacts, no advertising identifier, no browsing history, no microphone recording, no health or financial data. The app contains no analytics SDK, no advertising SDK and no third-party tracking of any kind, and it does not send push notifications or offer in-app purchases.
Camera and photo library
NeroPlant asks for camera access and, if you prefer to pick an existing picture, photo library access. Both are used for exactly one thing: taking or choosing a plant photo for identification, a health check, or a plant in your collection. We do not browse your gallery, and nothing is uploaded unless you take that action yourself. You can refuse or later withdraw these permissions in Android settings; the rest of the app carries on working without them.
Who else sees your data
We do not sell your data and we do not share it for advertising. Data leaves our servers in exactly the situations below.
Plant.id — plant identification and health checks
When you identify a plant or run a health check, the photo you submitted is sent to Plant.id, the service that performs the recognition, and their answer is returned to you. Only the image is sent: your email address, display name and account are not attached to the request. We do not keep a copy of a scan photo on our servers unless you attach that photo to a plant in your collection. Plant.id handles the image under its own privacy policy (plant.id).
Anthropic — the Sprout assistant
When you send a message to Sprout, the text of your message, together with up to the last twenty messages of that same conversation for context, is sent to Anthropic’s Claude API, which generates the reply. Your email address and display name are not sent with it. Do not type anything into Sprout that you would not want processed by a third party. Anthropic handles the text under its own privacy policy (anthropic.com).
Google — only if you choose Google sign-in
If you tap “Continue with Google”, Google authenticates you and issues a sign-in token, which we verify with Google. From that token we receive your verified email address and, where available, your name, and we use them to create or find your NeroPlant account. If you sign up with an email address and password instead, Google is not involved at all. Google handles that sign-in under its own privacy policy (policies.google.com/privacy).
Our hosting provider
The app’s servers, database and uploaded photos are hosted with our infrastructure provider (Hetzner Online GmbH), which stores the data on our behalf and may not use it for its own purposes.
Legal requests
We may disclose information if we are legally required to — for example a valid court order — or where it is necessary to protect the rights and safety of our users or of us.
Our legal basis (UK/EU GDPR)
- Performance of a contract — running your account and the core features you asked for: storing your plants, your schedule and your care history.
- Your consent — the optional features you actively trigger: submitting a photo for identification or a health check, and chatting with Sprout. You can withdraw consent simply by not using those features, by revoking the camera or photo permission, and by clearing your Sprout conversation in the app.
- Our legitimate interests — keeping the service available and secure, preventing abuse and fixing faults, using ordinary server logs.
- Legal obligation — where the law requires us to retain or disclose something.
How long we keep it
- Your account and its contents are kept for as long as your account exists. There is no expiry date and no archive we hold on to afterwards.
- Delete a plant and its photo, care tasks and growth entries go with it.
- Clear the Sprout conversation in the app and those messages are removed from our database.
- Delete your account and everything above is erased from our systems immediately — see deleting everything below.
- Technical server logs rotate and are discarded in the normal course of running the service.
- Requests already sent to Plant.id or Anthropic in order to produce a result are held under those companies’ own retention policies; deleting your account removes our copy, and we cannot delete theirs on your behalf.
How your data is protected
All traffic between the app and our servers travels over HTTPS (TLS), so it is encrypted in transit; so is every call we make to Plant.id, Anthropic and Google. Passwords are stored only as salted hashes. Your sign-in tokens are held in the Android Keystore through the device’s secure storage, not in plain app storage, and they expire and are refreshed automatically. Access to the production database is limited to the people who operate the service. No system is perfectly secure, but we take this seriously; if a breach ever affects your data we will tell you and the relevant regulator as the law requires.
Your rights and choices
Depending on where you live you have the right to access the data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, obtain a copy of it, object to or restrict certain processing, and complain to your local data protection authority. In practice:
- See and correct — your profile, plants, notes and settings are all visible and editable inside the app.
- Delete — Profile → Delete account removes everything at once, and individual plants and the Sprout conversation can be deleted separately.
- Copy of your data — email [email protected] from your account’s email address and we will send you an export.
We do not charge for any of this, and we will not treat you differently for exercising these rights.
Deleting everything
In the app, open the Profile tab, scroll to Account and tap Delete account. You confirm twice, and then your account, plants, photos, rooms, care schedule and history, badges and Sprout conversation are permanently erased. It happens immediately and it cannot be undone — there is no grace period and no way for us to restore it afterwards.
If you can no longer sign in, the account deletion page explains how to ask us to do it for you by email.
Children
NeroPlant is a general-audience app about houseplants. It is not directed at children under 13, we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13, and the app contains no child-directed content, no ads and nothing to buy. If you believe a child has created an account, email [email protected] and we will delete the account and its data promptly.
International transfers
NeroPlant’s servers are located in Nuremberg, Germany (in the European Union). The services we rely on operate internationally: requests to Plant.id, Anthropic and Google may be processed in other countries, including the United States. Where data leaves the UK or the European Economic Area, it is transferred under the safeguards those providers put in place for international transfers, such as the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses. If you use the app from outside our hosting region, you are asking us to process your data there.
Changes to this policy
If we change how the app handles data, we will update this page and move the “last updated” date at the top. If a change is significant — a new third party, or a new category of data — we will make that clear in the app before it takes effect. Continuing to use NeroPlant after an update means you accept the revised policy.
Contact
Email [email protected]. We answer privacy requests as quickly as we can, and within 30 days at the latest.