Privacy Policy

The short version

We collect what's needed to identify plants and keep your history: your email address, the photos you submit, and your location if you allow it.
Your photos and location are shared with the service providers that make identification work. We don't sell your information or use it for advertising.
The app doesn't include advertising or third-party analytics tools.
We may use your photos to improve Minneflora, including its plant identification.
Our plant identification provider may also use submitted photos to improve its identification models, provide examples to other customers, or share them publicly under a Creative Commons license. Its permission to use these photos continues after you delete your account. See section 4 for details.
You can delete your account in the app at any time, or by email if you can't use the app. We delete your account and remove the links between your account and your photos and identification records. We may retain those photos and records to improve Minneflora. We don't review each photo for identifying details, so retained photos may still contain personal information in the image itself or its embedded metadata. We also retain certain records, such as billing records. Section 5 explains what remains after deletion.

1. Who we are

Minneflora is operated by Northwoods Digital LLC ("Northwoods Digital," "we," "us," or "our"). This Privacy Policy explains how we handle information when you use the Minneflora mobile app and the website at minneflora.com (together, the "Service").

If you have questions, contact us at contact@minneflora.com.

2. Information we collect

Information you give us

Account information. Your email address and a password when you create an account. We store your password only as a one-way cryptographic hash, never in readable form.
Photos. The photos you take or choose when you identify a plant. Our plant identification service may reuse and publicly share these photos (see section 4), so keep people, faces, and other personal details out of them.
Messages. Anything you send us, such as emails to our support address.

Location (optional)

If you allow location access, the app includes your device's precise location (latitude and longitude) when you submit a photo for identification. We use it to:

help the identification service narrow down likely species;
look up an approximate place name, such as a city, state, and country; and
record where you found the plant, so you can see it in your history.

The coordinates and place name are stored with that identification. If you don't allow location access, you can still identify plants, and the app won't add your device's location to new identifications. Turning location access off later doesn't remove locations saved with earlier identifications. Those are removed or generalized when you delete your account (see section 5), or you can email us to delete them sooner.

Location information can also reach us in other ways:

Photo details. Photos can contain embedded details (EXIF data), such as when and on what device they were taken and, depending on your device and camera settings, where. Minneflora doesn't currently remove these details before a photo is sent for identification and stored. To keep location out of your photos, turn off location tagging in your device's camera settings.
IP address. Our servers record IP addresses (see below), which can indicate your approximate location.

Information created as you use the Service

Identification records: when you made an identification, the suggestions returned, the photo, and location if provided.
Usage counts: how many identifications your account has made each day, used to apply any plan limits.
Subscription status: if you subscribe, details such as your plan, which store you bought through, status, expiration date, and whether it renews. We don't receive your full payment card details.
Technical information: our servers may record standard information such as IP address, request times, and error details to keep the Service running, secure, and free of abuse.

Information stored on your device

The app keeps a copy of your identification history on your device, stores sign-in tokens (not your password) in your device's secure storage (Keychain on iOS, Keystore on Android), and saves a few app preferences locally.

Device permissions

Permission	Why we ask	Required?
Camera	To take photos of plants for identification.	Only to take photos in the app
Photos	To choose existing photos for identification, and to save photos if you ask the app to.	Only to use your photo library
Location	To include where you found a plant, as described above.	No

You can change these permissions at any time in your device settings.

3. How we use information

We use the information described above to:

identify plants from your photos and show you plant information;
save and display your identification history;
create and manage your account, including sending verification codes and password reset emails;
provide subscriptions and apply plan limits;
respond to your questions and feedback;
keep the Service secure, prevent abuse, and fix problems;
improve Minneflora, as described below; and
comply with legal obligations.

Improving Minneflora. Now or in the future, we may use the photos you submit to improve Minneflora, for example to develop, train, or test plant identification models, or to improve plant information and other features. This includes de-identified photos we keep after you delete your account (see section 5).

We don't use your information for advertising, and we don't sell it.

We share information with service providers only as needed to run the Service. Except for the plant identification service's rights to photos, explained below, they may use it only to provide services to us, and they must protect it with at least the same level of care described in this policy.

Type of provider	What it does for us	Information involved
Plant identification service (Plant.id, by Kindwise)	Suggests which plants a photo shows. It may also reuse and publicly share photos, as explained below.	Your photo, including any details embedded in it, and, if provided, your location coordinates
Cloud storage provider	Stores submitted photos	Your photos
Location lookup service	Turns coordinates into a place name	Location coordinates, if provided
Plant information service	Helps prepare plant descriptions and Minnesota status information	Plant names only. Your photos, location, and account details are not sent.
Email delivery provider	Sends account emails	Your email address and the email's contents
Subscription management provider	Manages subscriptions across stores and runs our web checkout	A random account ID (not your email address), purchase and subscription details, and basic device and app information, such as operating system, app version, and IP address. For web purchases, also the email address you enter at checkout.
Payment processor (web checkout)	Processes card payments for web subscriptions	The payment card and billing details you enter at checkout. We don't receive your full card number.
Apple App Store, Google Play	Process in-app purchases	Handled by the store under its own terms; we receive subscription status
Hosting and database providers	Run our servers and store data	Information we store, as described in this policy

How the plant identification service can use your photos

Our plant identification service is Plant.id, provided by FlowerChecker s.r.o. (Kindwise), based in the Czech Republic, under its API Terms and Conditions. Every photo you submit for identification goes to it. Under those terms, it receives a non-exclusive, unlimited, and irrevocable license to each photo. It may:

keep and modify the photo;
use it to develop its software and train its AI models;
give it to the service's other customers as part of identification results or other outputs; and
share it publicly under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC BY-SA 4.0 or later). That license lets anyone copy, adapt, and redistribute the photo, including for commercial use, as long as they give credit and share their versions under the same license.

Not every photo is necessarily published or used for training, but you should assume any photo you submit could be. This license can't be withdrawn. Deleting your account de-identifies your photos at Minneflora (see section 5), but it doesn't undo uses the service has already made or licenses already granted to others.

Before you submit a photo, make sure it's one you took yourself or have the owner's permission to share this way. Keep people, faces, license plates, house numbers, and other personal details out of the frame.

We may also share information:

when required by law, or to respond to valid legal process;
to protect the rights, safety, or property of our users, the public, or Northwoods Digital, including investigating abuse or security issues;
as part of a merger, acquisition, or transfer of the Service, in which case this policy will continue to apply to your information; or
with your permission.

We don't sell personal information, share it for targeted advertising, or let advertisers collect it through the app.

5. Keeping and deleting information

How long we keep information

Account information, photos, identification records, and locations: while your account is open, unless you ask us to delete them sooner.
Support messages: as long as needed to answer you and handle any follow-up, and longer only when we need them for a legal reason, such as a dispute.
Server logs: for a limited time, to keep the Service running and secure and to investigate problems, and then deleted.
Backups: deleted information can remain in our backups for a limited time, until those backups are replaced. We use backups only to recover from failures. If we ever restore one, we'll delete again anything that had already been deleted.
After account deletion: some records stay, as described below.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account in the app under Settings → Delete account. If you can't use the app, email contact@minneflora.com from the email address on your account and ask us to delete your account and its data. We'll confirm the request comes from you before acting on it.

When your account is deleted, we:

Delete your account. This removes your account record (including your email address and password hash), your sign-in sessions, and your active subscription record.
Unlink your photos. We remove every link between your account and the photos and identifications you submitted, in our database and in cloud storage.
Clean the photos and records. We remove or generalize details in the photos and their records that could identify you, such as embedded file information (for example, EXIF data) and precise location coordinates.
Delete your information from third-party services. We delete information that identifies you from the service providers we use, where they allow it. The exceptions are described below.
Check the result. We confirm that the remaining photos and records can't reasonably be used to identify you.

Your account is deleted right away, and we complete the remaining steps promptly after that. The app also clears the identification history stored on your device.

What stays after deletion

De-identified photos and records. After the steps above, the remaining photos and identification records are de-identified. We may keep them and use them to improve Minneflora, as described in section 3. We'll keep them in de-identified form, won't try to re-identify them, and will require anyone we share them with to do the same.
A billing record. We keep a record that the account was deleted. It holds the random account ID your account used, the deletion date, and your subscription details at that time: plan, store, status, expiration date, whether it was set to renew, and whether we cancelled a web subscription. It has no email address or other contact details. It isn't anonymous, though, because the same random ID links to your purchase history at our subscription management provider and the store. We keep it to answer billing questions, handle refunds and chargebacks, and keep required financial records, and only as long as those needs last.
Purchase history at our subscription management provider. The provider keeps your purchase history under the same random ID. This lets you restore an App Store or Google Play subscription with Restore purchases if you sign up again, and lets purchases be verified. For web purchases, it includes the email address you entered at checkout. Apple, Google, and our payment processor also keep their own purchase records under their own policies.
Photos already sent for identification. Deletion can't undo the plant identification service's license to photos you already submitted (see section 4).
Backups, for a limited time, as described above.

Deleting your account doesn't cancel an App Store or Google Play subscription. Cancel it through your store account. If you subscribed through our web checkout, deleting your account cancels that subscription, and your paid access ends right away.

6. Your choices and rights

Permissions: turn camera, photo, or location access on or off in your device settings.
Account deletion: delete your account in the app at any time, or email us to delete your account and its data if you can't use the app (see section 5).
Requests: email us to ask for a copy of your information, to correct it, or to delete it.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights over your personal information. We'll respond to requests as required by applicable law, and we'll do our best to honor reasonable requests from anyone. We may need to confirm your identity before acting on a request.

7. Security

We use reasonable safeguards to protect your information, including hashed passwords, encrypted connections, and secure on-device storage for sign-in tokens. No system is perfectly secure, so we can't guarantee absolute security.

8. Children

Minneflora is not directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has given us personal information, contact us and we'll delete it.

9. Where information is processed

We and our service providers may process information in the United States and in other countries, including countries in the European Union, whose privacy laws may differ from those where you live.

10. This website

minneflora.com doesn't use cookies, analytics, advertising, or third-party scripts or fonts. Our web host may keep standard server logs, such as IP address, browser type, and pages requested, to deliver and protect the site.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as Minneflora changes. We'll post the new version here and update the effective date above. If we make significant changes, we'll take reasonable steps to let you know, such as a notice in the app or an email.

12. Contact us

Questions or requests about privacy: contact@minneflora.com