Privacy Policy

1. Operator & Contact

This Privacy Policy describes how L Lavatio Botanicus Co., a Maryland corporation doing business as The Growers Guild ("the Platform"), collects, uses, and shares your personal information. The Growers Guild is a trade name of L Lavatio Botanicus Co., not a separate legal entity. If you have questions or wish to exercise your rights, visit our Help & Support page or see Account Deletion & Data Requests.

2. Categories of Data We Collect

• Account & authentication data: Your email address (used for login), the display name you choose, avatar, optional bio, social profile links, and an immutable public user ID. Your authentication provider may also supply your full name when you sign in; this is stored on your account but is never displayed publicly — all public references use your chosen display name.
• Age self-certification: A timestamp recording when you certified that you are 21 or older. We do not prospectively collect or store your full date of birth. Any date of birth previously collected is retained for backward compatibility but is not displayed, populated for new users, or used for any purpose beyond verifying prior compliance.
• Grow data: Plants, journal entries, feeding logs, sensor readings, and photos you upload.
• Community & social data: Posts, comments, reactions, follows, direct messages, and group memberships you create.
• Moderation, support & audit data: Reports you submit, support requests, moderation actions, and rate-limit records (stored as hashed identifiers, not raw data).
• Transaction data: If you purchase a subscription, we store a checkout session identifier and payment status. Payment details are handled by our payment processor; we do not store your card number.
• Analytics & diagnostics: Product analytics events (such as "first plant created" or "AI mentor opened") linked to your account email. These events track only event names and minimal metadata — never journal notes, messages, photos, or strain names. Analytics records are visible to admins only.
• AI prompt & output data: Plant data and questions you submit to AI features, and the responses generated, are stored in your AI conversation and diagnosis records.

We do not collect biometric data. The application does not intentionally write IP addresses or device fingerprints to your account, profile, or analytics records. However, hosting, security, authentication, content delivery, and platform providers may automatically process technical request data — such as IP address, browser and device information, timestamps, and logs — to deliver and secure the service under their applicable service agreements and provider terms.

3. Sources of Data

We collect data you provide directly (account creation, grow entries, posts, support requests), data generated by your use of the Platform (analytics events, AI conversations), and data supplied by your authentication provider when you sign in (such as your email and full name).

4. How We Use Your Data

• To provide, operate, and maintain the Platform and its features;
• To create and manage your account and authenticate you;
• To display your content according to your chosen visibility settings;
• To generate AI-guided responses based on your plant data;
• To moderate content, enforce our Community Standards, and maintain safety;
• To process payments and manage subscriptions;
• To respond to your support requests and exercise your data rights;
• To improve the Platform, diagnose issues, and analyze usage patterns; and
• To comply with legal obligations and protect the Platform and its users.

5. How We Share Your Data

We share your data with the following categories of recipients:

• Service providers & processors: Cloud hosting, database storage, authentication, email delivery, AI processing, and payment processing providers that help us operate the Platform. These providers process data on our behalf under applicable service agreements and provider terms, and are limited to what is necessary to provide their service.
• Other users: Your display name, avatar, and content you choose to share (posts, comments, plants with public or followers visibility) are visible to other users according to your visibility settings.
• Legal authorities: We may disclose data where required by law, legal process, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of the Platform, our users, or others.

6. Sale of Data, Targeted Advertising & Profiling

We do not sell your personal information to third parties. We do not share your data for cross-context targeted advertising. We do not use your data for profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects about you.

7. Visibility Controls

You control who sees your content at three levels:

• Account default: Sets the baseline for all new plants and entries (Private, Followers, or Public).
• Per-plant: Override the default for any individual plant.
• Per-entry: Override the default for any individual journal entry or photo.

The most restrictive applicable setting always wins. For example, if your account default is "Followers" but a specific entry is set to "Private," that entry is only visible to you. These controls apply to content you create; they do not control content that other users have copied or screenshots they have taken.

8. Photo Handling & EXIF

When you upload a photo through the Platform's upload tool, the app attempts to re-encode the image in your browser before sending it to storage. This re-encoding is designed to remove EXIF metadata — including GPS coordinates, device identifiers, and capture location — while preserving visual orientation. If the re-encoding fails for any reason, the original file is uploaded as-is and may retain its original metadata. We recommend you remove location metadata from your photos before uploading if this is a concern.

9. AI Features

Our AI Grow Mentor and AI Plant Diagnosis tools send your plant data and questions to an AI processing provider to generate responses. Processing of your data by the AI provider is subject to the provider's terms and configuration as contracted by us. We advise you not to submit unnecessary identifying information when using AI features. AI responses are informational only — see our AI & Horticultural Disclaimer.

10. Security

We implement reasonable technical and organizational safeguards to protect your data. However, no system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee the security of your data. In the event of a data breach, we will take steps to investigate, mitigate, and notify affected users and authorities as required by applicable law.

11. Retention & Deletion

You can delete any plant, entry, post, or your entire account at any time. When you delete your account, it is deactivated and marked for deletion. Your associated content (plants, journal entries, feeding logs, community posts, and messages) remains in our active database until it is reviewed and removed by our team. Photos, media, and private Living Record PDFs you uploaded may not be automatically deleted by the platform's current storage system. These items remain subject to the platform's access controls until removal. We disclose this limitation honestly and do not represent that all stored files can be fully deleted by the platform on request.

Certain data may be retained where required by law or for legitimate business purposes, including transaction records, moderation actions, and analytics records. We do not represent that all data is immediately or permanently "deleted" upon request; rather, it is deactivated and scheduled for removal as described above. See Account Deletion & Data Requests.

12. Your Rights

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you;
• Request correction of inaccurate data;
• Request deletion of your data or account;
• Request a portable copy of your data; and
• Opt out of the sale or sharing of your data (we do not sell or share your data for targeted advertising).

To exercise these rights, submit a request through our Help & Support page and select "Privacy / Data Request." We will verify your identity and aim to respond within 45 days where applicable; we may extend this period where legally permitted with notice to you.

13. U.S. Processing & International Users

The Platform is operated from the United States. If you access the Platform from outside the U.S., your data will be transferred to and processed in the U.S. By using the Platform, you consent to this transfer to the extent permitted by applicable law.

14. Children's Privacy

The Platform is intended for adults 21 and older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 21. The 21+ self-certification gate is a platform policy and does not by itself satisfy every child-privacy or age-restriction law. If you believe we have collected information from someone under 21, please report it through Help & Support and we will take steps to investigate and remove it.

15. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be posted with a new "Last updated" date and, where legally required, we will provide clear advance or in-app notice and require your renewed affirmative acceptance. Your continued use after such notice constitutes acceptance only where legally permitted.