Flora Clue
Who handles the data
Flora Clue is developed and published by Simula Valerio Antonello, Milano 20161, Italia — the data controller under Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR).
For any question about this page or about your data, write to privacy@floraclue.com. We have no data protection officer: we do not fall into the cases where the GDPR requires one (Article 37).
What we do not do
Worth saying before the rest, because it is the shortest part and the most important.
- We do not ask you to create an account, or for a name, an email or a phone number.
- We show no advertising and have no advertising system in the app.
- We use no analytics, measurement or behavioural tracking tools.
- We do not profile anyone and we make no automated decisions producing legal effects on you.
- We do not sell, rent or hand over data to anyone for commercial purposes.
- We do not use your photos to train artificial intelligence models, and neither do the providers we use.
- We do not read your address book, your location, your contacts or the other photos in your gallery.
What stays on your phone
This information never reaches us: it lives in the app’s private storage.
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| The plant diary | Diagnoses, health scores, check-up history, notes you write yourself |
| The plant photos | Saved in the app’s private folder so the diary can show them to you |
| The reminders | They are local notifications: your phone schedules and shows them, without any server |
| The settings | Light/dark theme, whether you have seen the introduction, subscription status |
| The analysis counters | How many you have run today and this month, so your plan’s limits work |
The diary is not synchronised and has no backup on our servers. That is the deliberate consequence of having no accounts, and it has an effect you should know about: what is in the app exists in a single copy.
Your phone’s backup is a different thing, and we do not run it. If system backup is switched on — Google Backup on Android, iCloud on iPhone — the app’s data goes into the copy held in your account. That is our choice, declared inside the app: the diary, the plant photos, the reminders, the settings and the analysis counters are included, because without accounts the backup is the only way you have of not losing the diary when you change phone or your phone breaks. The same applies to direct phone-to-phone transfer.
That copy sits with Google or Apple, not with us: we cannot see it and cannot read it. You govern it from your phone settings: on Android under Settings › Google › Backup, on iPhone under Settings › [your name] › iCloud. If you switch backup off, the data stays on the phone only, and when you change phone you start again.
What leaves your phone, and only when
Part of the work happens entirely on the phone and produces no communication at all. When recognising the plant from the photo is needed, or reasoning about a complicated case, the app contacts our server. All communication travels encrypted over HTTPS.
The plant photo
It is sent to our server at the moment of the analysis, and from there to the recognition provider. We do not keep it. The server holds the photo’s fingerprint in temporary memory (a SHA-256 code, from which the image cannot be reconstructed) together with the result, so the same analysis is not run — or charged — twice. That memory is volatile and is wiped every time the service restarts.
If people, objects or parts of your home happen to appear in the photo, that image follows the same path: it is not kept by us, but it does pass through the providers listed below. Frame the plant only.
Your answers to the questions
When you last watered, what the soil is like, how much light it gets, the type of pot, the symptoms you confirm. They are needed for the diagnosis and travel with the photo.
An anonymous device identifier
The first time you use the app the server generates a random code that the app keeps. It is not an account and you never see it. It contains nothing of yours, it is not linked to your phone or to your identity: it exists only to count how many analyses have been run, so that the plan limits work and nobody can overload the service.
The “the diagnosis was wrong” reports
If you tell us we got it wrong, we receive what we had answered, how much confidence we had declared, the reason you picked and the text you wrote. We do not receive the photo and there is no way to trace it back to you. We do keep these reports, because they are the only way we have of correcting the engine: we say so here and the app says so too, before you send it. Do not write personal data into them.
Who receives the data
We use few providers, and only to make the service work. They act as processors on our behalf, under a contract pursuant to Article 28 GDPR.
| Provider | What it receives | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | The photo and the answers, to recognise the plant and reason about the diagnosis | United States |
| Kindwise (Plant.id) | The photo only, when a second opinion on the species is needed | European Union |
| Google Play Integrity | An attestation from the operating system saying the request comes from a genuine app, to stop abuse | European Union / United States |
| RevenueCat | The store purchase receipt and an anonymous identifier, to know whether the subscription is active | United States |
| Hostinger | Hosts this site: the server logs, with the IP address of whoever visits | European Union |
None of the providers uses what it receives from us to train its own models. Transfers to the United States take place under the standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission (Article 46 GDPR).
Buying the subscription does not pass through us: it is handled by Google Play or the App Store under their own notices, as independent controllers. Flora Clue never sees and never stores your card details.
For how long
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Diary, photos, reminders | On your phone until you delete the plant or uninstall the app |
| The photo sent for analysis | Not kept: used and discarded |
| Photo fingerprint and result | In volatile memory, wiped every time the service restarts |
| Anonymous identifier and counters | In volatile memory, to make the plan limits work |
| Error reports | Kept, because they are what corrects the engine |
| Emails you send us | 24 months, then deleted |
| Site logs | Kept by Hostinger for server security, for as long as its service provides |
On what legal basis
- Performance of a contract (Art. 6.1.b GDPR) — to run the analysis you asked for, manage the subscription and make the plan limits work.
- Legitimate interest (Art. 6.1.f GDPR) — to protect the service from automated use and abuse, to correct the engine using error reports, and to answer the emails you send us.
We ask for no consent because we do nothing that requires one: no profiling cookies, no advertising, no newsletter.
Your rights
The GDPR gives you the right of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection. Write to privacy@floraclue.com: we answer within a month.
One clarification that seems honest rather than convenient: since we collect no identifier relating to you, we are not able to find “your data” in our systems — not because we are keeping it, but because nothing exists that links it to you. That is the other side of having no accounts. For the data on your phone the control is already entirely yours: deleting a plant or uninstalling the app really does erase it, and no copy stays with us.
If you believe we are handling your data improperly you can turn to the Italian Data Protection Authority, or to the supervisory authority of the country where you live.
This website
floraclue.com uses no cookies, has no analytics and loads nothing from third-party servers: the typeface and the images are on our own domain. That is why you see no banner: there is nothing to accept.
Your language choice, if you make one from the menu in the bar, is stored in your browser only (local storage). It is not a cookie, it never leaves your device, and it exists so the site opens in the language you picked.
Like any site, the server hosting it records the requests it receives — IP address, date and time, page requested, browser type. This keeps the server running and defends it against attacks (legitimate interest, Art. 6.1.f GDPR). Those logs are handled by Hostinger.
Minimum age
Flora Clue is not meant for anyone under 14, which in Italy is the age from which you can consent on your own to information society services (Art. 2-quinquies of the Privacy Code). Since there is no sign-up we do not ask your age and we do not knowingly collect data from minors: if you realise a minor has used the app and want something deleted, write to us.
If this page changes
The date at the top says when it was last updated. If we change something that matters — a new provider, a new kind of data — we write it here and flag it in the app before the change takes effect.
This page is a translation. In case of any discrepancy, the Italian version prevails.