TeddyGreenFingersPrivacy notice
Last updated 5 September 2026 · version 2026-09-05
TeddyGreenFingers is a garden app. It is not advertising-funded, nothing you put in it is sold to anyone, and no advertising or analytics company sees anything. This notice says what is kept, who else sees it, how long it lasts, and how to get rid of it.
Who is responsible
TeddyGreenFingers is made and run by Justin Sterrenberg, in Portugal, who is the data controller for the information described here. You can reach us at info@teddygreenfingers.com. For anything to do with security, put the word security in the subject line.
The database, the sign-in and the photo storage are hosted in the European Union (Frankfurt, Germany). Your garden data does not leave the EU. Two narrow exceptions — checking for app updates, and the website you are reading — are described under who else sees anything.
What is kept
- Your email address and password. Held by our hosting provider, Supabase. The password is stored as a hash — nobody, including us, can read it.
- If you sign in with Google: your name, email address and profile picture, as Google provides them. No password is stored with us in that case.
- Your display name and, if you set one, an avatar.
- Your garden. Its name, the town you chose, and everything you record: beds, plantings, harvests, tasks, stock, journal notes and the photos you attach to them.
- That you accepted the terms, which version, and when.
- A log of identification requests: when, which kind (plant, health, insect, mushroom) and whether it succeeded. Not the photo. The link to your account is removed after 30 days; the counts stay so we can plan capacity.
- Usage events during testing — not recorded at the moment. At some point during testing we may record which screens and features you open, with your account, kept for 90 days and then deleted, so we can see what is broken or unused. This is switched off in the database today. We will not start without giving you a switch in Settings → Privacy to refuse it, enforced in the database rather than on your phone, and this notice will say so on the day.
There is no advertising identifier, no device fingerprint, no third-party analytics SDK and no crash-reporting data tied to you.
Why, and on what basis
| What | Why | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Email and password, or Google sign-in | To let you sign in and to keep your garden yours | Performance of a contract |
| Display name and avatar | So people who share a garden with you can see who did what | Performance of a contract |
| Garden records and photos | The thing the app is for | Performance of a contract |
| Town | Sowing windows, watering advice and the forecast follow where you garden | Performance of a contract |
| Terms acceptance | So we can show you agreed, and tell you when they change | Legitimate interests |
| Identification log | To stop one account, or a flood of them, exhausting a paid service for everyone else, and to plan for it | Legitimate interests |
| Usage events (not yet recorded) | To find what is broken during testing. If we start, you can object at any time with a switch in Settings. | Legitimate interests |
Photographs
Photos you attach to a journal entry are stored in a private bucket. They are not served at a public address. When you or someone in your garden opens one, the app mints a link that stops working after an hour, and it will only do that for people who belong to that garden.
Photos you take for identification are sent to Kindwise to be analysed. As soon as their answer comes back, the app asks Kindwise to delete that identification — the photo and the result — and this happens on every request. We do not keep the photo ourselves unless you choose to save it to your journal, in which case it is stored with your garden like any other journal photo.
Photographs of a garden are often photographs of a home. This is why the storage is private rather than public, and why the links expire.
Location
The app never reads your device's position. It has no location permission at all. The town you choose during setup is stored so that sowing dates, watering advice and the five-day forecast match where you actually garden. It is stored rounded to about a kilometre — the database will not accept a more precise point — and the same rounded value is what the identification and weather services receive. It is a town, not a house, and never a live position.
Who else sees anything
Nothing beyond what each one needs to do its job.
| Who | What they receive | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Hosts the database, the sign-in and the photo storage. They hold everything described above, as our processor. | EU (Frankfurt) |
| Kindwise (FlowerChecker s.r.o.) | One identification photo and the rounded coordinates of your town, and returns an answer. No account details are sent. Each identification is deleted at our request as soon as the answer is back. | EU (Czechia) |
| Open-Meteo | The rounded coordinates of your town, and returns the weather. Nothing identifies you. | EU (Germany) |
| Google — only if you sign in with Google | Google learns that you signed in to TeddyGreenFingers, and gives us your name, email address and picture. Google's own privacy policy applies to what Google keeps. | Google's terms |
| Expo (EAS Update) | When the app checks whether a newer version is available, the request carries the app version, the platform, an update-channel name and — like any web request — your IP address. It carries no account or garden data. | USA |
| Netlify | Hosts this website and the Android download. Like any web host, its servers see the IP address of whoever visits. The website itself sets no cookies and runs no scripts. | Global CDN |
If you email us, Google Workspace handles that mail. No advertiser, data broker or analytics company receives anything at all.
How long it is kept
Your garden is kept until you delete it. Deleting your account is done by our server, not your phone: it removes your photos first, then your gardens and records, then your profile and sign-in, and it will not report success until all three are done.
The identification log is unlinked from your account after 30 days. Usage events, if we ever record them, are deleted after 90 days. Invite codes expire after a week and are removed a month later. Deleting your account unlinks the log from you immediately.
One honest note about backups: a copy of the database is taken every day and kept for seven days, as a protection against mistakes and failure. So for up to a week after you delete your account, your data can still exist inside one of those copies. They are never restored selectively for one person, and nobody reads them. After that week it is gone from those too.
If you share a garden with someone and you delete your account, the garden and its contents stay with them — it is theirs as much as yours. Only your own profile and account are removed, and anything you wrote is un-attributed rather than destroyed. If you were the only person in that garden, the garden goes with you.
Your rights
Under the GDPR you can ask for a copy of your data, ask for it to be corrected, ask for it to be deleted, object to processing, and complain to a supervisory authority. Two of those you can do yourself, immediately, without asking anyone:
- Export my data in Settings hands you a full copy of everything — account, gardens, records, photo list, identification log and usage events — as one file.
- Delete my account in Settings removes all of it.
If you have already uninstalled the app, see deleting your account without the app. For anything else, write to info@teddygreenfingers.com from the address you signed up with, and we will answer within 30 days.
If you are in Portugal, the supervisory authority is the CNPD. Elsewhere in the EU or the UK, it is your own national authority. If you are in South Africa, POPIA applies and the authority is the Information Regulator.
The testing phase
The app is currently being tested by family, friends and people who asked to try it. That changes nothing about your rights, but it does mean features change often, improvements arrive automatically when you open the app, and we may write to the address you signed up with about the test itself — a bug that affects you, or a change you need to know about. We will not send marketing.
Children
The app is not designed for children and accounts are for adults aged 18 and over. It collects nothing about who else uses your garden — children can help in the garden without ever appearing in the app. If a child has created an account, delete it in Settings, or write to us and we will.
Changes
If this notice changes in a way that matters, the version at the top changes and we tell you — in the app, or by email to the address you signed up with. Old versions are not quietly replaced.
Changed on 5 September 2026: added Google sign-in, the identification log and its retention, what usage events would be if we ever record them, the update check, the website host, the rounded location, daily copies kept for seven days, and South Africa.