Privacy Policy

Who We Are

Plotera ("we", "us", "our") is a garden planning web application operated by Th3rd Dimension Media Pty Ltd as trustee for the P.H & K.T. Trust (ABN 57 743 632 283), Queensland, Australia, at plotera.app. If you have any questions about this policy, contact us at admin@plotera.app.

What Information We Collect

Account information: When you create an account, we collect your email address, a display name (optional), country, state/region, postcode, and a hashed password. We never store your password in plain text.

Garden data: Everything you enter into Plotera — gardens, zones, plants, watering logs, fertiliser records, todos, yield logs, costs, photos, nursery trays, and seed inventory — is stored in your account and associated only with you.

Location data: We store the country, state/region and postcode you enter at signup to understand where signups are coming from. If you search for your location in the garden settings, we store your suburb name and approximate coordinates (latitude/longitude) to provide weather data and seasonal planting advice. We do not track your device's GPS continuously.

Gardeners' Globe: This optional feature is off until you expressly choose to join. For participating users, Plotera derives a deliberately shifted country-level marker from an already saved garden or account location and displays it to other signed-in users with a masked first name. The globe never provides your exact coordinates, suburb, postcode, email, full name or account identifier. You can leave the globe at any time from the globe screen.

Usage data: We store login count, page views, approximate time spent in app sections, timezone, locale, device class (phone/tablet/desktop), installed-app status, notification status, onboarding progress, and coarse feature counts such as number of gardens, zones, reminders, photos, seed records, nursery trays, harvest logs, and suggestion requests. This helps us understand how Plotera is used and where the app needs improvement. Public website pages may also use Google Analytics to understand traffic and improve launch pages.

Photos: Photos you upload to the garden gallery are stored on our server. They are not shared, indexed, or used for any purpose other than displaying them to you in the app.

Support messages: If you contact us via the in-app support form, we store your message and email address to respond to you.

How We Use Your Information

• To operate and maintain your account and garden data
• To understand the broad country, state/region and postcode areas where signups are coming from
• To provide weather data relevant to your garden location
• With your explicit opt-in, to show a masked name and deliberately shifted country-level marker on the Gardeners' Globe
• To send transactional emails — email verification, password resets (if applicable)
• To respond to support requests you send us
• To understand broad usage patterns, notification health, onboarding progress, and feature adoption so we can improve the app

We do not use your data for advertising, behavioural profiling, or sale to third parties. We do not store IP history for user analytics.

Data Storage & Security

Your data is stored on servers hosted by Hostinger (cloud infrastructure). Data is stored in Australia/EU depending on server location. We use industry-standard security practices including:

• Passwords hashed with bcryptjs (never stored in plain text)
• HTTPS enforced on all connections
• JWT tokens with 30-day expiry for authentication
• Rate limiting on login and signup endpoints to prevent brute force attacks

No system is 100% secure. In the unlikely event of a data breach affecting your personal information, we will notify affected users by email as soon as reasonably practicable.

How long we keep your data

We keep your account and garden data for as long as you use Plotera. If a free account is not used at all for 24 months, we delete it, together with its gardens, records and photos, so we are not holding personal information longer than needed. Before that happens we email you twice, 30 days and 7 days beforehand; signing in at any time keeps your account. Accounts that have a Plotera Pro subscription, or have ever had one, are not deleted this way. Copies held in our backups are removed as older backups are cleared out on their normal schedule.

Third-Party Services

Plotera uses a small number of third-party services to operate:

• Open-Meteo (open-meteo.com) — free weather API. Your garden's coordinates are sent to retrieve weather data. No account or API key required. See their terms.
• Google Fonts — font files (Nunito, Fraunces) are loaded from Google's CDN. This involves a request to Google servers. See Google's privacy policy.
• Google Analytics — used on plotera.app, including the web app, to understand aggregate traffic and page performance (for example which pages are visited and how visitors find us). It is not used for advertising. See Google's privacy policy and opt out of Google Analytics.
• hCaptcha — used on the login and signup forms to prevent spam. A verification challenge is presented. See hCaptcha's privacy policy.
• Tesseract.js — OCR library for the seed packet scanner. Runs entirely in your browser. No data is sent to any server.
• Payments (only if you buy Plotera Pro) — purchases in the apps are processed by Apple (App Store) or Google (Google Play); purchases on plotera.app are processed by Paddle, our reseller and merchant of record, which receives your email, country and payment details to take payment and handle tax (see Paddle's privacy policy). We use RevenueCat to keep track of which accounts have an active subscription: it receives a random account identifier (not your name or email) and your purchase records from Apple, Google or Paddle (see RevenueCat's privacy policy). We never see or store your card details.
• NASA Blue Marble imagery — the Gardeners' Globe uses a copy of NASA Earth imagery bundled inside Plotera. Opening the globe does not send data to NASA.

Cookies & Local Storage

We do not use advertising cookies, and we do not track you across other websites or apps. We use:

• Analytics cookies — Google Analytics sets cookies (named _ga and _ga_*) to count visits and see how pages are used, in aggregate. You can block them in your browser settings or with Google's opt-out add-on; Plotera works fully without them.
• localStorage — to store your login token, app preferences, notification settings, and wizard history. This stays on your device and is never transmitted except as part of API requests.
• sessionStorage — for temporary in-session state like the current garden page. Cleared when you close the browser tab.

Your Rights

You have the right to:

• Access the account and garden data visible inside the app, and download a copy of it at any time (My Account → Download My Data on plotera.app).
• Delete your account and associated active app data — available in My Account → Delete Account. Details are available at plotera.app/account-deletion.
• Correct your information — update your name and password in the app settings at any time.
• Withdraw globe participation at any time using the visibility control on the Gardeners' Globe.
• Request help with access, correction, or deletion if an in-app option is not available to you.

To exercise any right not available in-app, contact us at admin@plotera.app.

Children's Privacy

Plotera is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we'll update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. For significant changes, we'll notify users by email or via an in-app notice.

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