At PlantEyes.com, we are committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring a safe online experience. This Privacy Policy explains how PlantEyes.com (“PlantEyes,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, uses, stores, shares, and protects your personal information when you access and use our website and any associated services, features, content, or applications (collectively, the “Service”).
By using the Service, you consent to the collection and use of your information as described in this Privacy Policy.
1. Information We Collect
We collect various types of information to provide and improve our Service. This information can be broadly categorized as:
1.1. Information You Provide Directly to Us:
When you interact with our Service, you may provide us with personal information, including:
- Basic Contact Details: Your name, email address, phone number, and physical address (e.g., when creating an account, contacting support, or making a purchase).
- Account Information: Usernames, passwords, and other log-in credentials.
- Payment Information: If you make purchases or subscribe to paid features, we collect billing address, shipping address, and payment details (e.g., credit card numbers).
- User Content: Information, data, and content you submit, post, display, transmit, or broadcast on the Service, such as photographs of plants for identification, comments, or forum posts. This includes images you upload for AI analysis.
- Communications: Records of your correspondence with us, including emails and support inquiries.
1.2. Information Collected Automatically:
When you visit or interact with our Service, we and our third-party partners may automatically collect certain information about your device and browsing activity using various technologies:
- Device Information: Your IP address, web browser type, operating system, time zone, and unique device identifiers.
- Usage Data: Information about how you interact with the Service, such as the web pages or products you view, the features you use, the websites or search terms that referred you to our site, and date/time stamps.
- Log Files: Data collected by our web server logs, including IP addresses, browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, and clickstream data.
- Location Data: If you enable location services on your device, we may collect general location data (e.g., based on IP address) or precise location data to provide localized content or services.
2. How We Use Your Information
We use the information we collect for various purposes, including:
- To Provide and Maintain the Service: To deliver plant identification, plant care guides, community features, and other services you request.
- To Improve and Develop the Service: To understand how users interact with our Service, troubleshoot issues, and develop new features and functionalities. This includes using user-submitted content (especially images) and usage data for the training and enhancement of our AI models.
- To Personalize Your Experience: To tailor content, recommendations, and advertisements based on your preferences and interactions with the Service.
- To Process Transactions: To fulfill orders, process payments, arrange for shipping, and provide invoices or order confirmations for any paid services or subscriptions.
- To Communicate with You: To respond to your inquiries, provide customer support, send service-related notifications, and deliver promotional emails (if you have opted in).
- For Security and Fraud Prevention: To screen for potential risks or fraud, protect our rights, and defend against misuse of the Service.
- For Legal Compliance: To comply with applicable laws, regulations, legal processes (e.g., subpoenas), and to enforce our Terms of Use.
- For Internal Business Purposes: For data analysis, audits, and other internal management purposes.
3. How We Share Your Information
We may share your personal information with third parties in the following circumstances:
- Service Providers: We engage third-party service providers to perform functions on our behalf, such as hosting, payment processing, analytics, customer support, and marketing. These providers have access to personal information only as needed to perform their functions and are obligated to protect it.
- For AI Model Training and Improvement: As stated in our Terms of Use, user-submitted content, particularly images, may be used for the training and enhancement of our AI models. This may involve sharing data with AI solution providers.
- Advertising and Marketing Partners: We may share information with third-party advertising partners to deliver targeted advertisements or marketing communications that we believe may be of interest to you.
- Business Transfers: In the event of a merger, acquisition, sale of assets, or other business transaction, your personal information may be transferred as part of that transaction.
- Legal Requirements and Protection: We may disclose your information if required by law, in response to a subpoena, search warrant, or other lawful request, or to protect our rights, property, or safety, and the rights, property, or safety of our users or others.
- With Your Consent: We may share your information with third parties when we have your explicit consent to do so.
We do not sell or share sensitive personal information for the purposes of inferring characteristics about you.
4. Cookies and Tracking Technologies
We use cookies, log files, web beacons, pixels, and similar tracking technologies to collect information about your browsing preferences and interactions with our Service.
- Cookies: Small data files placed on your device. They help us remember your preferences, track your activity, and enhance your user experience.
- Log Files: Track actions occurring on the Service and collect data such as IP address, browser type, and date/time stamps.
- Web Beacons, Tags, Pixels: Electronic files used to record information about how you browse the Service and interact with emails or advertisements.
These technologies are used for:
- Essential Functionality: To enable core features of the Service.
- Performance and Analytics: To analyze user movement, measure site performance, and understand how users interact with the Service to improve it.
- Advertising and Personalization: To deliver targeted advertisements and personalize content based on your interests.
Your Choices Regarding Cookies:
You can choose whether to accept cookies by changing the settings on your browser. However, if you block cookies, you may not be able to view or access some features of our Service. 12 Your cookie preferences are typically browser and device-specific.
5. Data Retention
We retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law. For example, we will maintain your Order Information for our records unless and until you ask us to delete this information.
6. Your Privacy Rights
Depending on your location and applicable data protection laws (such as GDPR and CCPA/CPRA), you may have certain rights regarding your personal information:
- Right to Access/Know: You may have the right to request access to the personal information we hold about you, including details about how we use and share your information.
- Right to Correct/Rectify: You may have the right to request that we correct inaccurate or incomplete personal information we maintain about you.
- Right to Delete/Erasure (Right to be Forgotten): You may have the right to request that we delete personal information we maintain about you.
- Right of Portability: You may have the right to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to request that we transfer it to a third party, in certain circumstances.
- Right to Opt-out of Sale or Sharing or Targeted Advertising: You may have the right to direct us not to “sell” or “share” your personal information or to opt out of the processing of your personal information for purposes considered to be “targeted advertising.” If you visit our Site with the Global Privacy Control (GPC) opt-out preference signal enabled, we will automatically treat this as a request to opt-out of the “sale” or “sharing” of information for the device and browser you use.
- Right to Restriction of Processing: You may have the right to ask us to stop or restrict our processing of personal information.
- Right to Withdraw Consent: Where we rely on your consent to process your personal information, you have the right to withdraw this consent at any time.
- Right to Appeal: You may have a right to appeal our decision if we decline to process your request.
- Managing Communication Preferences: You may opt out of receiving promotional emails from us at any time by using the unsubscribe option displayed in our emails. We may still send you non-promotional emails related to your account or orders.
To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the contact information provided below. We will respond to your request in accordance with applicable law.
7. Children’s Privacy
The Service is not intended for individuals under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 18. If we become aware that we have inadvertently collected personal information from a child under 18, we will take steps to delete such information from our records.
8. Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, legal requirements, or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. We will notify you of any significant changes by posting the updated Privacy Policy on this page, through an email notification, or a prominent notice on the Service. Your continued use of the Service after any modifications have been posted constitutes your acceptance of the revised Privacy Policy.