Privacy & data
Your garden, your data
This page summarises what MaxGrow AI collects, where it goes and what stays on your phone. It follows the same practices as the Privacy Policy inside the app; where they differ, the in-app policy is the fuller document.
This document was drafted by MaxGrow AI's development team and has not yet been reviewed by a qualified lawyer. This page is published ahead of the app's store listing so the policy can be reviewed; the listing's contact details are the route described below. The lawyer review must be completed before release.
Who we are
MaxGrow AI is an independent app developed by the developer named on its Google Play listing. This website sets no cookies and runs no analytics of its own; our host processes standard access logs (IP address, time, requested path) to serve the pages and protect the service.
Your photos
Before a scan leaves your device, the app strips all metadata — including EXIF and GPS location — as part of on-device compression. A scan is uploaded only when you are online. The server processes it in memory, forwards it to the vision service, returns the result to your device and discards the image. Scan images are never written to the server's disk and never appear in its logs.
Your garden and scan history
Your beds, plantings, almanac and scan history are stored on your phone in the app's private storage. If you sign in, garden sync is on: it copies your beds, plantings, almanac and each scan's record (crop, result and timestamp — never the image) to your account so they survive a lost phone. Signing out stops syncing and leaves the local data on this device.
Account
Signing in is optional. We never store your password: it is sent over TLS to Firebase Authentication, which processes your email address and (for Google Sign-In) the identity token Google returns. Our backend also keeps an account record with your email address, Firebase user id and sign-in timestamps so it can apply your entitlements and sync your garden. Deleting the account from Settings deletes that backend account and its synced garden records; the Firebase/Google identity itself is not deleted, and signing in again creates a new, empty account.
Location and weather
Fungal-risk advice uses an approximate location. The app asks for coarse location only when you tap “Allow location”. That location is used to fetch a forecast and is not stored; the layout planner separately remembers a latitude you type yourself. The coordinate is sent to the MaxGrow AI backend, which forwards it to Open-Meteo to fetch the forecast. It is not used for advertising, and the marketing site never receives it.
Analytics (off by default)
Crash, performance and usage analytics are switched off by default. You can turn them on in Settings and off again at any time. When enabled, analytics do not include your garden contents, scan photos, exact GPS location or account credentials. As with any network request, the provider necessarily sees the source IP address of the request.
Data donation (currently unavailable)
MaxGrow AI plans an opt-in feature that would let you donate stripped scan images to improve future models. The toggle is currently disabled in Settings: no infrastructure exists yet to store donated images or your consent record, so no images are collected through it until it ships. Stripping metadata reduces identifying information; it does not by itself make an image anonymous.
Affiliate links
Some care recommendations link to partner shops. Those links are labelled “Ad”/“Advertentie”. When you tap one, our backend records the product id and the time of the click, without an account or device identifier. The shop's own privacy policy applies once you leave the app.
Rate limiting and abuse prevention
To keep the service available and prevent abuse, our backend limits how many requests it accepts from the same IP address. That IP data is used only for this operational security purpose, is hashed where feasible, and is kept for at most 24 hours.
Security and retention
Scan uploads and account requests use TLS. A scan's result is cached on the server for at most 24 hours so a retry does not repeat the paid vision call; the image is not cached. Account and synced garden records are kept until you delete the account. Rate-limit data is kept for at most 24 hours. Local data is removed when you uninstall the app or clear its storage, except where the device's Android backup restores it.
Your rights
Where the GDPR applies, you can ask for access to, correction of, or erasure of your personal data, and you can ask us to restrict or object to its processing or to provide it in a portable form. Use the contact route below. You also have the right to complain to your national data-protection authority — in the Netherlands, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens.
Contact
The privacy contact is the developer contact published on the MaxGrow AI Google Play listing. That listing is the durable route for access, correction and deletion requests. It is not live during the pre-release period, which is why this page carries the unreviewed-draft notice; the route takes effect when the listing goes live.
Last updated: 8 November 2026 · Back to MaxGrow AI · How the app handles trust