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Privacy Policy

Effective Date: September 19, 2026 • Last Revised: October 3, 2026

🛡️ Core Privacy Guarantee: Local-First Architecture & Data Sovereignty

All personal data, including your ZIP code and garden records, is stored strictly locally on your own device (via browser client-side IndexedDB & LocalStorage). Crop Plot & Sentry does not collect, transmit, profile, sell, or store your personal information on external tracking servers or third-party advertising databases. You retain 100% ownership and control over your garden data.

1. Information Processing & Local-First Storage

We adhere to strict data minimization and local data sovereignty principles (aligned with GDPR, CCPA, and agricultural data privacy standards):

Summary of Data Stored Exclusively on Your Device:
  • Geographic Location: User-provided 5-digit ZIP code and derived NOAA weather grid coordinates for microclimate calculations.
  • Garden & Bed Configuration: Custom bed names, soil types, airflow aerations, sunlight levels, and microclimate multipliers.
  • Plant & Crop Inventory: Plant varieties, botanical families, planting dates, phenological stages, lot numbers, and symptom notes.
  • Treatment & Spray Logs: Applied organic treatments, dosages, sunset timing records, and safe harvest dates (Pre-Harvest Intervals PHI / Restricted-Entry Intervals REI).
  • Accessibility & Display Preferences: Font size scaling, high-contrast APCA modes, motion suppression, and plain-language glossary settings.

Transient Server Telemetry: Transient IP telemetry is processed strictly in volatile server memory for anti-abuse rate limiting (held for 5–15 minutes before being automatically purged) and is never linked to personal identities or persisted to storage.

Diagnostic Imagery: When you submit a foliar or arthropod photo for AI diagnostic classification, the image is streamed securely to evaluate visual symptoms against agronomic models. Photos are ephemeral and are not cataloged into public facial recognition or non-consensual databases.

Feedback Survey: If you voluntarily submit feedback via our Community Survey (hosted on Google Forms), submitted suggestions or bug reports are used solely to improve application functionality.

2. Advertising, Cookies & Tracking Technologies

Crop Plot & Sentry uses Google AdSense (Publisher ID: ca-pub-6007216652650056) to serve contextually relevant advertisements and support free access to agronomic tools for gardeners and growers.

  • Third-Party Vendor Cookies: Google and other third-party ad networks use cookies, web beacons, and unique identifiers to serve ads based on prior visits to this website or other internet sites.
  • Personalized Advertising: Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve personalized ads to users based on browsing behavior across the web.
  • Opt-Out Choices: You may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google's Ads Settings. Alternatively, you can opt out of third-party vendor cookies for personalized advertising by visiting AboutAds.info or the Network Advertising Initiative at optout.networkadvertising.org.

3. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Compliance

For users located within the European Economic Area (EEA), United Kingdom, or Switzerland, you enjoy fundamental privacy rights under the EU General Data Protection Regulation:

  • Right of Access & Portability: You can export your full garden database, seed inventory, and treatment logs at any time as a portable JSON or SQL schema file directly via the in-app Database Settings tab.
  • Right to Erasure ("Right to be Forgotten"): You can wipe all stored garden profiles, beds, and logs instantly using the in-app "Reset All Data" button or by clearing your browser site data.
  • Lawful Basis for Processing: We process telemetry data on the legal basis of legitimate interests (delivering weather calculations, safety warnings, and app operational stability) and consent for advertising cookies where required by applicable law.

4. California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA / CPRA)

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), California residents have specific statutory rights:

  • No Sale of Personal Information: Crop Plot & Sentry does not sell, rent, or trade your personal information or garden records to third parties for monetary compensation.
  • Right to Know & Delete: You have the right to request what personal information is processed and request deletion. Because your data resides in your own browser's storage, you retain direct, instantaneous deletion capability at all times.
  • Non-Discrimination: We do not discriminate against any user for exercising their statutory CCPA privacy rights.

5. Data Security & Encryption

All data in transit between your browser and our backend services is protected with industry-standard TLS 1.3 encryption. We implement strict rate limiting, input sanitization via Zod schema enforcement, Helmet security headers, and Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) controls to guard against malicious exploitation.

6. Children's Privacy (COPPA)

Crop Plot & Sentry is an educational agronomy and garden management utility intended for general audiences and home horticulturists. We do not knowingly solicit, collect, or retain personally identifiable information from children under the age of 13.

7. Questions & Contact Information

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or our local-first data practices, you may submit an inquiry directly through our Community Feedback Survey or visit our Mission & Agronomy Page.