Verno — Privacy Policy

Last Updated: 25 August 2026

At Verno ("we," "our," or "us"), we respect your privacy and are committed to protecting the personal data you share with us. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use the Verno mobile application (the "App").

1. Information We Collect

Camera & Photo Data: When you perform a scan, we access your camera, or a photo you choose from your library, solely to send that image to Google Gemini for analysis. We do not store your scanned images. The image exists in memory for the duration of that request and is never written to a disk, a database, or object storage — Verno operates no image storage of any kind, so after your result is returned there is nothing for us to retrieve, share, or lose.

Location Data: To provide localized weather-adaptive watering schedules, sun aspect analysis, soil advice, and regional plant recommendations, we collect and store location data associated with your saved garden profiles (with your permission). We request both approximate and precise location, and read it only while you are using the App — never in the background. Coordinates are stored against the garden you attach them to, and are sent to Nominatim (OpenStreetMap) to resolve a suburb name, and to Open-Meteo and Kaegro to retrieve weather and soil data for that spot.

Account & Profile Data: Information provided during account creation, such as your email address, name, saved plant lists, and account preferences. If you choose to sign in with Google, Google returns your email address, name, and profile picture to us.

Care History & Task Logs: We record your care schedule history, completed gardening tasks, custom care notes, and maintenance logs to track plant health over time and personalize your experience.

Calendar Data: If you enable calendar integration, we request permission to access your device's native calendar application to sync scheduled plant care tasks directly to your local device. Those events are written on your device; we do not upload your calendar or read the rest of it.

Usage & Technical Data: Push notification tokens, device identifiers, operating system version, app interaction metrics, and diagnostic crash logs.

Payment Data: Subscriptions and in-app purchases are processed directly by Apple (App Store) or Google (Google Play Store). We do not collect or store full credit card details.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the collected information for the following core purposes:

Transient Real-Time Image Analysis: Processing scanned photos through machine learning models in real time to return instant plant identifications, diagnostics, and advice.

Location-Based Gardening Intelligence: Using your stored location data to continuously fetch live hyper-local weather conditions, UV/sun angles, seasonal temperature shifts, and regional agricultural data for your specific area.

Dynamic Care Scheduling & History Tracking: Computing daily care schedules based on live weather and maintaining an active log of your completed tasks, care history, and garden progress.

Reminders & Push Notifications: Sending automated push notifications for scheduled plant maintenance, weather-adaptive watering alerts, and essential system notices.

Calendar Syncing: Exporting care events directly into your personal device calendar when authorized by you.

Email Communication: Sending account status updates, transactional receipts, personalized care schedule reminders, and promotional announcements. Service notifications contain options to adjust alert preferences, while promotional emails include an immediate unsubscribe option.

Account & Billing Management: Managing active subscription tiers, enforcing fair-use rate limits, and securing account access.

3. Third-Party Processors

We do not sell your personal data. We share it only with the processors named below, only for the purpose named, and only to the extent that purpose requires.

Google — Gemini: Receives the images you scan and the prompt built from your garden profile, and returns the identifications, diagnostics, and advice you see.

Google — Play Billing & Play Developer API: Processes subscription purchases and tells us whether a subscription is active. Card details are handled by Google and never reach us.

Google — Sign-In: Handles authentication and returns your basic profile, if you choose to sign in with Google.

Neon: Hosts our PostgreSQL database. Everything we store — account details, gardens, garden locations, saved plants, care history, task logs — is stored there.

Resend: Delivers our email, and therefore receives your email address and the contents of the messages we send you.

Sentry: Receives crash reports and diagnostic data from the mobile app when it fails, so we can fix faults.

Expo Push Notification Service: Relays scheduled care notifications to your device, and holds the push token it needs to do so.

Open-Meteo: Receives a garden's coordinates and returns historical and forecast weather for that location.

Nominatim (OpenStreetMap Foundation): Receives a garden's coordinates and returns a suburb name.

Kaegro: Receives a garden's coordinates and returns the soil type at that location.

No Image Retention or Sale: Your uploaded images are discarded after processing and are not stored or sold to third-party advertisers, data brokers, or external AI platforms for independent model training.

4. Data Retention & Security

No Image Storage: We do not retain or store your scanned photos. Once your real-time scan output is generated the image payload is gone, and no copy of it is written anywhere in our system.

Profile & Location Data Retention: Stored garden locations, saved plant profiles, care calendar histories, and task completion logs remain securely stored on encrypted cloud servers for as long as your account remains active so you can maintain hyper-local care context over time.

Account Data Retention: Account details and profile settings are stored securely until you delete your account or request data removal.

Security Measures: We implement industry-standard technical and organizational security measures to protect your account data, location details, task logs, and profile information against unauthorized access, loss, alteration, or disclosure.

5. Your Rights & Device Permissions

Permissions We Request: The App asks you to grant these device permissions, each at the point it is first needed — Camera, to photograph your garden; Photos, so you can choose an existing image instead; Approximate and Precise Location, to place a garden and fetch its weather, soil, and suburb; Notifications, to send care reminders; and Calendar, used only if you turn calendar sync on. The App does not ask for microphone, contacts, physical activity, or background location access. As is normal for an Android app, the build also declares routine install-time permissions that give us no access to your personal data, such as checking for a network connection, vibrating for a notification, and re-registering your reminders after the device restarts.

Depending on your jurisdiction (e.g., EU/UK GDPR, California CPRA, Australian Privacy Act), you have the right to:

Device Permission Controls: Revoke camera, location, push notification, or calendar permissions at any time through your mobile device's system settings.

Communication Preferences: You can manage your task reminder and alert preferences via the "Manage notification settings" link in service emails or within your in-app account settings. You may opt out of promotional or marketing emails at any time by clicking the "Unsubscribe" link located at the bottom of any marketing email.

Access & Export: Request a copy of the personal account data, stored location profiles, and task history we hold about you.

Deletion: You can delete your account at any time from Profile → Delete account inside the App. Deletion is permanent and immediate: your account, your gardens and their stored locations, your saved plants, your care history and task logs, your notification settings, and your push tokens are erased, and it cannot be undone. If you can no longer reach the App — for example, you have uninstalled it — email privacy@vernoapp.com from the address on the account and we will delete it for you within 30 days. Step-by-step instructions are published at https://vernoapp.com/delete-account.

6. Contact Us

If you have any questions or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or your personal data, please contact us at: privacy@vernoapp.com