Privacy policy
This policy is a working draft prepared for legal review. It is not yet in force.
FEED US Inc., a Delaware corporation, operating GrowYourOwn at growyourown.com, is responsible for the personal data described here.
The short version
- We do not sell your personal data, and we never share it for advertising. There are no ads.
- Your home address is never stored on your profile or shown to anyone.
- Photos have their hidden metadata, including GPS coordinates, removed on upload.
- Your phone number is stored only as a one-way hash, never in readable form.
- You can delete your account yourself, at any time.
What we collect
- Account details: your email address, a display name, and your confirmation that you are 18 or over.
- Profile details you choose to add, such as a short bio and a neighborhood label.
- What you grow, harvest, store, and cook, when you record it.
- Exchange activity: what was offered, what was handed over, and both confirmations.
- Messages you send to other members to arrange a handoff.
- Photos you upload.
- Subscription and order records. Card details go directly to Stripe and never reach our servers.
- Basic technical information such as device and browser type, and error diagnostics when something breaks.
Location, specifically
Profiles carry a neighborhood label only. We do not store or display members’ home addresses, and the only precise coordinates in the system belong to swap hubs — businesses that have asked to be listed.
When you join, you enter a ZIP code. We use it once to work out your growing zone and frost dates, and then discard it.
Photos
Photos routinely carry hidden metadata, including the exact location where they were taken. When you upload a photo, we strip that metadata before storing it, so a picture of your tomatoes cannot reveal your garden’s coordinates.
Phone verification
Sharing food in person requires a verified phone number. We send the number to our verification provider to confirm it, and we keep only a one-way hash of it. We cannot recover the number from that hash, other members never see it, and we do not use it for marketing.
Who else processes your data
We use a small number of service providers to run FEED US Inc.’s service. They process data on our instructions and for no purpose of their own.
- Supabase — database, authentication, and file storage.
- Vercel — application hosting and delivery.
- Stripe — subscription billing and marketplace payments.
- Twilio — phone-number verification.
- Resend — transactional and digest email.
- Anthropic — photo plant, pest, and disease identification.
- Open-Meteo — weather and frost forecasting.
- Sentry — error reporting and diagnostics.
Photo identification and AI
When you ask the app to identify a plant problem from a photo, that photo and the crop it belongs to are sent to our AI provider to compare against our curated catalogue of pests and diseases. The result is stored with your grow so you can look back at it.
How long we keep things, and deleting your account
We keep your data while your account is open. You can delete your account yourself from your settings, and we remove your personal data within a reasonable period after that.
Some records survive in de-identified form — for example, counts of exchanges that other members’ reputation depends on. These no longer identify you.
- ⟦to be supplied: the specific deletion window counsel wants stated⟧
Your rights
You can ask us for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. You can do most of this yourself in settings, and you can always write to us.
- ⟦to be supplied: the state-specific rights disclosures counsel requires⟧
Children
This service is for adults. Accounts are 18 and over, and we do not knowingly collect data from children.
Changes and contact
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will tell you before it takes effect.
Questions about your data go to hello@growyourown.com.
⟦to be supplied: the registered postal address for privacy enquiries⟧