Privacy

Who we are

GardenBuddy.au is operated by Dutch Digital Dynamics Pty Limited (ABN 86 081 237 087), an Australian company based in Queensland. We are the entity responsible for your personal information under the Australian Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). If you have any privacy question, email support@gardenbuddy.au.

What we collect

If you sign up for an account: your email address, the password you choose (stored hashed, not in plain text), your postcode (used to determine your climate zone), the crops you add to your garden journal, any photos you upload for pest identification, and the notes, photos and voice recordings you add in the app.

If you ask to see a vegetable’s growing guide on the price tracker: we ask for your email address once (a one-time gate). We store that email along with the date, your IP address and browser type, so we can recognise you next time and send the free digest you opted into.

If you subscribe to a price report: your email address, your display name, the vegetables you select to follow, and your send schedule. Pro members choose their own list; Starter members get the weekly top-movers alert.

If you pay us: Stripe handles the payment and we never see your card number. We see the transaction status (paid/failed/refunded) and the amount, managed through Paid Memberships Pro.

If we email you: we record whether the email was delivered and whether it was opened (a tracking pixel logs the open time, IP and browser). You can ignore the pixel by viewing email with images turned off.

If you send us a message or feedback: the contact and feedback forms store your name, your email address, what the message is about, the message itself, the page you sent it from and your IP address, so we can reply and keep spam out. Your browser does a small sum before the form sends, which stops bots without any outside service. If you bought the Garden Year book, we email you once, about ten days after it ships, to ask what you think. That email links to the feedback form with your name, email and order number already filled in. Ask us any time and we will delete your message.

If you visit any page: standard server logs (IP address, browser, page requested, timestamp) and the privacy-first analytics described below.

Analytics we use

Koko Analytics, our primary analytics tool. Privacy-first: no tracking cookies, no cross-site tracking, stores only aggregate counts (page views, referrers). Data stays on our Australian server.

Our own first-party analytics, built in house. Tracks page views and session journeys to help us understand which features are useful. No third-party data sharing. IP addresses are hashed before storage.

Google Search Console tells us which search terms bring people to the site. It reports on our own pages, it does not place any tracker in your browser and it does not tell us who you are.

We do not use Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, advertising networks, or any retargeting cookies. Google Analytics was removed from this site in September 2026.

What we do with it

We use your postcode/zone and active crops to personalise advice. We use your email to send the digests, price reports and alerts you signed up for, and to recover your account if you forget your password. We use your selected vegetables to build your personalised price report. We use email open-tracking and server logs to fix bugs, measure whether reports are useful, and detect abuse.

That is it. We never sell your data. We never share it with third-party advertisers. Logged-in members never see ads. If we add affiliate links to seed or garden suppliers in the future, we will label them clearly as affiliate links, they do not change what we collect about you.

How long we keep it

While your account is active, we keep your garden journal, photos, history and report preferences. If you delete your account, we delete all your personal data within 30 days. Email subscribers who unsubscribe are removed from active sending immediately and purged within 30 days. Server logs are kept for 90 days then automatically rotated out. Email open/delivery logs are kept for up to 12 months for deliverability troubleshooting, then removed.

What happens to your recordings

Voice. When you use Talk in the app, your recording is uploaded to our server and kept in a private folder that only your account can reach. A computer we own and run ourselves in Australia collects it and turns your speech into written words. The recording is never sent to an outside company. We delete the recording 30 days after it has been turned into words, or after 90 days if it could not be processed. The words stay in your garden diary as a note until you delete them.

Turning your words into records (Starter and Pro). To work out that “watered the tomatoes” means a watering record, the written words are sent to Anthropic’s Claude API, together with the date and the names of your plantings, beds and trays so they can be matched. Anthropic processes that request on servers in the United States. Only text is sent, never the recording. On the free plan your words are not sent anywhere.

Typed notes and records. These are stored on our Australian server and kept until you delete them or close your account.

Photos. Photos you add to a note are made smaller on your phone before upload, stored privately on our Australian server, and removed when you delete the note they belong to.

Video. The app can record a short video, up to one minute, when you tap Video on the Today screen. We use it for two things only: the sound is turned into words, the same way as a voice note, and one still picture is taken from it and kept on that note as its photo. The video file itself is then deleted from our server. This happens every time, whether or not you have Keep my voice recordings turned on, and whether the reading worked or failed. We do not keep, view or share the video. The words and the picture can be edited or deleted by you from the note, like any other note.

Where it lives

Our database, the website, your garden journal and every photo you upload are stored on Australian infrastructure that we own and manage in Brisbane. Your photos are never stored outside Australia.

AI analysis is the one exception, and we would rather tell you straight than let you assume otherwise. When you use GardenBuddy.au Check or the AI starter plan, the photo and the question are sent to Anthropic’s Claude API, and Anthropic processes that request on servers in the United States. With GardenBuddy.au Check we also send the town, postcode and climate zone the plant is growing in and the recent weather for that postcode, so the answer fits your garden. We take the place from the postcode on your account. If your photo carries a location and it was taken somewhere else, we use that place instead. We work out the postcode on our own server. The exact spot a photo was taken is never sent to anyone. The answer comes back to our server and your photo stays in your account here. The same goes for the written words from Talk on Starter and Pro, described under What happens to your recordings: the text is sent, the recording is not. Anthropic’s commercial terms state that they do not train their models on customer content. We do not send your photos to OpenAI, to Google Vision, or to any advertiser or data broker. If you would rather no image of yours left Australia, simply do not use GardenBuddy.au Check or the AI starter plan, every other feature works without them. Anthropic’s privacy policy is at anthropic.com/legal/privacy.

Stripe (which handles payments) is a US company and complies with the Australian Privacy Principles. Their privacy policy is at stripe.com/au/privacy. Outbound email is delivered through our own mail server.

Your rights

Under the Australian Privacy Act, you can:

• Ask us what data we hold about you (we will export it within 30 days)
• Ask us to correct anything that is wrong
• Ask us to delete everything (full account deletion, 30-day SLA)
• Unsubscribe from any email at any time using the link in every email
• Complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au) if you think we have done the wrong thing

For any of the above, email support@gardenbuddy.au.

Cookies

We use the minimum number of cookies needed to make the site work: a session cookie (PHPSESSID), a logged-in cookie for members, and a one-time cookie that remembers you have given your email on the price tracker so we do not ask again. Koko Analytics and our own analytics do not set tracking cookies.

Last updated: 13 October 2026.