Privacy policy

Who is responsible for your data

The data controller is Mr Benjamin John Barker, trading as Plot Trak, of 121 Waltersgreen Crescent, Golborne, WA3 3WA, United Kingdom. You can reach me at legal@plottrak.com for anything in this policy.

What the app collects

Nothing about your garden is sent anywhere. Plots, plantings, photos, harvest logs and settings are stored locally on your device and are only ever copied off it if you export a backup yourself.

The app requests your approximate location, with your permission, so that live weather and rainfall are right for your plot. That location is used to fetch a forecast and is not stored on any server of mine. You can refuse it and the app carries on without weather.

Nothing that identifies you is ever sent automatically. The only personal detail Plot Trak ever holds is an email address, and only if you give one when asking for help inside the app, using the “Get help” screen, so I can reply. It is entirely optional: you can send a message with the box left blank, and I will read it, but there will be no reply. If you do give an address, it is used to answer you and for nothing else, it is not added to a mailing list and it is never shared or sold. Your message and any address you gave are kept for 12 months, or deleted sooner if you ask, by writing to legal@plottrak.com.

When the app stops unexpectedly, Plot Trak sends a crash report automatically so that the fault can be found and fixed. Reporting of a genuine fault happens by itself and cannot be switched off, because a report that a crashing app can be told not to send is of little use to anybody. Stopping Plot Trak yourself from the Android settings screen is treated differently, because that is you telling me something rather than the app failing. Plot Trak sends a report about that too, marked as a force stop rather than a crash, and it asks you why. That part is yours to refuse: the Crash reporting data collection switch in More stops Plot Trak asking, stops the force stop report being sent, and deletes any report of that kind that was waiting to be sent. If you want to object to fault reports as well, email legal@plottrak.com. A report holds the reason for the crash, a short list of what the app was doing beforehand, the reason Android gives for the app closing, any crash trace Android recorded, the app version, your Android version and its SDK level, your device model, your language setting, how long the app had been running and how much memory it was using. It also holds a few things about how the 3D view was set up when the fault happened, because 3D mode is the most likely place in the app to cause a crash: your graphics quality setting, whether animations were on, your screen size and density, what graphics chip your phone uses, and how many features and plants were on the plot. Those last two are counts only, never what the features or plants are. A report holds no identifier of any kind. It carries nothing that names you, your device or your copy of the app, and nothing that stays the same from one report to the next, so two reports cannot be linked to each other or traced back to a person. When a report is about to be sent, the app asks what you were doing at the time. Anything you type is sent with the report, in your own words and unchanged, up to 500 characters. This is the one part of a report you write yourself, so please do not put anything in it you would not want me to read, and if you skip the question nothing is added. Apart from that, a report holds no garden records, no photographs, no plot names, no location and no contact details. It is sent over an encrypted connection to a server I run at plottrak.com and stops there. No advertising network, no analytics company and no third-party crash reporting service receives it. One company is unavoidably part of this and it is my web host, IONOS: the site runs on their machines, so a report passes through their systems on the way to me, and their web server keeps its own access log in the ordinary way, as every web server does. IONOS acts only on my instructions, holds nothing for its own purposes, and is the only other company in the chain. I use crash reports for one purpose only: finding and fixing faults in the app and making it better for the people using it. They are never sold, never shared, never used for advertising, never used to build a profile of anyone and never used to make a decision about a person. You can also email me directly if you would rather explain something at length.

What this website collects

If you join the waitlist, I store the email address you type and the date you gave it, so I can send you one message when the Android beta opens. That is the only use.

The site sets no cookies at all. Not advertising, not analytics, not even a strictly necessary one and it does not profile visitors. See the cookie notice for detail.

If you use the contact form on the support page, I store the name, email address, enquiry type, any device details and the message you type, so that I can answer you and keep a record of the exchange. A copy is emailed to me and a confirmation copy is emailed back to you. Contact messages are deleted automatically after 12 months, or sooner if you ask. I do not store your IP address alongside the message.

My lawful bases

Waitlist email: your consent, under Article 6(1)(a) UK GDPR. You can withdraw it at any time by unsubscribing or emailing me.

Get help messages: your consent, under Article 6(1)(a) UK GDPR, given by typing your email address into the app for this one purpose. You can withdraw it at any time by emailing me, and I will delete the message and address on request.

Purchases and refunds: performance of a contract, under Article 6(1)(b). Payments are handled entirely by Google Play and I never see your card details.

Crash reports: my legitimate interests, under Article 6(1)(f), in finding and fixing faults in my own software. A crash report carries no identifier and cannot be traced back to a person, so the effect on you is minimal, while the benefit of a fault being fixed goes to the people using the app. You can object to force stop reports at any time with the Crash reporting data collection switch in More, and that takes effect straight away. A report about a genuine fault has no switch, so to object to those, email legal@plottrak.com and I will consider it and reply within one month. I have carried out and recorded a balancing assessment for this and will provide a summary of it on request.

Contact form messages: my legitimate interests, under Article 6(1)(f), in answering the people who write to me and keeping a record of what was asked.

Who I share it with

I do not sell or rent personal data, ever. Email addresses are held with my email provider purely to deliver the launch message. Purchases and subscriptions are processed by Google Play under their own privacy terms. Weather data is requested from my weather provider using coordinates only.

How long I keep it

Waitlist addresses are deleted within 30 days of the launch email being sent, or immediately on request. Automatic crash reports are held on a server I run myself and are deleted once the fault they describe is fixed, and in any case within 12 months. A crash report you choose to email me sits in my email inbox and is deleted on the same terms. Contact form messages are deleted automatically 12 months after they are sent. A message sent through Get help in the app, and any email address given with it, is kept for 12 months too, or deleted sooner if you ask. Data held on your device stays until you delete it or uninstall the app.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to the processing of your personal data and the right to data portability. Because your garden is held on your own device, you already hold and control that copy directly. Automatic crash reports are the one exception, and it is a consequence of how private they are: because a report carries no identifier, I cannot tell which reports came from which person, so I cannot find, send you or delete a particular one on request. I am not required to collect extra information purely to make that possible, and collecting it would remove the very protection that keeps the reports anonymous. You can stop any further force stop reports at any time with the Crash reporting data collection switch in More. Reports about a genuine fault have no switch, so to object to those, email legal@plottrak.com.

To exercise any right, email legal@plottrak.com. I respond within one month.

If you are not satisfied you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

How I count visits to this site

I count how many people read this site, because otherwise I have no idea whether anyone does. It is done entirely on my own server and it works like this. When your browser asks for a page, the server counts one page view against that page. It also works out whether it has already seen your connection today, so that reading five pages counts as one visitor rather than five. If you arrived by following a link from another site, the name of that site is counted too.

No cookie is set. No script runs in your browser. No pixel is loaded. Nothing is sent to any other company. Your browser is not asked to do a single extra thing, and there is nothing to opt out of because there is nothing stored on your device. This is also why you are not being shown a consent banner: those rules are about storing or reading information on your device, and none of this does either.

Your IP address is never written down. To recognise a repeat visit within the same day, the address is put through a one-way scramble along with your browser name, the date and a secret. Only a short piece of the result is kept, and it is meaningless on its own. The secret is replaced every day and the old one destroyed, so yesterday’s records cannot be unscrambled even by somebody holding my whole database. When I count where visitors came from I keep only the name of the site, never the full address, because a full link can carry the words somebody searched for.

What this cannot tell me, so you know the limits of it: nothing about who you are, nothing you did on any other website, no path through this site, how long you stayed, or whether you came back another day. The visitor number is an estimate rather than a headcount. Counts are kept for about a year so that one season can be compared with the last, then deleted automatically.

The web server keeps a log, and I want you to know that

Separately from anything I choose to collect, the web server at plottrak.com records each request it answers, as web servers have always done. A line in that log holds the address the request came from, the time, what was asked for, whether it worked and what software asked. This applies to pages you read in your browser and to a crash report sent by the app alike. These logs belong to my host, are kept for a short period for security and for keeping the service running, and I cannot switch them off. I do not read them to learn about individual people, I do not combine them with anything else, and nothing in them is used for advertising or profiling.

I also run my own protection against automated attacks on this site. It counts how many requests come from one connection, so that a machine cannot hammer the site or guess passwords. It stores a scrambled, one-way version of the address rather than the address itself, the count is forgotten within minutes, and it can identify nobody. It runs entirely on my own server and nothing is sent to anybody else.

Transfers outside the UK

This site is hosted by IONOS, whose servers are in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area. Personal data may move between the two freely, because each recognises the other as offering equivalent protection, so nothing here relies on any further safeguard. My email and weather providers may process data outside the UK. Where that happens, transfers are covered by the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or an adequacy decision.

Children

Plot Trak is not aimed at children and I do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 13.

Changes

If this policy changes I will update the date at the top of this page and material changes will be described here rather than made quietly.