Privacy Policy

Who we are

Everforest is an iPhone app and the website everforest.app, operated by CHZ Development LLC ("Everforest," "we," "us").[review]This policy covers both. Questions go to support@everforest.app.

What we collect

In the app

• An anonymous account ID, created when you first open the app. It is not linked to your name, email or phone number.
• Sign in with Apple, only if you choose it to sync across devices. Apple gives us a stable identifier for your Apple ID and, if you allow it, an email address, which may be an Apple private relay address.
• Your profile: an optional nickname (shown to friends), your language, your onboarding answers (about how many plants you have, indoor or outdoor, your biggest plant-care struggle, whether you have pets), your invite code, and who invited you.
• Scans: the plant name we returned, the confidence, the time, whether the scan counted toward a tree, and a numeric fingerprint of the photo (not the photo itself), used only to recognize repeat photos and deleted after 30 days.
• Your plant list: plant names, watering schedules and streaks, mirrored to our servers so reminders and badges work across devices. The photos of your saved plants stay on your phone.
• Trees: the tree credits your scans and membership earn, and which nightly order each one went into.
• Subscription status from RevenueCat (whether you have Pro, renewal and trial dates). Apple processes the payment; we never see your card details.
• App usage events through PostHog: app events such as screens viewed, taps and scan outcomes, linked to a random account ID; never your photos.
• App integrity checks through Apple's App Attest, which tells our servers that requests come from the genuine Everforest app on a real device. It does not identify you.

On the website

• Page analytics through PostHog, without cookies: we count visits and clicks but do not recognize you from one visit to the next.
• Your email address, only if you join the waitlist, and where you joined from.
• Server logs kept by our website host, Railway, such as IP address, browser and the page requested, for security and troubleshooting, kept for up to 30 days.

When you contact us

Whatever you include in your email to support.

What we do not collect

No location, no contacts, no access to your photo library (the photo picker runs outside the app and hands us only the photo you choose), no advertising identifier, and no ad or social-media tracking tools. Everforest does not use App Tracking Transparency because it does not track you.

How plant photos are processed

When you scan a plant, the photo goes from the app to our server and from there to one or two identification partners. Their answer comes back to you. We pass the photo through and do not store it.

• Pl@ntNet identifies every scan, on Free and Pro. Its API terms say: “The photos sent by the user are not stored in the database. They are only kept in our server volatile memory during the identification process.” Read them: my.plantnet.org/terms_of_use.
• Kindwise (plant.id) checks Pro scans and runs the plant health check. Free scans never go to Kindwise. Its API terms, the Terms and Conditions for API products of FlowerChecker s.r.o. (the company behind Kindwise), cover what happens to Pro photos; there, "the Client" is Everforest. §20.4 describes “storage of data, entered to FlowerChecker apps or websites by Client or its end users, for the period specified in the Service Level Agreement (SLA)” and “alteration of these data for the purpose of their anonymization (especially blurring faces in photos) after 6 months of their receipt.” §17.5 says: “The Client grants a license to FlowerChecker for all photographs provided from its devices and/or its end users. This license is non-exclusive, unlimited and irrevocable.” It covers “developing machine learning or other forms of artifical [sic] intelligence” and “entitles FlowerChecker to share provided photographs under the license CC-BY-SA 4.0 or later.” Kindwise's privacy policy: kindwise.com/privacy-policy.
• Plant health explanations on Pro are written by Anthropic's Claude from the health check's result. Claude receives the result as text, not your photo, and never identifies the species.

Don't scan photos that show people, documents or anything private. The app shows this line before your first photo is sent: "Photos are processed by our identification partners under their terms; we don't store them."

How we use information

• To run the app: identify plants, show care guides, schedule reminders, keep your grove and badges.
• To count trees and place our nightly order with our planting vendor.
• To keep the service fair: daily scan limits, spotting repeat photos and automated use, and protecting tree counts.
• To manage your subscription and restore purchases.
• To understand how the app is used and improve it, mostly from aggregate numbers.
• To answer support requests and meet legal obligations.

We don't use your information for advertising and don't build advertising profiles.

Partners we share with

We share information only with the companies that run parts of Everforest for us, and only what each one needs:

• Supabase: our database and servers. Privacy · Terms
• Pl@ntNet and Kindwise: plant identification and health checks (above).
• Anthropic: writes care guides and plant health explanations from plant data and, for Pro health checks, any symptoms you type, never from your photos or your profile. Privacy · Terms
• RevenueCat: subscription status. Privacy · Terms
• PostHog: usage analytics. Privacy · Terms
• Apple: the App Store, payments, Sign in with Apple and App Attest. Privacy
• Railway: hosts this website. Privacy · Terms
• The Good API: our planting vendor. We send it the number of trees in each nightly order and nothing about you. Privacy · Terms

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect people's safety, or as part of a sale or merger of the business, in which case this policy continues to apply.

What other people can see

• Friends you connect with see your nickname (or "A friend") and your grove. Your invite link (everforest.app/r/your-code) shows your nickname and how many of your trees have been planted.
• The public ledger at everforest.app/impact lists every tree order: date, trees, country and the vendor's evidence. It contains nothing about any user.
• Share cards show what you choose to share, including your invite code.

How long we keep it

We keep your account data while you use Everforest and delete it when you delete your account. Tree orders stay on the public ledger because they are our purchase records, and they contain no personal information. Analytics events are kept for 12 months, and server backups keep deleted data for up to 7 days.

Deleting your data

• In the app: Settings → Account → Delete account. Deleting your account removes every row tied to it from our live systems immediately; copies in server backups expire within 7 days. It also ends your anonymous sign-in.
• By email: write to support@everforest.app from the app's Settings → Support link, or include your invite code, so we can find the account. We confirm when it's done.
• On your phone: deleting the app removes your saved plants and their photos, which only ever lived on your device.
• Subscriptions are managed by Apple; deleting your account does not cancel one. Cancel in Settings → [your name] → Subscriptions first.
• Trees already ordered stay planted and stay on the ledger; they carry no personal information.

California privacy rights

If you live in California, the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act, gives you these rights. We honor these requests from anyone, anywhere.

• Know what personal information we collect, use and disclose, and get a copy of it.
• Delete the personal information we hold about you.
• Correct inaccurate personal information.
• Opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information. We don't sell it or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.
• Limit the use of sensitive personal information. We don't collect sensitive personal information as the law defines it.
• Not be treated differently for using any of these rights.

In the last 12 months we collected these categories: identifiers (the anonymous account ID, an Apple ID identifier and email if you used Sign in with Apple, a waitlist email); commercial information (subscription status); internet or other electronic network activity (app and website usage); and the profile information you gave during onboarding. We collected them from you and your device, for the purposes above, and disclosed them only to the partners listed.

To use a right, email support@everforest.app or use Delete account in the app. Because accounts are anonymous, we verify a request by matching it to the account, for example with your invite code. An authorized agent can ask for you with your written permission. We answer within 45 days. More about these rights: oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa.

Children

Everforest is not directed at children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has given us information, email us and we will delete it.

Security and where data is processed

Data travels encrypted. Paid-service keys live only on our servers, and each account can read only its own rows. Our servers are in the United States (database and functions on Supabase in AWS us-east-1; website on Railway in the US). Kindwise and Pl@ntNet process photos in the EU. If you use Everforest from outside the US, your data is transferred to and processed in the US.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy we update the date at the top. If a change matters, for example a new partner that receives your photos, we tell you in the app before it takes effect.

Contact

CHZ Development LLC · support@everforest.app[review]