Privacy

Without an account

Everything you add stays on your device, in the browser's own storage. None of it is sent anywhere, apart from error reports when something goes wrong. The app is served by GitHub Pages, which sees each visit the way any website host does, including your IP address. GitHub's privacy statement covers that.

With an account

An account is optional, and only needed to keep the same plants on several devices. You need to be 13 or older to make one.

Signing in is handled by Clerk, a company in the United States. Clerk keeps your email address, and your name and profile picture if you sign in with Google, Facebook or Discord, along with when you signed in and, for each device you're signed in on, its browser, IP address and rough location. If you sign in with your email, Clerk sends the code to it.

What you add in the app, like plants, propagations, care, pests, photos and settings, is sent to the Stikling server so your other devices get it too. The server runs on Microsoft Azure in Poland. Only people in your collection can get at it through the app, and for now that is only you. As the one who runs the server I can technically reach the database, but I only look at it to fix a problem you've told me about.

Notifications, if you turn them on, send the server your time zone and the time you chose, the text of the next 30 days of notifications, which can name your plants, and your device's push address. The text is worked out on your device. The server keeps it so it can send each day's notification at your time without the app open. The message goes through the push service of your browser (Mozilla, Google or Apple), which carries it encrypted and can't read it. Turning notifications off on a device removes its push address from the server, and deleting your account removes everything.

Google Photos

If you turn on Pick from Google Photos in Settings, Stikling can open Google Photos so you can choose photos from there. Stikling only gets the photos you pick, when you pick them. It can't see, change or delete anything else in your Google Photos.

The photos go straight from Google to your device, never through Stikling's server. They're kept on your device like photos from the phone's gallery, and synced like any other photo if you have an account. Google gives the app access for an hour at a time. That access is only held by the open page. It's never saved and never sent anywhere.

Stikling's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

Public pages

If you're signed in, you can turn on a link for one plant or propagation. Anyone with the link can open its page, without an account. The page shows its name, the line under it, its photos and milestones, and your notes on it if you leave them on. The line starts as the one on the share card, which can name the plant it was taken from or say it was a gift, and you can change it. The page never shows the room, the price, the shop or person it came from, who it went to, its tags, pots or care. Photos you leave out aren't on it.

The page follows the plant, so new photos and notes show up on it after the next sync. Search engines are asked not to list it. When you turn the link off, or delete the plant, the page stops working within a few minutes, though a site that showed a preview of the link may keep its copy of the picture. To protect the server, it uses the IP address of someone opening a page for a moment to limit how often pages can be loaded, and doesn't keep it.

Error reports

When something goes wrong in the app or on the server, a report of what failed is sent to Sentry, a company in the United States, which stores it in Germany. It's how problems get found and fixed when nobody has written in about them. A report has the kind of error and where in the code it happened, but not the error's own message. It also has the app's version, your browser and system, the address of the screen you were on, which only holds ids, and the screens you opened just before. It doesn't have your account or email address, or your plants, notes or photos. Sentry sees your IP address when a report arrives, the way any website does, and is set not to keep it. Reports are kept for 30 days.

You can turn off reports from the app with Send error reports, under Your data in Settings. The server's reports don't depend on that switch, since they're about the server and hold the same kind of information.

What Stikling doesn't do

There are no ads, no analytics and no tracking. Your data isn't sold or shared with anyone other than the services named on this page, and it's only used to run the app. Error reports are only used to fix problems. The app doesn't use cookies of its own. Clerk sets the cookies it needs to keep you signed in, and Google may set its own if you use Pick from Google Photos.

How long it's kept

What you delete in the app, like a plant, a care log or a photo, is removed from the server as soon as the deletion syncs. Only its id and the dates it was added, changed and deleted are kept, so your other devices know to delete it too. A photo's images are deleted completely. The database's automatic backups still have the earlier version for up to 7 days. When you merge two rooms or spots, the one merged away is kept as it was, since the app still uses it to find where things went.

Everything else is kept as long as you have the account. When you delete it on the Account page in Settings, your plants, photos and settings are erased from the server straight away, and Clerk deletes your sign-in. The database's automatic backups still hold a copy for up to 7 days, after which it's gone. The server keeps a note of the id your sign-in had at Clerk, so a device that is still signed in can't upload it all again. Once Clerk has deleted your sign-in, that id no longer leads to anything. The deleting your data page has the steps.

The server's logs are kept for 30 days. They note when the server starts and stops, the database commands it runs without the values in them, and what went wrong when something fails, which can include the id of a record. They don't hold your IP address, your email address, your plants or your photos.

Your rights

You can download everything the server holds about you with Download your data on the Account page in Settings. It's a ZIP with your plants and everything else you added, deleted things as they are kept, your photos, your settings, and what Clerk has about you. A backup, under Backup and storage, has what is on the device you make it on. You can change anything in the app, and delete your account whenever you like. For anything else, like a question about what is kept, write to support@stikling.app. If you think your data is handled wrongly, you can complain to the Danish Data Protection Agency, Datatilsynet.