On The Grow, LLC (“we”, “us” or “our”) operates Sprouting Tracker (“the Service”), a kitchen sprouting tracker at sproutingtracker.com. This Privacy Policy explains what we collect, why, who we share it with, and what you can ask us to do about it.
1. Information we collect
1.1 Information you give us
- Account information: your email address and password. Your password is stored only as a salted hash, sealed with a secret kept apart from the database. We cannot read it. You must confirm your email address before you can sign in.
- Display name: set from the first part of your email address when your account is created, and editable afterwards.
- Preferences: your timezone, the clock times you rinse at, your weight and volume units, clock format, theme, text size, language, number format, your reference seed price, and your answers and progress through setup.
- Jar records: the crop and variety you started, an optional jar label, the method (jar or clay tray), how much seed went in, and the timestamps for soaking, rinsing, moving into the light, harvesting and discarding.
- The event log: an append-only record of each soak, rinse, harvest and discard, with the time it happened.
- Seed inventory: the crop, the amount bought, what it cost, what is left, and any note you attach to a bag.
- Crop timing overrides: the soak hours, rinse counts and harvest days you set for a crop when the catalog does not match what you get.
- Your kitchen: its name, your jar sizes, and any custom crops and mixes you create.
- Billing state: the plan, trial and subscription status kept on your account, and the customer and subscription references Stripe gives us. Card numbers never reach us.
- Achievements: which milestones you have unlocked and when.
- Messages to us: if you use the in-app contact form, we receive the category, subject and message you wrote, and your account email so we can reply.
1.2 Reminder subscriptions
If you turn on reminders, your browser gives us a push endpoint, two encryption keys, and the browser and device description your browser chooses to send. These identify a browser installation rather than you personally, and we use them only to deliver the reminders you asked for. Turning reminders off for a device deletes them. We also delete an endpoint automatically once the push service tells us it is dead, so uninstalling the app or clearing its data eventually removes it without you doing anything.
1.3 Information collected automatically
- Server logs: our hosting provider records requests to the Service, including IP address, the page requested, and your browser type. These are used for security, debugging and abuse prevention.
- Sign-in log, email send times and sessions: we keep a log of sign-in attempts, with the email address, IP address, browser type, time and whether the attempt worked. When we send a confirmation or password reset email, we keep a hashed copy of the address and the time for one day, so the next one to that address can be made to wait. Your signed-in sessions also record the IP address and browser type they started from. We use them to keep your account safe and to look into abuse.
- Error reports: when something breaks, we may record what failed and where, so it can be fixed.
- Location: we do not collect precise device location. Your timezone is a setting you choose, not a reading we take. Our hosting provider may derive a rough region from your IP address for security and routing.
We run no analytics and no tracking. There is no analytics package, no advertising network, no social media pixel and no cross-site tracking anywhere in the Service. We do not build a profile of you and we do not follow you to other websites.
Our home page can play a video from our YouTube channel. Nothing from YouTube loads until you press Play Video. The player then loads from youtube-nocookie.com, and YouTube may store data in your browser under its own privacy policy. If you never press play, YouTube receives nothing.
1.4 We do not collect information about other people
The Service is a personal tool for your own kitchen. There is nowhere in it to record a customer, a delivery, an order or anyone else’s contact details, and we ask that you do not put another person’s personal information into a jar label or a note.
2. How we use it
- To run the Service: keep you signed in, show your jars, work out when each one is next due, and remember your settings.
- To send the reminders you asked for: an hourly job checks which jars are due and pushes a notification to the devices you subscribed.
- To answer you: reply to contact form messages and support requests.
- To keep it working and safe: diagnose faults, prevent abuse, and protect the integrity of the data.
- To improve it: understand where the crop catalog is wrong and where the app is confusing, and build what is missing.
- To meet legal obligations: comply with the law and enforce our Terms of Service.
- To derive de-identified sprouting data, which we retain permanently and use after your account is gone. Part of our business model comes from this. Section 6 says exactly what it is.
3. Who we share it with
We do not sell your personal information. We share it only in the circumstances below.
3.1 The other member of your kitchen
If you invite someone into your kitchen, or accept an invitation into theirs, you both see the same jars, seed and kitchen settings, and each of you can see who recorded what. The other member sees your display name or your email address. Your display preferences, achievements, reminder devices and messages to us stay your own.
3.2 Service providers
These are the third parties that handle your information on our behalf. This is the full list, and we will update it here when it changes. Each acts on our instructions, is bound to protect what it receives, and may use it only for the purpose named.
| Provider | Purpose | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | Application hosting, the database, private backup storage, server logs, the reminder job, the bot check on sign-up, sign-in and the contact form, sending the email we send you, and notifying us that you sent a contact form message | Everything you enter into the Service, your sign-in credentials, your email address for the messages we send you, and request data including your IP address and browser type |
| Have I Been Pwned | Checking that a new password is not on a list of leaked passwords | The first five characters of a one-way hash of the password, never your email address or the password itself |
| Push services | Delivering reminders to your device | The endpoint your own browser issued, and the encrypted notification. These are run by your browser vendor, not chosen by us |
| Stripe | Payment processing and subscription billing | Your email and billing details. Stripe handles card data directly; we never receive or store a full card number |
Each of these publishes its own privacy policy, and we are not responsible for their independent practices.
3.3 Legal requirements
We may disclose information where we are required to by law, or where we believe in good faith that it is necessary to comply with a court order or government request, to protect our rights or safety, to prevent fraud or a security problem, or to enforce our Terms of Service.
3.4 Business transfers
If we are involved in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, your information may transfer as part of that transaction. We will tell you before it changes hands.
4. Security
Every query the Service runs against its database names the kitchen it is for, through one gateway that nothing else in the application can bypass, and a suite of tests proves that one grower’s jars are never returned to another. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, access to production is restricted, and the hourly reminder job is started by a platform schedule, not by a web address. Our operator console is used for support and abuse prevention, and only the operator can open it.
No system is perfectly secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security, and you should use a password here that you do not use anywhere else.
5. How long we keep it
- Your account and jar records: for as long as your account exists. We back up the database every night to private storage at Cloudflare, and keep some copies on our own computer. Each backup is deleted 90 days after it is taken, so a deleted account is gone from every backup within 90 days. Backups are used only to restore the database.
- Sign-in log: 90 days for a successful sign-in, and 7 days for a failed or blocked one. Sessions are cleared as they expire.
- Email send times: one day.
- Accounts never confirmed: a sign-up that is not confirmed by email within 7 days, and holds no jars, seed or billing record, is deleted.
- Reminder subscriptions: until you turn reminders off on that device, or until the push service reports the endpoint as dead.
- Contact form messages: while we are dealing with them, and afterwards as a record of what was asked and answered.
- Server logs: for the retention period our hosting provider applies, which is short.
- De-identified sprouting data: permanently. See Section 6.
6. De-identified sprouting data
We derive de-identified sprouting data from use of the Service. It records the facts of the growing rather than the grower, it cannot identify you, and it carries no link back to your account. We use it to improve the Service, to correct our crop catalog, to develop industry insights, and for our own research and business purposes. Part of our revenue model comes from this data, and we may use or license insights drawn from it, or share de-identified and aggregated figures with partners or researchers.
What it contains. When a jar finishes we record:
- Crop: which crop from our catalog, or for a crop you made yourself only the catalog crops in it and never its name, and whether it grew in a jar, on a stacking tray or on clay
- When: the month the jar finished, and nothing finer
- Seed: how much seed went in, by weight, the size of the jar, and the rate that implies
- Timings: how long the soak ran, how many rinses a day, how many you logged and at what spacing, whether a greening step was taken and for how long, and how long from start to finish
- Overrides: where you corrected our suggested soak hours, rinse count or harvest window, which is how we find out where the catalog is wrong
- Outcome: the harvest weight, the yield relative to the seed sown, whether the jar was harvested or discarded, and for a discarded jar the reason you picked from our list
- Cost: the seed cost already calculated for that jar
What it never contains. It excludes your name, your email, your account, your jar labels, your seed notes, your messages to us, and anything else you typed as free text. It is stripped of anything pointing back to you before it is stored.
We will not try to re-identify it. We commit not to attempt to link de-identified data back to any individual or account, we maintain safeguards against doing so, and we require the same of anyone we share it with.
It is kept permanently and is not affected by deleting your account. Because it is not personal information and cannot be traced to you, it survives deletion of your account. Deleting your account removes everything personal, as described in Section 7.2. By using the Service you acknowledge and consent to this collection, retention and use.
7. Your rights and choices
7.1 Getting at your data
You can, at any time:
- See and change your account details and preferences in Settings
- Correct a jar, a seed bag or a crop timing you got wrong
- Turn reminders on or off, per device, in Settings
- Download your jar record as a CSV file, or open a printable report, from Stats
- Ask us for a copy of your data, by emailing info@onthegrow.net. There is no charge for this and it does not depend on what you pay us.
7.2 Deleting your account
You can delete your account yourself, at any time: in Settings, tap Delete account, then confirm with your password (the steps are also on this page). That permanently deletes your account, your jars, your event history, your seed inventory, your achievements, your reminder subscriptions and your messages to us. If you own a shared kitchen, its jars are deleted with your account, and we email the person you shared it with to say so. Jars, seed and history you added to someone else's kitchen stay in that kitchen, under its owner. We cancel any subscription and remove your saved card first, and Stripe keeps its own payment records under its own policy.
If you cannot sign in, email us at info@onthegrow.net from the address your account uses, and we will delete it for you and confirm when it is done. We will not delay the request or ask you to justify it.
Copies in our backups are deleted within 90 days, as Section 5 says. We may keep a limited amount of information afterwards where the law requires it, and de-identified sprouting data under Section 6 is unaffected, because it can no longer be linked to you.
7.3 Email from us
We send email about your account, such as confirming an address or resetting a password, replies to messages you send us, and two emails about a free trial: one when it starts and one a few days before it ends. We do not run a marketing list. If we ever start one it will be opt-in, and every message will carry a way out.
8. Cookies
We use a small number of cookies. Each one either keeps you signed in or remembers a display choice you made. We set no analytics cookies, no advertising cookies and no tracking cookies, which is why the Service shows you no cookie banner: there is nothing to consent to. Full detail is in our Cookie Policy.
9. Children
The Service is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Sprouting is a wonderful thing to do with a child; the account should belong to the adult. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.
10. International transfers
We operate from the United States and our providers process data there. If you use the Service from elsewhere, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States. Where we transfer data internationally we rely on appropriate safeguards under the applicable data protection law.
11. California residents
If you live in California, the California Consumer Privacy Act gives you the right to know what we collect, use and disclose, the right to have your personal information deleted subject to legal exceptions, the right to opt out of the sale of personal information, and the right not to be treated differently for exercising any of them. We do not sell personal information. To exercise any of these rights, email us at info@onthegrow.net.
12. Changes to this policy
We may update this Privacy Policy. When we do, we will change the “Last updated” date at the top of this page, and if the change is material we will tell you by email or by a notice inside the Service before it takes effect.
13. Contact us
Questions about this policy, or about anything we hold, go to the same place: