Privacy Policy
Effective September 9, 2026 · updated September 10, 2026
Toxic Plants for Cats & Dogs ("the app") is built to work without an account. This policy explains what stays on your device, what leaves it, and what never does.
What stays on your device
- Your pets. Names, species, breed, age, your vet's number and the photos you add are stored only on your iPhone (and its encrypted device backups). They are never uploaded anywhere.
- Your home map. Rooms, saved plants, nicknames and the plant crops you keep are stored on your device only.
- The plant library. All plant records and their photos ship inside the app and work offline.
What leaves your device, and where it goes
Three features send data off your phone. All of it goes to a small server we run on Vercel (toxicplants.vercel.app), which adds our API credentials and forwards the request to Google's Gemini models (currently gemini-2.5-flash, via Google's Generative Language API). Google returns an answer; our server passes it back to the app. Nothing else is in the loop.
- Plant identification (Scan). The photo you take or pick, downscaled to about 1,000 pixels on its long side, with location and camera metadata stripped, is sent as a JPEG together with a fixed instruction asking the model to name the plants and estimate their toxicity for cats and dogs. Nothing about you or your pets travels with a scan: no names, no pet photos, no location.
- Emergency guide. The plant you chose or scanned (its name and scientific name), our library's record for it, what you typed about how long ago and any symptoms, and your pet's first name, species, breed and age bracket as you entered them, so the plan can be specific.
- Chat. The messages in that conversation, the plant it was opened from (if any), and your pets' first names, species, breeds and age brackets.
Retention. We do not store your photos or messages. Our server forwards them and keeps only aggregate counts (how many requests, how many tokens, how many failures) so we can see when something breaks; those counts contain no content. Google processes API requests under its Gemini API terms; for the paid API tier Google states that prompts and responses are not used to train its models. We cannot see or retrieve an individual request after it is answered.
Purchases. Subscriptions are processed entirely by Apple. We never see your payment details. If RevenueCat is used to manage subscriptions, it receives an anonymous app-generated identifier and your purchase receipt, nothing else.
Links. Tapping a phone number, a Wikipedia link or a policy link opens the relevant app or site; from that point their terms apply.
Advertising attribution
To measure our own ads, and nothing else, Toxic Plants includes the Meta (Facebook) SDK. If, and only if, you allow tracking at the iOS prompt, the SDK may use your device's advertising identifier together with app events (install, session, subscription) to work out which ads brought people to the app. This is governed by Apple's App Tracking Transparency: decline the prompt and no tracking identifier is shared, and you can change your mind at any time in Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking. Meta processes this data under its own privacy policy.
We never share your pets, their photos, your scans, your home map or your chat messages with Meta or any advertiser. Attribution events carry no plant or pet content.
What we don't do
No accounts, no selling of data, no profiles built about you. Diagnostic counts (how many scans succeed or fail) are aggregated and anonymous.
Notifications
The weekly and seasonal reminders are scheduled locally on your device. We run no push-notification servers.
About the AI
Identification, toxicity estimates, the emergency plan and chat replies are generated by a machine-learning model. They can be wrong. When our verified library has a record for a plant, the app shows the library's verdict and labels the model's view separately; when it doesn't, the model's answer is labelled "AI". Never treat a green result as a guarantee.
Not veterinary advice
The app provides general information compiled from published toxic and non-toxic plant lists and from AI assessment. It is not a substitute for a veterinarian. If your pet has eaten a plant, contact a veterinarian or an animal poison control service.
Children
The app is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.
Your choices
- Delete the app to remove all locally stored pets, photos and your home map.
- Manage or cancel your subscription anytime in iPhone Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions.
- Email us to ask anything about this policy.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted here with a new effective date.