Privacy Policy

This policy describes what personal data Viridia collects, why, who it may be shared with, and what rights you can exercise.

Who is responsible for your data?

The data controller is WS VENTURES, an SAS registered under SIREN 107 479 388, with its registered office at 150 chemin de Figournas, 06480 La Colle-sur-Loup, France. For any question about your data, you can write to us at contact@viridia.pro (subject "Personal data").

What data do we collect?

Account: email, password (never stored in plain text — hashed with Argon2), display name. Optional profile: first name, last name, phone number, address, public town, profile photo, biography. Content you create: photos of your plants and garden, observations, community posts. Account security: two-factor authentication (2FA) code and passkey public keys (no biometric data is ever sent to our servers — biometrics stay on your device). Service usage: internal audience metrics, pseudonymised and without any advertising tracking cookie (see the "Cookies and trackers" section below).

Why do we use this data?

To provide the service you ask us for (plant identification, garden tracking, coaching, connection with professional gardeners, community features); to secure your account (authentication, abuse detection); to send you the emails you have explicitly requested or accepted (account confirmation, password reset, weekly digest — can be disabled at any time in Settings); and to improve the product based on aggregated usage statistics.

Improving plant recognition. When you confirm an identification — by adding the plant to your garden or correcting the suggestion — the part of the photo showing the plant and the name you chose may be kept to build Viridia's visual memory: recognising your own plants in a future photo and, eventually, identifying species without relying on a third-party service. No image in which a person is detected is kept. These photos are never published, shared or sold, and serve no other purpose.

Legal basis for processing

The performance of the service is based on the contract between us (Art. 6.1.b GDPR). Account security and product improvement are based on our legitimate interest (Art. 6.1.f), balanced against your rights. Publishing a public profile (gardener showcase), receiving non-essential emails and sharing your precise location are based on your explicit consent (Art. 6.1.a), which you can withdraw at any time.

Improving plant recognition from your confirmed identifications is based on our legitimate interest in making the service you use better (Art. 6.1.f). You can object at any time, without giving a reason, from Settings → My data (“Improve recognition with my photos”): photos already kept are removed from the visual memory within 30 days, and no new ones are added.

Who is your data shared with?

We never sell your data. Some processing is subcontracted to technical providers, each bound by a contract governing the use of your data: hosting of servers and files (photos, documents), sending of transactional emails, and artificial intelligence services used for health diagnosis, identification verification and the gardening assistant. These providers may only use your data to perform the service requested by Viridia.

Plant identification. The photos you submit for identification are sent to the Pl@ntNet API, published by CIRAD, INRAE, INRIA and IRD. Unlike our other providers, these organisations act as independent data controllers: they process the submitted images, your IP address and technical identifiers on the basis of their legitimate interest, to operate and improve their service, prevent abuse, produce statistics and contribute to scientific research on biodiversity. You can exercise your rights directly with their data protection officer (dpo@cirad.fr).

How long do we keep your data?

As long as your account is active. If you delete your account (see below), your personal data is deleted immediately, except for data that the law requires us to keep for longer (e.g. accounting documents).

Photos kept for the visual memory follow your account: they are deleted with it, or earlier if you object.

Your rights

You have the right to access, rectify, erase, port and object to the processing of your data (Art. 15, 16, 17, 20, 21 GDPR). You can exercise your access and erasure rights yourself, at any time and without contacting us, from the page Settings → My data: immediate export of a structured copy of your data (excluding technical and security logs, which are kept separately — see above), or permanent deletion of your account. The detailed procedure, what is erased and what is retained are described on the page Delete my account. For any other request, write to us at contact@viridia.pro. You can also lodge a complaint with the CNIL (www.cnil.fr) if you believe your rights are not being respected.

Cookies and trackers

Viridia does not place any advertising cookie without your prior agreement — if you accept the advertising measurement described in the next section, cookies from Meta and from Google are then placed; otherwise, none. Your account session is maintained via a token stored locally in your browser, never shared with third parties. For visitors who are not signed in, our internal usage statistics are collected without cookies and without advertising identifiers: they rely on a pseudonymised visit identifier, computed by hashing (with a secret salt renewed every day) — your IP address is never stored, and this identifier changes automatically every day, which prevents tracking a signed-out visitor from one day to the next. When you are signed in to your account, some usage events (pages viewed, features used) are, on the other hand, linked to it, on the basis of our legitimate interest: measuring activation, retention and the costs of the service (for example the consumption of AI features). That audience data remains internal: it is neither shared with third parties nor used for advertising, is purged automatically (180 days for events), and the link with your account is permanently severed when you delete it. Advertising measurement, by contrast, is a separate processing operation — it does involve a third party, rests on your consent, and is covered in the next section. If your browser sends a tracking refusal signal (Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control), we honour it: no metrics are collected, signed in or not. These audience metrics are kept for internal purposes only and are not part of your data export (like technical and security logs, they are kept separately).

Country of connection. On this website, your IP address is matched, on our own servers and without being stored or shared with anyone, against a geolocation database that gives only the country — never the town. That country is used solely to direct you to the site of the brand operated in your country (VERDEVA for Italy), on the basis of our legitimate interest. IP Geolocation by DB-IP.

Advertising measurement (Meta and Google)

We sometimes promote Viridia through advertising on Facebook, Instagram and Google. To find out whether those ads achieve anything, we measure how many people who saw them then create an account or take out a subscription. This processing has a third-party recipient: Meta Platforms Ireland Limited. It rests solely on your consent (Art. 6.1.a GDPR), and Viridia never relies on it by default.

What is sent, and nothing else. On the website, if you accept, a Meta script and cookie are placed in your browser; Meta then receives your IP address and the Viridia pages you view. From our servers, we send the event itself (account creation, subscription, renewal), its amount, and two items allowing Meta to match it to an advertising account: your email address turned into an irreversible fingerprint (SHA-256 — Meta never receives your email in clear text) and your country, also as a fingerprint. We do not send your name, your photos, your garden's contents, or its location.

Google (Google Ads and Google Analytics). The Google tag is loaded on the website in Google's “consent mode”: until you have accepted, it runs in denied mode — no cookie is placed, no identifier is assigned to you, and only cookieless technical signals, from which advertising click identifiers are stripped, reach Google, which uses them for an aggregated statistical estimate of how effective its ads are. If you accept, Google Ads and Google Analytics cookies are then placed, and Google receives your IP address and the Viridia pages you view, as with Meta. If your browser sends a tracking refusal signal (Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track), the tag is not loaded at all until you have explicitly accepted. Recipient: Google Ireland Limited.

In the mobile app. On iOS, measurement goes through the Meta software development kit and may use your device's advertising identifier (IDFA). Apple requires that your permission be requested through a dedicated prompt (App Tracking Transparency): if you decline it, no advertising identifier is used, and the app works in exactly the same way. You can change this choice at any time in the iOS Settings, under Privacy & Security › Tracking.

How to decline, or change your mind. On the website, a banner asks for your agreement before anything is placed; declining removes no feature. Whether you accepted or declined, you can change that choice at any time from your Security and privacy area, which switches off both the browser cookie and the data sent from our servers. Withdrawal applies going forward: it does not erase measurements already sent to Meta, for which you may exercise your rights directly with Meta.

If you say nothing, nothing happens. Absent an explicit choice from you, no data is sent to Meta from our servers. In the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, no advertising cookie is placed either until you have answered the banner: Meta's script is not loaded, and the Google tag stays in denied mode, as described above.

Security

Passwords are hashed (Argon2, never stored in plain text), all exchanges are encrypted (HTTPS), two-factor authentication and passkeys (biometric access keys) are available as options, and abusive sign-in attempts are automatically rate-limited.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy to reflect changes in the product or in regulations. Any substantial change will be brought to your attention.