This policy covers the whatgrassisthis.com website and the What Grass Is This? apps for iOS and Android. One account works across all of them.
Information We Collect
When you use What Grass Is This?, we collect information to provide you with personalized lawn care recommendations:
Account information: Your name, email address, and user ID when you create or sign in to an account
Device identifiers: A random app-generated install ID used to protect anonymous grass scans from abuse, and a push notification token if you turn on notifications in the apps
Photos: Images of your lawn that you upload for grass type identification
Soil test reports: The PDF or scanned text you give the soil test tool. We remove names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and ID numbers where we can before the text goes to our AI provider. We keep the lab values we read from the report, not the file
Community submissions and activity: Lawn photos, titles, grass types, project types, approximate photo months, timeframes, starting conditions, work performed, outcomes, optional social handles and email addresses, the first three digits of a submitted ZIP code, and a browser identifier used to limit duplicate votes and reports
Journal and lawn content: Lawn notes, saved care-plan details, measurements, and other content you choose to save
Location: ZIP code or approximate device location, when you allow it, to provide climate-specific recommendations
Purchase history: Subscription status and related purchase events used to manage Premium access
Quote requests: Name, email, phone number, ZIP code, service type, property details, request description, consent record, and optional photos when you ask for lawn or home service quotes
Assistant conversations: The questions and messages you type into our AI lawn assistant, including when you are not signed in. We keep this text on its own, with no account, device, session, or location identifier attached and no precise timestamp, so we can see what lawn owners are asking and write better answers
Feedback and support messages: What you type into the in-app feedback form or send to support, with your email address if you give one
Preferences: Lawn care preferences and analysis results
Product interaction and crash data: App usage, diagnostics, and crash information used to improve reliability
Mobile Apps (iOS and Android)
The What Grass Is This? apps for iPhone and Android use the same account as the website, so your lawns, journal, and plan show up in both. The apps are for people 18 and older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you think a child has given us information, email support@whatgrassisthis.com and we will delete it.
What the apps collect
This adds to the list above. The apps ask permission before they use your camera, your location, or notifications, and you can turn each one off in your phone settings.
Sign-in: Google or Apple sends us your name and email address when you sign in with them. We never see your Google or Apple password. You can also use the apps as a guest, with no name or email.
Camera and photos: Photos you take or pick for scans, journal entries, and quote requests. You choose each photo, and we do not read the rest of your photo library.
Location: Your ZIP code, or your approximate location while the app is open and you allow it. We use it for local weather, soil temperature, and your care plan. Your phone's location services may turn your location into a ZIP code. The Android app asks for approximate location only.
Soil test reports: The PDF or scanned text you give the soil test tool, handled as described under Information We Collect.
Assistant and feedback messages: What you type into the lawn assistant and the in-app feedback form.
Purchases: Which Premium plan you have and when it renews, from Google Play or Apple. We never receive your card number.
Notifications: A push notification token and your notification settings, if you turn notifications on.
App activity and device data: Screens you open, features you use, app version, phone model, operating system, and crash reports. These are tied to a random ID, not your name or email.
Screen recordings: We record some sessions as a series of screen images and touches so we can find and fix problems. Text boxes are hidden in the recordings. Photos shown on screen, such as a scan result, are not.
Calendar: If you add a task to your calendar, the app writes the event on your phone. We do not receive your calendar.
The apps do not read your contacts and show no ads. The Android app does not use an advertising ID and sends no data to advertising partners. The Android app does not use the microphone. On iPhone, Map search can turn your voice into text if you allow the microphone and speech recognition. Apple does that processing, and we receive only the text you search for, not the audio. On iPhone the app also collects an Apple Ads attribution token. It carries no advertising ID and lets us see which Apple Ads campaign led to an install. Some results link to products on Amazon. If you tap one, you leave the app and Amazon's privacy notice applies. We may earn a commission on qualifying purchases and send Amazon no account information.
Ad attribution on iPhone
We advertise the iPhone app on Meta (Facebook and Instagram). To see which of those ads bring people to the app, the iPhone app asks for permission to track, using Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt. If you tap Ask App Not to Track, nothing below happens and the app works the same.
If you tap Allow, the app starts Meta's software development kit and sends Meta your device's advertising ID, app opens, and your first successful scan (only its type: grass ID, weed ID, or diagnosis). RevenueCat then sends Meta your trial start, purchases, and renewals, together with your advertising ID, your device's vendor ID, and your IP address. Meta uses this to measure and improve the ads that led to your install. Meta never receives your name, email address, phone number, photos, scan contents, grass type, or location. You can turn tracking off at any time in your iPhone's Settings, under Privacy & Security, then Tracking. The app then stops sending Meta anything new.
Services that process app data
These service providers help us run the apps, and each one's own privacy policy also applies.
Supabase (database, sign-in, and file storage): stores your account, lawns, journal entries, scans, photos, and plans.
Vercel (hosting): runs our servers, which pass requests from the apps to the services on this list.
OpenAI (AI analysis): reads your lawn photos, assistant questions, and soil test text to produce your results, and may use them to train its models. See AI Processing and Model Training below.
RevenueCat (subscriptions): receives your random account ID and your purchase records from Google Play or Apple, and keeps your Premium status in sync. On iPhone it also receives the Apple Ads attribution token and, if you allow tracking, the identifiers it passes to Meta (see Ad attribution on iPhone).
Meta (ad attribution, iPhone only, only if you allow tracking): receives the advertising ID, app events, and purchase events described under Ad attribution on iPhone. See Meta's Privacy Policy.
Google Play and Apple (payments and sign-in): take your payment and manage your subscription, and tell us whether you have Premium. If you use Sign in with Google or Sign in with Apple, they send us your name and email address.
PostHog (product analytics and screen recordings, on servers in the United States): receives the app activity, device data, and recordings described above.
Sentry (crash and performance reports): receives crash details, app version, phone model, operating system, and a random user ID. We scrub email addresses and sign-in tokens from reports before they leave your phone.
Expo (push delivery and app updates) and Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google, Android push delivery): Expo's push service delivers notifications to your phone. On Android it passes them to Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging, and on iPhone to Apple's push service. They see your push token and the notification text. Expo also sees your app version and device type when the app checks for updates.
Community Gallery
If you submit to the Community gallery, approved content is public and can be viewed and shared by other visitors. This includes the photo, title, grass type, broad region, project type and timing, starting condition, work performed, outcome, and optional social credit you provide. We remove photo metadata such as GPS coordinates during upload and store only the first three digits of the ZIP code you provide. Your optional email address is kept private and used only to tell you about that submission's moderation status. It does not subscribe you to marketing.
We use a stable browser identifier to enforce one vote or report per visitor and to reduce abuse. Approved posts may remain available while the gallery operates; pending, rejected, and unreferenced uploads are retained only as needed for moderation, security, and cleanup. You can request removal of a Community post or its associated contact information by emailing support@whatgrassisthis.com.
Quote Requests and Lead Sharing
If you submit a quote request, we collect and store the information needed to review and route that request: your name, email address, phone number, property ZIP code, requested service type, property type, timeline, yard-size range, request description, optional photo, source page, UTM/referrer details, IP address, user agent, and the exact consent text and consent version shown when you submitted the form.
WGIS admins review quote requests before any provider handoff.
Infrastructure providers help us operate the form, storage, notifications, analytics, and admin workflow.
Relevant lawn or home service providers may receive your request details, contact information, and optional photo only when we manually select them as a potential fit for your request.
Our v1 quote funnel does not automatically auction leads, broadly resell lead data, or route requests through a ping tree.
Crewstead (Business Accounts)
Crewstead is for lawn care companies. When a company uses Crewstead, it decides what client information to enter, and we process that information on the company's behalf to run its account. This section adds to the rest of this policy.
Company and member data: The organization's details, and the name, email address, and role of each member.
Client records: Client names, contact details, property addresses, visits, notes, photos, quotes, invoices, payments, and booking requests that the company or its clients enter.
Payments: Stripe (through Stripe Connect) processes client payments to the company. Stripe collects and keeps the payment details. We keep the invoice and payment status.
Client texting: Twilio delivers a company's texts. We store each message (direction, text, status, and a hashed form of the recipient's number), the client's opt-in and opt-out record (when, how, and the wording they agreed to), and the business details the company gives us to register its texting number. Clients can reply STOP to opt out. We do not sell or share mobile numbers or text consent with third parties or affiliates for their marketing or promotional purposes.
Client portal: A client opens the portal with a private link. We store only a hashed form of the link, and the company can turn links off. Portal pages are excluded from session recording and ads. We record when a link was opened.
Companies, not What Grass Is This?, decide why they collect their clients' information. To ask about a client record, contact the company first. You can also email support@whatgrassisthis.com.
QuickBooks Online
An owner can connect the company's QuickBooks Online account through Intuit sign-in. Sync then works one way, from Crewstead to QuickBooks.
What we send: The company's customers, invoices, and payments, including voids and refunds, plus a service item for each Crewstead service billed when the company has not mapped one. Client names and contact details go to the company's own QuickBooks company and nowhere else.
What we read: The QuickBooks company name, and the accounts, items, and tax codes the company picks from in its sync settings. We do not read any other QuickBooks data back into Crewstead.
What we store: Encrypted Intuit access and refresh tokens, the QuickBooks company ID, the company's sync settings, and the IDs and status of the records we synced.
Disconnect: When an owner disconnects, we ask Intuit to revoke the connection, delete the stored tokens, and cancel queued syncs. Records already in QuickBooks stay there. The company manages them in QuickBooks.
How We Use Your Information
Analyze your lawn photos using AI to identify grass types
Review, publish, rank, and moderate Community gallery submissions and notify submitters about moderation status
Create personalized care plans based on your location and preferences
Send you seasonal lawn care tips and reminders (if you opt in)
Review and fulfill quote requests, including contacting you and sharing request details with relevant lawn or home service providers when appropriate
Manage your subscription, purchases, and account access
Prevent abuse of anonymous scan limits and protect service availability
Improve our prompts, our model choices, and service quality
AI Processing and Model Training
Grass identification, weed identification, lawn diagnosis, soil test reading, and the lawn assistant are powered by OpenAI. When you upload a photo or a soil test report, or ask the assistant a question, we send that content to OpenAI so it can produce your result.
OpenAI is also permitted to use what we send, including the lawn and weed photos you upload, the text of your questions, and the text of your soil test reports, to develop and train its models. This is broader than using your content only to answer you, so we want to be direct about it: if you would prefer your photos or soil test reports not be used to train AI models, please do not upload them here.
To make answers fit your lawn, we may include details such as your ZIP code and your grass type with the question we send. We do not send your name, email address, or account identifiers. If you have questions about this, or want to know what we currently share, email support@whatgrassisthis.com.
Analytics and Performance Tracking
We use analytics tools to understand how visitors use our website, improve our services, and enhance your experience. These tools collect information about your interactions with our site.
Google Analytics 4: We use Google Analytics to analyze website traffic and user behavior. This service collects information such as pages visited, time spent on pages, device and browser information, approximate geographic location (based on IP address), and how you arrived at our site. Google Analytics uses cookies to collect this data. You can opt out by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.
PostHog: We use PostHog for product analytics, including feature usage tracking, user journey analysis, and session recordings. Session recordings capture your interactions with our site (such as clicks, scrolls, and page navigation) to help us identify usability issues and improve our service. PostHog does not record sensitive information such as passwords or payment details. For more information, visit PostHog's Privacy Policy.
The data collected through these analytics tools helps us understand which features are most useful, identify technical issues, and make data-driven improvements to our lawn care tools and content.
Advertising and Third-Party Services
We work with third-party advertising partners to display advertisements on our website that help fund our free tools and content. The apps show no ads, and the iPhone app shares data with Meta for ad attribution only if you allow tracking, as described under Ad attribution on iPhone. These partners use cookies, device and online identifiers, and similar technologies to serve and measure ads based on your visits to our site and to other sites and apps across the internet.
Journey by Mediavine (Grow): We participate in the Journey advertising program operated by Mediavine through its Grow platform. The Grow script collects site usage and engagement data, and it may load advertising identity technologies, including Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) and European Unified ID (EUID). These use online identifiers derived from information such as your IP address, and your email address if you provide one, to support interest-based advertising and ad measurement across sites. For more information, see the Mediavine Privacy Notice.
Third-Party Cookies: Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on a user's prior visits to our website or other websites.
For more information about how Google uses data when you use our site, please visit Google's Privacy & Terms.
Data Sharing
We do not sell your personal information for money. However, to help fund our free tools and content, we share certain online identifiers and activity data with advertising partners to deliver interest-based ads. Under some state privacy laws (such as the California CPRA), this may be considered a “sale” or “sharing” of personal information, and you can opt out as described in the Advertising and Your Rights sections. On the iPhone app, the same applies to the data sent to Meta when you allow tracking (see Ad attribution on iPhone), and you opt out by turning tracking off. The Android app sends no data to advertising partners. Apart from that, we share your personal information only in the situations described in this policy:
With your explicit consent
To comply with legal requirements
With service providers who help us operate our platform (under strict confidentiality agreements)
With lawn or home service providers when you submit a quote request and consent to being contacted about that request
For Crewstead, with Stripe, Twilio, and, if the company connects it, Intuit QuickBooks, as described in the Crewstead section above
With analytics providers (Google Analytics and PostHog) as described in the Analytics section above
With advertising partners, including Journey by Mediavine (Grow), together with their advertising identity and measurement providers, as described in the Advertising section above
With Meta, from the iPhone app and only if you allow tracking, as described under Ad attribution on iPhone
How Long We Keep Data
Your account: We keep your lawns, journal entries, scans, photos, plans, and saved assistant chats until you delete your account.
Guest use: A guest session with no saved lawn is deleted after 60 days, and a guest session that has not been used for 90 days is deleted, along with its data. Scans and soil test results made with no account or guest session are deleted after 30 days, photos included.
Notifications: Notifications you have read are deleted after one year.
Assistant questions: We store the text with no account, device, or location identifier, so we cannot find one person's messages afterward.
Analytics and crash reports: These are tied to a random ID, not your name or email. Email us and we remove the events tied to your account within 30 days.
Purchase records: Google Play, Apple, and Stripe keep their own billing records. RevenueCat keeps purchase events under your random account ID.
Community posts and quote requests: We keep these until you ask us to remove them, and we remove them within 30 days of your request.
Legal and security records: We keep limited records when the law requires it or when needed to stop abuse and fraud.
Delete your account
In the apps, open Settings, then Data & Privacy, then Delete account, and confirm. Deletion starts right away and cannot be undone, so export your data first if you want a copy. If you no longer have the app or cannot sign in, use the account deletion page or email support@whatgrassisthis.com. We complete email requests within 30 days. Deleting your account does not cancel a Google Play or App Store subscription. Cancel it in Google Play or Apple Subscriptions first, or it keeps renewing.
Opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of your personal information for targeted advertising (in the iPhone app, turn tracking off in Settings, under Privacy & Security, then Tracking)
Export your data
Contact Us
What Grass Is This? publishes the website and the iOS and Android apps. If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at support@whatgrassisthis.com
