The short version. Trovario has no accounts and no logins. Your catches and their photos are stored on your iPhone, not on our servers. Two things you create leave your device: a photo you choose to identify, which goes to our identification provider Kindwise in the EU, is used only to identify it and is deleted straight after (section 4), and anything you type into the support form. Location is optional. If you turn it on, it is saved with your catches on your iPhone and sent to Apple to show a place name on the catch card. It only goes to Kindwise, as a rough area of about 10 km, if you choose to let it help identification (section 5). We do not sell data, we do not use advertising networks, and we do not track you across other apps or websites.
The controller for the processing described here is Lucid Labs LLC, a limited liability company registered in New Mexico, United States.
Email: contact@trovario.net
Trovario is published on the App Store under the developer name LucidLabs.
This policy covers the Trovario iOS app and the pages on trovario.net. It does not cover Apple's own processing when you download the app or join a TestFlight beta. That is governed by Apple's privacy policy.
Trovario is a local-first app. The following is written to your iPhone's storage and is never uploaded to us:
We have no server holding your collection, and no way to see it. Deleting the app deletes all of it. There is no cloud backup and no sync. If you delete the app, your catches are gone and we cannot restore them.
When you photograph something and ask Trovario to identify it, the photo is sent over an encrypted connection to a proxy we operate on Cloudflare, which forwards it to Kindwise, the trading name of FlowerChecker s.r.o., a company registered in Brno, Czech Republic. Kindwise operates the plant.id, insect.id and mushroom.id services. If Location is set to Collection + ID, a rough area (your coordinate rounded to one decimal place, about 10 km) is sent with the photo. With any other location setting, nothing about your location goes to Kindwise (see section 5). Kindwise returns candidate species, which the app shows you. The proxy exists so that our API key is not stored in the app; it does not keep a copy of your photo.
What happens to your photo at Kindwise. Our Kindwise account has Kindwise's "no internal use" setting switched on. With it, Kindwise does not use the photos we send for any purpose of its own: not to train or improve its models, and not to show them to anyone, including as reference images for other users. Kindwise processes and stores the photo in the Netherlands, within the EU.
As soon as Kindwise has returned its answer, our proxy asks Kindwise to delete the identification, which removes the stored photo. This happens automatically for every photo; you do not need to ask.
Good practice all the same: photograph the plant, bug or mushroom, and keep people, faces, documents, house numbers and identifying surroundings out of the frame. Only photos you actively submit for identification are sent. The rest of your catches stay on your device.
Questions about a photo. Photos are deleted automatically after identification (see above). If you have a question about a photo you submitted, contact us at contact@trovario.net with the approximate date and time of the catch. You may also contact Kindwise directly at support@kindwise.com, or their data protection officer at dpo@flowerchecker.com. Because we hold no account for you, we may need you to help us locate the record.
Species outside the built-in catalogue. When an identification names a species the app does not already have information for, our proxy fetches it for everyone who finds that species. It sends the species' scientific and common names, whether it is a plant or a bug, your region setting (for example "Europe") and Kindwise's reference text for it to Anthropic, whose Claude model writes when and where to look for it and translates its description. To show how rare a species is, the proxy sends its scientific name to iNaturalist. None of these requests contain your photo, your location or any identifier, and the results are stored per species at Supabase so the next lookup for the same species needs no new request.
Legal basis: your consent (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR). The app asks for this on a consent screen before the first identification, and identification does not work without it. You can withdraw consent at any time in the app's Settings (Privacy, then Withdraw consent). After that no photo is sent until you accept again, which also means new photos cannot be identified. Withdrawal does not affect identifications already made.
Location is optional. The app never requires it and works fully without it.
Location is off until you turn it on. The app's Settings offer three choices:
Precision. The app asks iOS for an accuracy of about 100 metres, not a precise fix, and saves the position iOS returns. If Precise Location is allowed for Trovario in iOS, that position can be more accurate. You can switch Precise Location off for Trovario in iOS Settings and the app keeps working.
Place names. To show a place name, such as a town, instead of coordinates on a catch card, the app uses the geocoding service built into iOS. When you open a species card for a catch that has a location, that catch's saved coordinate is sent to Apple to look up the name. This applies to both Collection settings. Apple handles the request under Apple's privacy policy, and we do not receive it.
You can change the setting at any time in the app's Settings, or turn location off entirely in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → Trovario.
Legal basis: your consent (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR), given through the iOS permission prompt and the in-app toggle.
Current status: analytics are not active in the released build. The app defines the events below and includes an opt-out, but no analytics provider is connected and no events leave your device. This section describes what will be collected if and when we enable it, so that you can opt out before as well as after.
When enabled, Trovario will record nine product events, to understand which parts of the app work and which don't:
app_opened, catch_attempted, catch_confirmed, catch_corrected, catch_failed, secret_rare_revealed, detail_card_shared, spotlight_opened, out_of_season_tapped.
These carry only coarse properties: whether the subject was a plant, a bug or a mushroom, a rarity tier, a confidence band, whether the species was new to you, and a reason code when an identification fails. They never contain your photos, your location, or the specific species you caught.
Events are grouped by a random identifier generated on your device the first time the app runs, and stored in the app's own preferences. It is not your name, your email, your Apple ID, your device's identifier, or an advertising identifier. It is not shared with anyone else and cannot be linked back to you by us. Deleting the app destroys it; reinstalling generates a new, unconnected one.
The intended provider is PostHog, configured to its EU region. You can opt out at any time in the app's Settings; when you are opted out, no events are recorded and no identifier is sent.
Legal basis: our legitimate interest in understanding how the app is used so we can improve it (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR), balanced by the data being minimal, unlinked to your identity, and switchable off in Settings. You may object at any time using that switch.
If you use the in-app support form, or the form's reclassification route, we receive exactly four things: your message (up to 4,000 characters), a short context tag saying which screen you wrote from, your app version, and your language preference (from your device's Accept-Language setting). You may also attach up to three images.
There is no name or email field. If you want a reply you will have to put contact details in the message yourself, and that is your choice. An anonymous report is still useful to us.
Messages travel through our Cloudflare proxy and are stored by Supabase: the text in a database table, any attached images in a separate storage bucket under randomly generated filenames. We do not store your IP address and the proxy keeps no copy of anything it forwards.
Legal basis: our legitimate interest in receiving and responding to feedback and support requests, and in fixing defects you report (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).
While Trovario is in closed beta, trovario.net and lucidlabs.dev have a "Request access" form. If you use it, we receive your email address, which of the two sites you used, the time, and the version of the note shown next to the form. Nothing else is asked for.
The address is used only to email you about Trovario: the beta invite and, later, a note when the beta ends or the app is released. It is not a newsletter. We do not share it, use it for advertising, or use it for anything unrelated to Trovario.
The form posts to our Cloudflare proxy, which stores the address in Supabase (Frankfurt, EU) in a table that has no public access. We do not store your IP address. The proxy uses it for a moment to limit how often one connection can submit the form, and does not keep it. If you sign up twice, the second one is ignored.
To be removed from the list, email contact@trovario.net from the address you signed up with.
Legal basis: your consent (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR), given by submitting the form next to the note above it. You can withdraw it at any time by emailing us.
Trovario can send you a daily "spotlight" notification about a species in season near you. This is optional, asked for in context after you have made a few catches, and declining costs you nothing. The scheduling happens on your device. We do not operate a push server and we do not know whether you have notifications on.
Legal basis: your consent (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR), via the iOS notification prompt. Withdraw it in iOS Settings → Notifications → Trovario.
| Purpose | Data | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Identify a species from your photo | Photo; a rough area (about 10 km) if Location is set to Collection + ID | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) |
| Rank likely species near you | Rough area (about 10 km), Collection + ID only | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) |
| Show where you found a catch | Catch location, stored on your iPhone; sent to Apple to look up the place name | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) |
| Describe species outside the catalogue | Species names, plant, bug or mushroom, region setting; no personal identifiers | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Improve the app | Nine product events + random identifier | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Answer your support message | Message text, optional image, app version | Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) |
| Email you about the beta and the app's release | Email address, which site you used, time, version of the form note | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) |
| Daily spotlight reminder | Scheduled on device only | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) |
| Recipient | Role | What they get |
|---|---|---|
| Kindwise (FlowerChecker s.r.o., Czech Republic; processing and storage in the Netherlands) | Processor: uses photos only to identify them (see section 4) | Photos you submit for identification; a rough area (about 10 km) if Location is set to Collection + ID. Separately, species names for looking up reference text, with no personal data |
| Cloudflare, Inc. (USA) | Processor | Operates the proxy that identification, support and access-list requests pass through |
| Anthropic, PBC (USA) | Processor | For species outside the built-in catalogue: the species' names, plant, bug or mushroom, your region setting and reference text. No photos, no location, no identifiers |
| iNaturalist (USA) | Public species database | A species' scientific name, to look up how often it is observed. No personal data |
| Supabase, Inc. | Processor | Stores support-form messages and any images you attach to them, and the email addresses of the access list (section 8), in its Frankfurt (EU) region. Also holds the per-species information described in section 4, which contains no personal data |
| PostHog (EU region) | Processor, not yet active | Product events and the random identifier, once analytics are enabled |
| Vercel Inc. (USA) | Processor | Hosts this website. Not used by the app. |
| Apple Inc. | Independent controller | App distribution, TestFlight, and any crash reports you opt into sharing with developers. If Location is on, the coordinate of a catch, to look up the place name shown on its card |
We do not sell personal data, we do not share it with advertising networks or data brokers, and we do not use it to build profiles about you.
Trovario is operated from the United States. Lucid Labs LLC is a New Mexico limited liability company. That means your personal data may be accessed from the US, and that US law can reach it, including the CLOUD Act, which allows US authorities to compel a US company to produce data within its control regardless of which country that data is stored in.
Where the data physically sits:
| Data | Where it is stored | Region |
|---|---|---|
| Your catches and their photos | Your iPhone only | With you |
| Access-list email addresses | Supabase, Frankfurt (eu-central-1) | EEA |
| Support messages and attached images | Supabase, Frankfurt (eu-central-1) | EEA |
| Photos sent for identification | Kindwise, established in the Czech Republic; processing and storage in the Netherlands | Within the EU; no transfer outside the EEA |
| Analytics (not yet active) | PostHog, EU region | EEA |
| Identification and support requests in transit | Cloudflare edge network, forwarded but never stored | US company; requests served from European edge locations |
| This website | Vercel | US company; served from European edge locations |
We chose EU regions where the provider offered the choice.
One technical note: because we are not established in the EU but are directly subject to the GDPR under Article 3(2), data you send us is not an "international transfer" in the Chapter V sense. That concept needs an EU-based exporter, and there isn't one here. We mention it only so that the absence of Standard Contractual Clauses from this policy is not mistaken for an oversight. It does not change the practical picture in the table above.
If you are in the EU or UK, you have the right to access your personal data, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict or object to processing, to data portability, and to withdraw consent at any time. To exercise any of these, email contact@trovario.net.
What we cannot do. Because Trovario has no accounts, we usually cannot identify you in the data we hold. Analytics events are grouped only by a random identifier that we cannot connect to a person, and your catches never reach us at all. Where we cannot identify you, Article 11(2) GDPR means the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction and portability may not apply. We are not permitted to collect extra information about you purely to make them work. For anything we can locate, such as a support message you sent or a photo submitted to Kindwise around a time you can tell us, we will act on your request.
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority, normally the one in the country where you live or work. The European Data Protection Board publishes a list of national authorities.
Trovario is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children. The app has no account system, no social features, no chat and no purchases. If you believe a child has sent us personal data through the support form, contact us and we will delete it.
If we change this policy we will update the version and date at the top. Material changes, such as a new recipient, a new purpose, or a change to how photos are handled, will also be surfaced in the app before they take effect. Previous versions are available on request.
Lucid Labs LLC, a limited liability company registered in New Mexico, United States.
Privacy enquiries: contact@trovario.net
General support: trovario.net/support