BrainPetals is designed to be a private place to write, reflect, and grow a garden from your thoughts. Because a journal can contain deeply personal information, we believe you should understand what information we collect, why we collect it, and what happens to it.
Our approach is simple: collect as little as possible, don't sell it, don't use it for advertising, and don't track you around the internet.
Account information
BrainPetals uses passwordless email sign-in. When you create an account, we store:
- your email address;
- basic account timestamps associated with authentication;
- a record confirming that you met the stated age requirement;
- the version of our Terms of Use you accepted and when you accepted it.
We do not ask you to create a password, and we do not store a password for your account.
We do not require a name, profile photo, avatar, or biography.
Notification settings
If you allow BrainPetals to email you when a plant blooms, we store:
- your chosen setting: no emails, one email per day, or one email per plant;
- the name of your device's time zone, such as
America/Mexico_City, so that an email can refer to the correct day of the week;
- when a notification covering a given entry was sent.
The time zone is a region name reported by your browser. It is not a location, not coordinates, and not derived from the weather feature described in Section 2. It is used only to describe a day in an email, never to decide when to send one. If your browser does not report one, notification emails simply use less specific wording.
New accounts are set to one email per day. You can change this at any time on the account page inside your garden, or turn notifications off from the link in the footer of any notification email, without signing in.
Notification emails describe only the day, the plant, and the mood associated with an entry. They never contain the text of a journal entry.
Your gardens
When you create a garden, we store information needed to create and display it, including:
- the garden's title;
- its theme and visual configuration;
- the date it was created.
Your journal entries
We store the journal entries you choose to write, along with information needed to display the plant associated with each entry, such as:
- the text of the entry;
- your selected mood, if any;
- plant species;
- the plant's position within your garden;
- when the entry was planted;
- when the plant is scheduled to bloom.
Your journal entries are private to your account. BrainPetals does not currently provide a feature for sharing journal entries with other users.
We do not sell your journal entries, use them for advertising, or use them to train artificial intelligence models.
2. Location and Weather
BrainPetals can optionally reflect your local weather in your garden.
Location access is not required to create an account or use your journal. We do not request location when you sign up.
If you choose to enable weather, your location is rounded to approximately one decimal degree, or roughly an 11-kilometer region. This approximate location is stored locally in your browser and is not stored in your BrainPetals account or database.
If you choose to type a place instead, the place name is sent to our weather provider to determine the appropriate location.
BrainPetals does not intentionally collect or store your precise GPS location, and no location stored for the weather feature is associated with your BrainPetals account.
You can use BrainPetals without enabling location-based weather.
Some preferences are stored only in your browser using local storage, including:
- approximate location when weather is enabled;
- whether you have dismissed the weather option;
- sound, music, and nature-sound preferences;
- whether certain one-time interface hints have been shown;
- certain display and tuning preferences;
- the name of the time zone most recently saved to your account, so that it is not sent again unnecessarily.
Clearing your browser's site data removes this locally stored information without deleting your journal or account.
4. What We Don't Do
BrainPetals does not currently:
- sell your personal information;
- sell or share your journal entries;
- display advertising;
- use advertising networks;
- use tracking pixels;
- use third-party behavioral analytics;
- record your browsing sessions;
- create device fingerprints;
- upload or store your photos;
- use your journal entries to train AI models.
We do not use third-party tracking technologies for advertising or behavioral analytics.
If these practices change in the future, we will update this Privacy Policy and provide any notice or choices required by applicable law before introducing the new practice.
5. Service Providers
BrainPetals uses a limited number of outside services necessary to operate.
Supabase
We use Supabase to provide database hosting and passwordless authentication.
Supabase processes the account, garden, and journal information necessary to provide BrainPetals.
Resend
We use Resend to deliver passwordless sign-in links and, if you have them enabled, notification emails telling you that a plant has bloomed.
To deliver either message, Resend receives the email address it is addressed to and may retain ordinary email-delivery logs.
Resend does not receive your journal entries. A notification email contains only the day, the plant, and the mood associated with an entry, never its text.
Open-Meteo
If you enable weather features, BrainPetals contacts Open-Meteo to retrieve weather information. Rounded coordinates and ordinary network information such as your IP address may be received by Open-Meteo when your browser requests a forecast.
No BrainPetals account identifier or journal entry is sent to Open-Meteo.
If you manually enter a place name, that place name and ordinary network information such as your IP address may be sent to Open-Meteo's geocoding service.
Self-hosted resources
BrainPetals's fonts and application libraries are served directly by BrainPetals rather than loaded from third-party font or content-delivery services.
6. How We Protect Your Journal
BrainPetals uses technical safeguards designed to prevent one user's journal from being accessed by another user.
Database access controls restrict signed-in users to information associated with their own accounts. These controls are tested as part of the application's security practices.
Information transmitted between your browser and BrainPetals is protected using encrypted HTTPS/TLS connections. Stored information is also protected by encryption provided at the hosting infrastructure level.
Journal entries are not currently end-to-end encrypted. They must be readable by the service in order to make your journal available when you sign in from another device.
No method of electronic storage or transmission can be guaranteed to be completely secure, and we do not promise absolute security.
7. Administrative Access to Journal Entries
Your journal is intended to be private.
BrainPetals does not read or review journal entries for advertising, marketing, profiling, AI training, analytics, or curiosity.
Routine administrative tools are designed not to display the text of journal entries. Administrative service credentials used for routine operation are restricted from reading journal-entry text.
If access to the text of an individual journal entry is necessary, BrainPetals's designated administrative process requires a written reason for the access and creates a permanent record identifying the entry accessed, when it was accessed, by whom, and why.
We do not access or read your journal entries except when technically necessary to:
- provide support you have asked for;
- investigate a security issue; or
- comply with a legal obligation.
Because BrainPetals's database must technically be capable of storing and retrieving your journal, authorized database-level access remains technically possible.
We therefore make a commitment about when we will access your writing, rather than claiming that access is technically impossible.
8. Exporting Your Journal
Your journal belongs to you.
BrainPetals allows you to export your information at any time as readable text or raw data.
We encourage you to export or otherwise preserve copies of entries that are particularly important to you.
You control whether your journal remains in BrainPetals.
You can:
- Empty your garden, which permanently deletes all journal entries from the active database while keeping your account; or
- Delete your account, which deletes your account together with its associated gardens, journal entries, and profile information from the active database.
Account deletion is available both from within BrainPetals and through a public account-deletion page.
Both actions are immediate and irreversible in BrainPetals's active database.
Before deleting your account, BrainPetals provides an opportunity to export your journal.
How long deletion takes to become permanent
BrainPetals's hosting provider maintains rolling daily database backups for seven days.
When you delete information, it is removed from the live database immediately. A copy may remain in an existing backup for up to seven days. After that seven-day backup period has passed, the deleted information is no longer retained in BrainPetals's database backups.
Backups exist to protect users from catastrophic data loss and are not used to restore individual deleted journal entries or accounts.
We retain your account, gardens, and journal entries while your account remains active so that we can provide BrainPetals.
When you empty your garden or delete your account, the applicable information is removed immediately from the active database and may remain in rolling backups for no more than seven days.
11. Your Choices and Privacy Rights
Depending on where you live, privacy laws may give you rights concerning your personal information, including rights to request access, correction, deletion, or a copy of your information.
BrainPetals provides tools for exporting and deleting your journal and account.
You can stop receiving notification emails at any time, either on the account page inside your garden or from the unsubscribe link in the footer of any notification email. The unsubscribe link works without signing in. Turning notifications off does not affect sign-in links, which are sent only when you request one.
You may also contact us regarding your personal information or privacy rights at:
hello@brainpetals.com
We may need to verify that a request relates to your account before acting on it.
We do not discriminate against users for exercising applicable privacy rights.
12. Cookies, Browser Storage, and Tracking
BrainPetals does not currently use advertising cookies, third-party behavioral tracking, tracking pixels, social embeds, or third-party analytics.
The service uses browser storage and technical mechanisms necessary for authentication, preferences, security, and core functionality.
Because we do not currently use optional tracking or advertising technologies, BrainPetals does not currently present a separate advertising or analytics cookie-consent banner.
If we later introduce technologies that require consent under applicable law, we will provide the appropriate notice and choices.
13. Children's Privacy
BrainPetals is not intended for children under 13.
When creating an account, users are required to confirm that they meet the applicable minimum age requirement, and BrainPetals stores a record of that confirmation.
We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have done so, we will take appropriate steps to delete the information.
If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, please contact us at hello@brainpetals.com.
14. Legal Requirements
We may disclose information if we reasonably believe disclosure is required by applicable law, legal process, or a valid governmental request, or when reasonably necessary to protect the security, rights, or integrity of BrainPetals and its users.
We will not voluntarily disclose private journal content merely because someone asks us to do so.
15. International Users
BrainPetals is available over the internet and may be accessed from different countries.
Our service providers may process or store information in countries other than the country where you live. Privacy and data-protection requirements vary by jurisdiction.
Additional rights or requirements may apply to you depending on where you live.
16. Changes to This Privacy Policy
BrainPetals may evolve, and this Privacy Policy may change with it.
If we make a material change to how we collect, use, or share your personal information, we will provide appropriate notice before or when the change takes effect where required by law.
The "Last updated" date at the top of this page identifies the most recent revision.
Questions about this Privacy Policy, your journal data, or your privacy rights can be sent to:
BrainPetals
Operator: Daisey Traynham
Email: hello@brainpetals.com