Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Bloom ("we," "our," or "us") is a relationship wellness app that helps you nurture your personal connections. In Bloom, each person you care about is represented as a "plant" in your garden.

Bloom is run by Filippo Forti, a self-employed developer based in Spain, who is the data controller responsible for your information. Contact details are in Section 12.

We take your privacy — and the privacy of the people you tend — seriously. Bloom is built so that the most identifying information, the names and contact details of the people in your life, never leaves your device.

This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and your rights regarding that data.

Minimum Age: Bloom is intended for users aged 13 and older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you are under 13, please do not use this app.

2. Information We Collect

Bloom stores data in two clearly separated places: our servers and your device. What lives where is described below.

2.1 Information Stored on Our Servers

Account Information

• Your email address, used for account creation and authentication

You sign in with a one-time code sent to your email address. Bloom does not ask you to create a password.

Plant Records (the people you tend)

• The plant type and care needs (how often, how deep, how much space) worked out for each plant. Bloom does not ask what the person is to you (partner, parent, friend).
• The day and month of a person's birthday, if you enter one — never the year
• The plant's care state and health values, which the app calculates from your activity
• The illustration you selected for the plant

Plant records on our servers do not contain the person's name. See Section 2.2.

Relationship Questionnaire Answers When you add a plant, Bloom asks you a short series of questions about the relationship to work out what kind of care it needs. Your answers to those questions are stored on our servers alongside the plant record.

Soil Reflections From time to time Bloom asks you a short question about how a relationship feels at its foundation. Your answer is not stored — we keep only its effect on the plant and the date you last reflected.

Care Logs Each time you log an interaction, we store:

• The care action performed and which in-app suggestion (if any) you acted on
• A timestamp
• Four descriptors of the interaction that the care engine needs in order to score it:
  • Channel — message, call, video, or in person (never which app you used)
  • Depth — roughly how substantial the interaction was
  • Nature — what kind of exchange it was (for example: you caught up, one of you opened up, or there was tension or a boundary set)
  • Tenor — how the interaction left you feeling: closer, fine, or off

Taken together, care logs form a record of how your relationships are going over time. We recognise this is sensitive. It is never used for advertising or sold, and is visible only to you and to anyone you choose to share a plant with (Section 4.3).

Garden Organisation

• The names, descriptions, and emoji you give to custom garden tabs

These are free text: if you type a person's name into a tab, it is stored on our servers.

Plant Event Notices Our servers record short notices about events in your garden — for example, that a birthday is coming up or a plant has started to flower. These contain no names.

Plant Invitations and Shared Plants See Section 4.

2.2 Information Stored on Your Device Only

The following is written to your device's secure storage (iOS Keychain or Android Keystore) and is never transmitted to our servers, with the single exception described in Section 4:

• The names and nicknames you give your plants — the real names of the people you tend
• Contact details: phone numbers, email addresses, and handles for Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Telegram, Signal, and TikTok
• Greeting message preferences and which channel you prefer for calls, messages, and video
• Private notes you write about a plant
• Message drafts you compose in the app
• Conflict-preparation ("pruning") worksheet answers
• Which soil-reflection questions you have seen recently (question identifiers only, so the app does not repeat itself — never your answers)
• The email address you typed for each invitation you still have open, so your profile can show who you invited; the app forgets it when the invitation closes

Bloom also keeps an encrypted offline copy of your garden on your device, so the app works without a connection. A copy that hasn't been refreshed for 24 hours is discarded, and it is deleted when you sign out.

2.3 Information We Do NOT Collect

• We do not use any analytics, telemetry, or crash-reporting service. We do not track which screens you visit, how long you use the app, or what you tap, and we do not use advertising identifiers.
• We do not read the content of your messages on WhatsApp, SMS, Instagram, Telegram, Snapchat, Signal, TikTok, or any other platform. When you tap to contact someone, Bloom opens that app via a link — we have no visibility into what you send or receive.
• We do not access your device's contact list, phone book, photos, camera, or microphone.
• We do not collect location data of any kind.
• We do not collect birth years.
• We do not run advertising, and we do not sell your data.

If we ever add crash reporting or analytics, we will update this policy and tell you in the app before it takes effect.

3. How We Use Your Information

We do not use your data for advertising, for profiling on behalf of third parties, or for automated decision-making that produces legal effects concerning you.

4. Information About Other People

A core feature of Bloom involves recording information about other people — friends, family, colleagues. This section explains how we limit that, and where the limits end.

4.1 Names and Contact Details Stay on Your Device

A person's name and contact details never reach our servers: your garden there is a set of unnamed plant records, and your device adds the names.

4.2 The One Exception: Plant Invitations

Bloom lets you invite someone to share a plant with you, so you can both tend the relationship. This feature transmits that person's email address to our servers.

When you send an invitation:

• We do not store the recipient's email address. We store only a coded version of it (a hash), which lets us recognise them if they sign up. Only someone who signs in with a one-time code sent to that address can see, accept, or decline the invitation; an account that has not proved the address that way cannot. We treat that hash as their personal data and delete it as described below.
• Any personal message you attach to the invitation is stored on our servers as written, until the invitation closes (below).
• If the recipient opens the invitation, your own account email address is shown to them, so they can see who is asking. Do not send an invitation to someone you would not want to share your email address with.

An invitation closes when it is accepted or declined, when you delete it from your profile, or after 5 days if nobody answers it. When it closes, we delete it entirely, message and hash included. If the person declines, you are not told: the invitation simply closes, as it would if they never answered. To limit how many invitations anyone can send, we keep a record that you sent one, and when (never who to), for 24 hours. Deleting your account removes every invitation you have sent or received, including those addressed to a recipient who never signed up.

4.3 Shared Plants

Once someone accepts your invitation (or you accept theirs), you both tend the same plant. That means:

• You both see the plant's care state and health
• You both can see every care log recorded on that plant, by either of you — including its channel, depth, nature, and tenor (for example, that an interaction involved tension, or left you feeling off)
• Each of you names the plant on your own device; neither of you sees the name the other chose, and neither name reaches our servers
• Your private notes, contact details, drafts, and worksheets stay on your own device and are never visible to the other person

When you accept an invitation, you can combine it with a plant you already have for the person who invited you, if you tend that plant on your own, instead of planting it as a new one. Every care log on your existing plant, all of them yours, then moves to the shared plant, where the other person can read them, as with any care log on a shared plant. Your existing plant's birthday, illustration, and place in your garden tabs carry over, and its levels do not: the shared plant keeps its own. Your existing plant is then deleted, along with your questionnaire answers for it, the invitations you sent for it, and its plant event notices. On your device, the name, notes, contact details, drafts, and worksheet you kept for that person move to the shared plant and stay there. The app shows you this before you confirm. A plant that someone else also tends cannot be combined.

Either of you can stop sharing the plant at any time, whoever sent the invitation. The plant then splits in two: whoever stops sharing keeps a copy of it as it was, with their own care logs, questionnaire answers, plant event notices, garden tabs, and the data on their device, and the other person keeps the original with theirs. Neither of you can see the other's care logs on it any more, and the invitation that linked you is deleted. Nobody can delete a plant out of someone else's garden, so the app doesn't let you delete a shared plant directly: stop sharing it, then delete your own copy if you want it gone, which deletes your care logs on it.

If you delete your account, all your care logs are deleted, on every plant. Plants only you tend are deleted with everything on them. A plant you share stays in the other person's garden, with the care logs they recorded and without yours.

4.4 Your Responsibility

You are solely responsible for ensuring you have an appropriate basis to record information about another person in Bloom. By entering someone's information, you represent that:

• You are doing so for your own personal relationship-management purposes
• You will not use it in a way that harms, surveils, manipulates, or harasses anyone
• You understand where that data is stored, as described in this policy

If someone asks you to remove their information from your Bloom garden, you can delete their plant. If only you tend it, deleting it erases both the server record and everything stored about them on your device. If you share it, deleting it means leaving it (Section 4.3): everything stored about them on your device is erased and your care logs and questionnaire answers for the plant are deleted, but the plant stays with the other person, along with the care logs they recorded.

5. Data Storage and Security

Where Your Data Lives

Supabase

Our backend is provided by Supabase, which hosts our database on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure in Frankfurt, Germany (EU). Supabase is our data processor. We have entered into a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) with Supabase as required by GDPR Article 28. See Supabase's compliance documentation for more on GDPR and data residency.

Supabase also serves the plant illustrations, so it receives your IP address when they load.

Security Measures

• All data is encrypted in transit
• Each account can access only its own data (and plants it shares)
• On-device data is held in the operating system's encrypted storage
• Access to production systems is limited to authorised personnel

No system is completely secure. If you believe your account has been compromised, contact us immediately at hello@realbloom.life.

6. Data Retention and Deletion

When You Delete or Leave a Plant

Deleting a plant in the app removes it from your garden, along with the name, notes, and other details stored about it on your device. On our servers:

• Your care logs, questionnaire answers, and invitations (sent or received) for that plant, and your link to it, are deleted.
• If nobody else tends the plant, the plant record itself is deleted, along with everything left on it.
• The app only deletes a plant nobody else tends; a shared plant you stop sharing first (below). If someone accepted your invitation to it just before you deleted it, you leave it instead: it stays in their garden, with the care logs they recorded and without yours.

When You Stop Sharing a Plant

Stopping sharing a plant (Section 4.3) deletes only the invitation that linked you. Whoever stops sharing takes their care logs, questionnaire answers, and plant event notices to their own copy of the plant, and the other person's stay on the original; each is then deleted, like any plant, when its gardener deletes it.

When You Combine a Plant Into a Shared One

Combining your plant with an invitation (Section 4.3) deletes your existing plant on our servers, with your questionnaire answers for it, the invitations you sent for it, and its plant event notices. Its care logs are not deleted: they move to the shared plant, where the other person can read them.

When You Delete Your Account

Deleting your account in the app (Profile → Delete Account) removes, in one operation:

• Every plant only you tend, with everything on it, and all your care logs, questionnaire answers, garden tabs, plant event notices, and invitations. A plant you share with someone else is the exception: it stays in their garden, with the care logs they recorded and without yours (see Section 4.3).
• Your account itself
• All Bloom data stored on that device, including names, contact details, notes, drafts, worksheets, and the offline cache

Server-side data is deleted immediately. Copies may remain in encrypted backups for a limited period until they are overwritten, and we may retain limited records where the law requires it.

If You Uninstall Without Deleting Your Account

Your account and its server-side data remain, so you can sign back in later.

On Android, uninstalling removes all Bloom data from the device. On iOS, the system may keep Bloom's encrypted data after the app is deleted; Bloom erases it if you reinstall. To remove it without reinstalling, delete your account before uninstalling.

7. Your Rights

For All Users

• Access: Email hello@realbloom.life to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you. We will respond within 30 days. Note that data stored only on your device is already fully in your possession and is not something we can produce.
• Correction: You can edit plant details, birthdays, artwork, notes, and contact information directly in the app. For anything you cannot change in-app, email us.
• Deletion: Delete your account and all associated data in the app (Profile → Delete Account), as described in Section 6.
• Portability: Email hello@realbloom.life to request a machine-readable export (JSON) of your server-side data. We will provide it within 30 days.

For EU/EEA Users (GDPR)

Under the General Data Protection Regulation, you also have:

• Right to restrict processing
• Right to object to processing based on legitimate interests
• Right to withdraw consent at any time, where processing is based on consent
• Right to lodge a complaint with a data protection authority — in Spain, the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD), or the authority in the EU country where you live

To exercise any of these rights, contact hello@realbloom.life. We will respond within one month, as GDPR requires.

For California Users (CCPA/CPRA)

California residents have the right to:

• Know what personal information we collect and how it is used
• Request deletion of personal information
• Correct inaccurate personal information
• Opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information — we do not sell or share your personal information, and we have not done so in the preceding 12 months
• Not be discriminated against for exercising these rights

To submit a request, contact hello@realbloom.life.

8. Children's Privacy (COPPA)

Bloom is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 13 without parental consent, we will delete it promptly.

If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, contact hello@realbloom.life.

9. Third-Party Services

Bloom contains no advertising networks, analytics providers, or crash-reporting services.

Links to Messaging Apps

When you choose to contact someone, Bloom opens the relevant app on your device: the phone dialler, SMS, email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, Snapchat, Signal, or TikTok. This is a one-way handoff — Bloom passes the address or handle you stored on your device to the app you selected, and receives nothing back. We do not share any data with these services ourselves, and we cannot see whether or what you went on to send. Your use of those apps is governed by their own privacy policies.

10. International Data Transfers

Our database is hosted in the European Union (Frankfurt, Germany). Some of our service providers are based in the United States, and may process limited data there:

• Supabase is a US company, and its personnel or sub-processors may access data from outside the EU to operate the service
• Expo receives your IP address, device platform, and app version when the app checks for an update
• Resend receives your email address to send sign-in codes, and the email address and message you enter in our website's contact form

Where personal data is transferred outside the EU/EEA, we rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the recipient is certified under it, and otherwise on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make significant changes, we will:

• Update the "Last Updated" date at the top
• Notify you in the app or by email for material changes

12. Contact Us

If you have questions, requests, or concerns about this Privacy Policy:

Data controller: Filippo Forti
Email: hello@realbloom.life
Address: C. Sevilla, 10, 35007 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
Response Time: Privacy requests are answered within the deadline the law sets (one month under GDPR).

Bloom is a relationship wellness tool designed to help you reflect on and nurture your personal connections. It is not a mental health service, therapeutic platform, or medical device.