Privacy policy

Who we are

• RootSwap is run by ENTELXCORE SINGLE MEMBER P.C. (ENTELXCORE ΜΟΝΟΠΡΟΣΩΠΗ Ι.Κ.Ε.), a company registered in Greece (“we”). We are the controller of your personal data.
• Registered office: Rizountos 51, 16777 Elliniko, Attica, Greece.
• G.E.MI. number 195125103000, VAT number (AFM) 803350763.
• Company information: https://entelxcore.com/company-info

What we store

• Your account: email address, display name and profile photo, or the details Google or Apple share when you sign in with them.
• What you publish: listings, photos, reviews, and whether your profile is private or a business.
• Messages you send to other members, including offers and swap proposals.
• Your saved plants, the members you block and the reports you make.

Location

RootSwap never stores your exact position. Before a location is saved it is rounded to an approximate area, and distances shown to other members are rounded too.

Photos

• Photos are compressed on your device and their metadata, including GPS coordinates and camera details, is removed before upload.
• To keep RootSwap safe, every photo you publish is checked automatically for explicit or violent content by Google’s Cloud Vision service, in the EU. A photo it flags is hidden until a moderator looks at it. A photo that is clearly unsafe is set aside, where only moderators can see it, for six months, and then deleted.

Notifications

• If you turn on notifications, we store a code that lets your browser receive them, together with the app’s language, so we can tell you about new messages, offers and answers, and when someone saves your listing. They reach you through Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging and your browser’s push service. A notification shows who wrote and what they wrote, or your listing’s name, never who saved it.
• You choose what to hear about in Settings, and you can turn notifications off in your browser at any time. When you sign out or delete your account, the code is deleted.

Plant identification

• Trusted members can ask RootSwap what plant is in the first photo of their listing. Only that photo is sent, to Google’s Gemini models on Vertex AI in the EU: not your name, your account or your location. Google processes it on our behalf to answer and, under Google Cloud’s terms, doesn’t use it to train its models.
• We count how many identifications you used this month, for the monthly limit. The guesses aren’t kept: they fill in your listing only if you pick one.

Search engines and shared links

• Listings are public. Anyone can open a listing on app.rootswap.gr without an account, and search engines such as Google can show it in their results.
• AI assistants such as ChatGPT or Claude can also read listings to answer people’s questions and link to them, but we ask AI companies not to use listings to train their models.
• For search engines, and for the preview that appears when someone shares a listing’s link (on WhatsApp or Facebook, for example), we prepare a page with the listing’s title, the plant’s species, the start of its description, its first photo, its price or type, whether it’s still available and its area. It doesn’t include your name, your profile photo or your exact location.
• A new listing is offered to search engines a day after you publish it, and only while it’s available. Once it’s reserved, sold, swapped, given away or expired, we ask search engines not to show it. Once it’s removed, or your account is deleted, its page is gone. Search engines update their results on their own schedule, so it can take a while before it disappears from them too.
• Reviews you write after a deal are public on the profile of the member you reviewed, with your name and profile photo, your stars and text, and the listing’s title. You can change or delete yours at any time.
• Member profiles aren’t offered to search engines. These pages are served by Netlify, which hosts the RootSwap web app.

Where your data lives

• RootSwap runs on Google Firebase (Authentication, Cloud Firestore, Cloud Storage and Cloud Functions), with the database and photos hosted in the EU. Maps come from Mapbox, which receives the map area you’re looking at and your IP address in order to send the map. We do not sell your data or use it for advertising.
• To keep bots and abuse out, the web app uses Google reCAPTCHA Enterprise, through Firebase App Check, which receives information about your browser and device to tell people from scripts.
• When the app crashes or hits an error, a technical report goes to Sentry, stored in the EU: what went wrong, the app version, the screen, and your device and browser type. Never your name, email, IP address or messages.

Reports and moderation

• When someone reports a listing, a member or a conversation, a RootSwap moderator reviews it. To do so, the moderator can see the reported listing or profile and, for a reported conversation, the messages in it. Every time a moderator opens a conversation, it is recorded.
• To keep RootSwap safe and to answer your requests, RootSwap’s moderators can also see account details such as your sign-in email.
• If a listing or an account breaks our terms of use, a moderator can take the listing down or suspend the account. We keep the reason and show it to you in the app. A suspended account can still browse, save plants and be deleted, but can’t publish listings or send messages.
• If several members report the same listing, it’s hidden automatically until a moderator has reviewed it. Accounts are never suspended automatically.

How long we keep it

• Your account, listings, messages and the rest stay for as long as you have your account, and go when you delete it (see “Your choices” below).
• A report stays until a moderator has reviewed it, and is deleted twelve months after it was closed.
• A photo the automatic check set aside is deleted six months after the check, even if you deleted your account before then.

If you ask about business profiles

If you leave your details in the form for nurseries and plant shops on rootswap.gr, we receive your name, email, business name, area and message. Netlify, which hosts the website, keeps them for us (Netlify Forms). We use them only to contact you about business profiles, and delete them once we no longer need them, or sooner if you ask.

Your choices

• You can edit or remove your listings and profile at any time.
• If you signed up with your email, you can change your email address and your password in Settings. A new email address takes effect once you open the link we send to it.
• You can download what RootSwap keeps about you, as one file, from Settings → Download your data: your profile and settings, your listings, your chats with their messages, your saved plants, the members you block, reviews by and about you, your deals and the reports you made. Reports other members made about you aren’t included, as they would show who made them.
• When you delete your account from Settings in the app, we delete your profile, listings, photos and the messages you sent. Other members keep their own messages. Reports are kept for moderation for as long as described above, and so are photos the automatic check set aside.

Contact

Questions about your data, or a request to see, correct or delete it: info@rootswap.gr.