Privacy notice
What Miome keeps about you, what never leaves your device, who helps us, how long we keep things, and your rights under UK data protection law.
Draft of 1 October 2026. In force from [date].
The short version
- Your postcode and your answers about your household stay on your device. We never see them.
- Photos stay on your device until you ask for a render or a reading. Their location data is removed before anything is sent.
- Renders are made by OpenAI in the US, which does not train on them and keeps them for up to 30 days to detect abuse.
- We keep your email address for sign-in, and records of your renders and credits.
- No cookies, no analytics, no advertising, and we never sell your information.
- You can see, correct or delete what we hold, and complain to the ICO.
1.Who is responsible for your information
Miome is run by Alex Mackintosh [trading as Miome, sole trader — confirm, or the company’s name and number], of [postal address]. For the information described here, Miome is the controller: we decide why and how it is used.
Registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office under number [ICO registration number — Alex to register and pay the data protection fee before launch]. Questions about privacy go to [privacy contact email].
2.What stays on your device
Much of Miome runs in your own browser, and the most personal parts never reach us. We cannot see any of the following:
- Your postcode. It is checked against a list downloaded to your browser and is never sent to us or put in a web address. Only its district (such as “SN15”) and the 1 km map square it falls in are kept, in this browser tab, and they are forgotten when you close it.
- Your answers about your garden and household, including whether children play there and roughly how old they are, pets, allergies and mobility. These can say something about people’s health, so we built Miome so that they stay in your browser tab. Your plan is made from them on your device.
- Your Garden Studio photos, the plants you place on them, and copies of your renders, kept in your browser’s storage on this device until you remove them or clear the site’s data.
- The name you give your garden vision, and the marketing choice described in our terms.
Because we never receive them, we cannot show them to you or delete them for you: you can delete them yourself by clearing this site’s data in your browser. The Cookies and storage section lists each one.
3.What we collect, why, and our lawful basis
UK data protection law asks us to give a lawful basis for each use. Ours are: contract (we need it to provide what you asked for), consent (you said yes and can withdraw), legitimate interests (a reasonable need of ours that does not override your rights; you can object) and legal obligation.
| What | When | Why | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email address and postcode district (not the full postcode) | You ask to hear when Miome reaches your area | To send you that one email | Consent |
| Email address, account ID, sign-in times; the sign-in service also records the IP address and browser used | You sign in to make renders | To run your account, keep your render credits and keep sign-in secure | Contract; security is legitimate interests |
| A copy of a photo you send, and what you placed on it (plant names, positions, distances, the bed shapes) | You ask for a render or ask us to read a photo | To make the render or the suggestions | Contract |
| Render records: what was asked, the instructions sent to the image service, the model used, its cost, the credit used, a fingerprint of the photo, and the finished render | Each render | To give you the render, count credits fairly, put things right when a render fails, and check costs | Contract; cost and fault checking is legitimate interests |
| Render credits and purchases | You buy or are given a pack | To know what you are owed, and to keep accounts | Contract; legal obligation (tax records) |
| A scrambled form of your IP address (see below) | Each render or photo reading | To stop one person collecting unlimited free renders | Legitimate interests (preventing abuse) |
| What you write to us | You email us | To answer you | Legitimate interests; contract where it is about your purchase |
The scrambled IP address
To limit how many renders and photo readings can come from one internet connection in a day, our server combines your IP address with a secret value and keeps only the scrambled result (a “salted hash”). We never store the IP address itself, and the result cannot easily be turned back into it, but because it could in principle be linked to you we treat it as personal data.
We do not use your information for advertising, we do not sell it, and we do not build a profile of you. We do not use analytics or tracking on this website.
4.Your photos
- Nothing leaves your device until you ask. A photo is only sent when you ask for a render or ask us to read it.
- Hidden details are removed first. Phone photos often carry hidden details, including the place where the photo was taken (its GPS position). Before a photo is sent, Miome redraws it at a smaller size, and the copy sent carries none of those details. The same happens before a photo is put into your garden vision’s pages. In your browser we read only the photo’s orientation and the lens’s focal length, to work out scale; we never read its location.
- We don’t keep the photo you send. It passes through our server to the image service and is not saved by us. We keep a fingerprint of it (a short code computed from the image, from which the image cannot be rebuilt) with the render record, and the finished render, which is stored privately and shown only to you through links that expire after an hour.
- Reading a photo for suggestions (“we think this bed is in part shade: right?”) sends a copy to an AI service and keeps nothing: we do not save the photo or the suggestions. Nothing changes in your answers unless you say yes.
- Photos can show people. We do not use photos to identify anyone, and please see the sharing terms before you share pictures of others.
6.Who helps us
A few companies process information for us, under contracts that only let them use it to provide their service to us. They are called processors.
| Who | What for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Sign-in, our database, private storage of renders, and the server code that handles renders and photo readings | Our project is hosted in the London region [confirm when the hosted project is created]. Supabase Inc. is a US company and its staff may access data for support [confirm Supabase’s DPA and its UK transfer terms]. |
| OpenAI | Making renders (its image editing service) and reading photos for suggestions | United States. OpenAI says data sent to its API is not used to train its models unless the customer opts in, and that it keeps API inputs and outputs for up to 30 days to detect abuse, unless the law requires longer. [Alex to apply for zero data retention, for which both services we use are eligible] |
| Our email provider | Sending sign-in codes and the occasional email you asked for | [provider and location to be chosen] |
| Our website host | Serving this website | [hosting provider and location to be chosen] |
| Our payment provider | Taking payments once they open; it holds your card details, not us | [e.g. Stripe — to be chosen] |
We may also share information if the law requires it, or to protect people from harm, and with professional advisers under a duty of confidence. If Miome is ever sold, your information would pass to the new owner under this notice, and we would tell you first.
7.Information sent outside the UK
Photos you send for a render or a reading go to OpenAI in the United States. OpenAI’s data processing terms cover UK personal data with the EU standard contractual clauses as amended by the ICO’s UK Addendum, which is one of the safeguards UK law accepts [confirm the current OpenAI DPA is signed and still says this]. Where Supabase or any other provider accesses data from outside the UK, it is under similar safeguards [confirm]. You can ask us for a copy of the relevant safeguards.
8.How long we keep it
These periods are proposals for the beta and will be confirmed before launch [proposal].
| What | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Area waiting-list email and district | Until we send the one email we promised, then deleted; sooner if you ask |
| Your account (email address, account ID) | While you have an account; closed and deleted after 24 months without a sign-in, after an email warning, unless it holds paid renders you have not used |
| Sign-in records with IP address and browser | 90 days |
| Photos you send | Not kept by us. OpenAI may keep them for up to 30 days to detect abuse |
| Finished renders in our storage | 12 months from when they were made, or until you delete them or your account; your own copy stays in your browser |
| Render records (what was asked, cost, the photo’s fingerprint) | 24 months; where a render used paid credit, the record of the credit and its cost is kept for 6 years for tax purposes, without the render |
| Purchase records | 6 years from the end of the tax year, as HMRC requires |
| Scrambled IP addresses for rate limits | 48 hours (the limits look back 24 hours) |
| Server logs | As long as our providers keep them, up to 90 days |
| Emails with us | 2 years after the conversation ends |
9.Your rights
You have the right to:
- get a copy of the information we hold about you;
- have it corrected if it is wrong;
- have it deleted, for example by closing your account;
- ask us to stop or limit using it, and object to uses based on our legitimate interests;
- have information you gave us sent to you or another service in a common format;
- withdraw your consent where we rely on it, at any time, without affecting what happened before.
Email [privacy contact email] from the address on your account. It is free. We will reply within one month, or tell you within that month if we need longer (up to two more months for complex requests). If we can’t confirm a request comes from you, we may send a sign-in code to your email address to check.
Information that stays on your device (see What stays on your device) is not held by us: clear this site’s data in your browser to delete it.
11.Children
Miome is for adults. You must be 18 or over to have an account, and we do not knowingly collect information from children. We ask whether children use your garden so the plan can avoid harmful plants; that answer stays on your device. If you think a child has given us their information, tell us and we will delete it.
12.Automated decisions
Your plan is made by our software from your answers and published ecological data, on your device. Render limits are applied automatically. Neither has a legal or similarly significant effect on you, and you can always ask a person: email us.
13.Keeping it safe
Information travels encrypted. Renders are stored privately and only reachable through links that expire after an hour. Access to our systems is limited to Alex, with two-step sign-in [confirm]. No system is perfectly secure; if something goes wrong that puts you at risk, we will tell you and the ICO as the law requires.
14.Changes to this notice
We will update this notice as Miome changes. The date at the top says when. If a change affects how we use information you have already given us, we will tell you before it applies.
15.Complaints
Please tell us first at [privacy contact email], and we will try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or call 0303 123 1113.