Privacy Policy

01The short version

This policy explains, in ordinary words, what SoilPulse AI collects about you and your farm, why we collect it, who else can see it, how long we keep it, and what you can do about it. There is no small print anywhere else. This is the whole policy.

02Who we are and what this covers

SoilPulse AI LLC (“SoilPulse”, “we”, “us”) runs a soil intelligence platform for farmers, cooperatives, field agents, extension officers, agronomists and researchers in Ghana. We are the data controller for the personal information described here, and we follow Ghana’s Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843).

This policy covers the SoilPulse website, the web application, and any account that was created for you by an administrator, a field agent or your cooperative. It applies whether you signed up with a phone number, an email address, or both.

03What we collect

We collect only what a feature needs to work. Each kind of information below is tied to the part of the platform that uses it.

Account and profile

Your name, your phone number and/or email address, a username, your password (stored only as a bcrypt hash we cannot reverse), the role you hold, your organisation or cooperative if you named one, your preferred language, and your region, district and community. Staff roles carry the district they are assigned to serve. A profile photo is optional when you sign up yourself and required when an administrator creates your account, so that field teams can recognise the person they are dealing with.

Farms

The name of each farm, the farmer it belongs to, a location label, its size in hectares, the main crop, its status, and its region, district and community. GPS coordinates and the boundary you walk or draw on the map are stored only while location sharing is switched on; the platform refuses to save them otherwise.

Sensors and readings

Each sensor’s code, type, sector, battery level and status, and every reading it sends: soil moisture, pH, temperature, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, with the time each was taken.

Alerts and goals

Contamination, degradation and maintenance alerts raised for your farms, whether you acknowledged or resolved them, and the regeneration goals you set.

Pest and disease records

The crop affected, what was identified, the symptoms, the area hit, severity, the treatment applied, the outcome, the date it happened, and any photographs you upload for identification.

Community and support

Posts you write in community rooms (visible to the members of that room), which rooms you have joined, support threads with a field agent including the text messages and voice notes exchanged, and the language you chose for the conversation.

Assistant conversations

Questions you ask the built-in assistant and its replies, kept as your chat history so you can look advice up again. The assistant answers from a curated library of soil and farming guidance held on our own servers; your questions are not sent to an outside AI service.

Notifications and preferences

Broadcasts sent to you and whether you have read them, your unit preferences, and which notification channels you have turned on.

Your consent record

Which permissions you switched on or off, when you did so, and the version of this policy you agreed to.

Technical information

A single sign-in cookie (sp_session) that keeps you signed in for up to 30 days, and ordinary server logs (IP address, browser type, time of request) that we keep briefly for security. There are no advertising trackers and no analytics cookies on the platform.

04How we use it

• To run the service. Readings become your soil health score, alerts and charts. Your crop, region and district decide which advisory, updates and seasonal timings you see.
• To connect you with people who can help. The field agent or extension officer for your district can see your farm records when you ask for support, and answer in your language.
• To keep a record of advice. Support threads and assistant conversations are stored so past guidance can be found again, by you or by an agent picking up where the last one stopped.
• To warn and inform. Pest and disease records help identify outbreaks and warn nearby farmers. Administrators send broadcasts about maintenance, weather, prices and seasons.
• For research, with your consent. Grouped, anonymised figures such as the average soil pH in a district may be shared with research partners once you have switched research sharing on.
• To keep the platform safe. Logs and access checks let us investigate misuse and restore lost records.

We do not use your data to make automated decisions that have a legal or similarly significant effect on you, and we do not use it for advertising.

05Your choices

Four switches on the Your Data page control how your information is used. You can change them whenever you like, and each change takes effect immediately.

06Who can see your data

You

Everything on your account, at any time, and a download of all of it.

Your district’s field agent or extension officer

Someone assigned to serve your district can see your farm records so they can advise you, once you have asked for support or been enrolled with them. They cannot see farmers outside their district.

Your cooperative

If you belong to a cooperative on the platform, its coordinator sees grouped figures for member farms in the district they serve.

Other farmers

Only what you post in a community room, shown with your name and photo to the members of that room. Nobody else sees your farm records.

SoilPulse administrators

A small number of staff can create and correct accounts, reset a password and reach account data when fixing a fault, restoring records or investigating misuse. They never see your password, and their access is limited to what the job needs.

Research partners, only with your consent

Grouped, anonymised figures. Names, phone numbers, emails, photos and exact coordinates are stripped out first.

Service providers

The companies that host our database, store photos and voice notes, and deliver SMS or email on our instructions. They may process data only for us and may not use it for their own purposes.

Authorities

Only where the law requires it, and we tell you unless the law forbids that too.

What we never do

• Sell your data, or rent your phone number or email address to advertisers.
• Give your name, contact details, photo or exact farm coordinates to a research partner.
• Share your records with a buyer, lender, landlord or government body unless you ask us to, or the law requires it.

07Where it is stored and how it is protected

Your data lives on cloud infrastructure operated for us by established hosting providers, which may be located outside Ghana. Wherever it is, it is protected by contract and by the measures below.

• Passwords are never stored. We keep only a bcrypt hash, which cannot be turned back into your password.
• Everything travels encrypted. All traffic between your device and SoilPulse uses HTTPS.
• Sessions cannot be stolen by page scripts. Sign-in uses an HTTP-only cookie that expires after 30 days.
• Every request is checked. The platform confirms who you are and whether the record belongs to you or falls within your district before it answers.
• Photos are re-encoded on upload. Profile photos are cropped, resized and saved fresh, which removes hidden camera metadata such as the location the picture was taken.
• Temporary passwords are meant to be replaced. When an account is created for you, change the password the first time you sign in.

No system is perfect. If we ever discover a breach that puts you at risk we will tell you promptly, explain what happened, and say what we are doing about it.

08How long we keep it

Farm data is only useful over time. A single reading tells you little; five seasons tell you a lot. So we keep your records while your account is open and erase them when you ask.

If your account sits unused for a long time we may contact you before removing anything. We never delete your records without warning you first.

09Your rights and how to use them

These rights are yours under Ghanaian law. Using them costs nothing and never affects the service you receive.

See your data

Everything is visible in the app. For a complete copy, open Your Data and choose Download my data. You receive one JSON file holding your profile, preferences, consent record, farms, sensors and their full reading history, alerts, goals, pest records, notifications, assistant chats and support conversations.

Correct it

Edit your profile in Settings, or the farm or record itself. An administrator can correct anything you cannot reach, and cannot change your permissions for you.

Withdraw a permission

Switch it off on the Your Data page. The change is immediate.

Delete your account

Email us from the address or number on your account and ask for it to be closed. We confirm it is you, then erase everything within 30 days.

Take it with you

The download is an open JSON format you can keep or hand to another service.

Complain

Write to us first and a person will answer. If you are not satisfied you can complain to the Data Protection Commission of Ghana.

10Accounts created for you

A SoilPulse administrator, or a cooperative or field agent working with one, can create an account on your behalf so you can start without filling in forms yourself. When that happens:

• They enter your name, a photo of you, a phone number or email address, your role, and where you farm. They must have your agreement to do so.
• The platform gives you a temporary password, shown to them once. Change it the first time you sign in. They cannot see it afterwards, and nobody at SoilPulse can read it.
• Everything they entered is yours to correct in Settings, and this policy applies to your account exactly as if you had signed up yourself.

11Children

SoilPulse is intended for people aged 18 and over who farm or work in agriculture. Younger people may take part through a parent, guardian or cooperative who holds the account. We do not knowingly collect information from a child without that arrangement, and we remove it if we learn we have.

12Changes to this policy

When a feature changes the way we handle data, this policy changes too, and the version number and date at the top move. If a change affects you materially we tell you inside the app and ask you to look at your choices again before it takes effect.

13Contact

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