Privacy Policy

Grovena is a registered business name of a partnership between S.S Palihapitiya Gamage and A.R Patel (ABN 41 703 356 052). In this policy, “Grovena”, “we”, “us” and “our” mean that partnership. This policy explains what information we collect when you use grovena.com.au (the “Site”) or install the Grovena browser extension (the “Extension”), how we use it, and your rights in relation to that information.

We handle your personal information in accordance with the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).

You do not need an account to use Grovena. Browsing, searching, comparing prices, building a cart and playing the daily game all work without telling us who you are, and we would rather you only created an account when you want something that genuinely needs one.

Where a hashed IP address is mentioned above, we store a one-way hash rather than the address itself, scrambled with a secret only we hold. We use it to limit automated abuse and for nothing else, and it is not shared. Because we hold that secret we still treat the hash as personal information, and it is deleted on the same schedule as the record it sits beside.

We use collected information to:

• Operate and improve the Site and its features
• Respond to your enquiries and support requests
• Understand usage patterns and fix technical issues
• Send you account-related notifications (if you have an account)
• Send price-drop alert emails, if you are a Pro subscriber and have them enabled
• Manage paid subscriptions, including billing, renewals and cancellations
• Count barcode scans in aggregate, and identify products missing from our catalogue so we can add them
• Re-price your saved shopping lists each week and send you the result
• Keep a record that you agreed to our Terms of Use, and which version
• Detect and limit automated abuse, and keep the Site secure and available
• Meet our obligations under Australian law

We do not use your data for advertising, and we do not sell, rent, or share your personal information with retailers, data brokers, or any third parties for their own marketing purposes.

Most cookies the Site sets are ones it needs in order to work, such as keeping you signed in, remembering a cart you built before you had an account, or remembering which notices you have already dismissed. We also use analytics cookies from a third-party provider to see how the Site is used — which pages people reach, what they search for, and where something on screen is not working. We do not use advertising cookies. You can disable cookies in your browser settings, though signing in will not work without them.

Separately, the Site stores a small amount of information in your browser's own local storage rather than in a cookie: whether you chose light or dark mode, and your recent searches. That never reaches our servers, and clearing your browsing data removes it.

On a Coles page only, the Extension reads one value that Coles has already stored in your browser: the id of the store you shop at, which a trolley cannot be read without. It has no permission to read your cookies, and gets this one value through the page the same way the page itself does — by name, without looking through anything else. It reads nothing of the kind on any other site.

We use a small number of third-party providers to run the Site. We engage the first group to provide a service to us, and we do not authorise any of them to use your information for their own marketing. Each also handles some information for its own operational, security or product-improvement purposes, under its own privacy policy:

• Supabase — our database, sign-in system and file storage. Effectively everything the Site stores lives here: your account, carts, favourites, saved lists, price alerts, game records, cart transfer history, contact messages and — if you use the iPhone app and turn on notifications — the notification token for your device. Stored in Sydney, Australia.
• Vercel — hosting. Every request to the Site passes through Vercel, so it receives your IP address, your browser type and the address you asked for. The code that answers you runs in Sydney; Vercel is a United States company and its request logs may be held outside Australia.
• Bunny.net — the delivery network that serves product images. It receives your IP address and browser type when an image loads. If you are in Australia those images come from its Sydney edge; the network also has locations in North America and Europe, which serve visitors closer to them.
• Resend — delivery of transactional, price-alert and shopping-list emails. It receives your email address and everything in the message, which can include the products you watch and the names and totals of your saved lists. Processed in Tokyo, Japan — Resend has no Australian region.
• Microsoft Clarity — how the Site is used. It receives your IP address, the pages you open and what you search for, your device and browser, and a recording of what happened on screen, with your account pages blanked out of it. Microsoft also uses this to improve its own products. Operates internationally, including in the United States.

The second group are independent of us. They decide for themselves how they handle the information you give them, and their own privacy policies govern that:

• Stripe — payment processing for Pro subscriptions. You give Stripe your card details directly on its own pages; we send it your email address and an account reference so it can bill the right person. Stripe operates internationally, including in the United States. If you close your Grovena account, Stripe keeps its own billing records to meet tax and financial reporting obligations.
• Google — only if you choose “Continue with Google”. Google confirms your identity to us and knows you signed in to Grovena. If your account has a Google profile picture, your browser fetches it from Google when it is shown. Google operates internationally, including in the United States.
• Apple — only if you choose “Sign in with Apple” or subscribe through the App Store in our iPhone app. For a sign-in, Apple confirms your identity to us and knows you signed in to Grovena; if you chose Hide My Email, Apple also relays our emails to you. For a subscription, Apple takes the payment and tells us whether it is still active. When you close your account we tell Apple to revoke that sign-in. Apple operates internationally, including in the United States.

Your account and everything the Site stores about you is held in Australia. The exceptions are the ones named above: analytics and our hosting records are held overseas, email is processed in Japan, product images are served from North America and Europe, and Stripe, Google and Apple operate internationally. Where we disclose information overseas we take reasonable steps to ensure it is handled consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles.

The Site links to external retailer websites (Coles, Woolworths, Aldi). Once you leave the Site, their own privacy policies apply. We are not responsible for the data practices of third-party websites.

Specifically: the Site is served over HTTPS and configures browsers to use a secure connection; passwords are stored only as a salted, one-way hash, never as text anyone could read; access to your rows in our database is restricted at the database itself, so one account cannot read another's; and card numbers never reach our servers, because payment happens on Stripe's own pages.

Among our own team, only the two partners named at the top of this policy can reach production systems. The providers listed in section 5 necessarily have their own staff access to the infrastructure they run for us, governed by their own security practices and privacy policies.

No method of electronic transmission or storage is completely secure. We take reasonable steps to protect your information, but we cannot guarantee absolute security.

We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purpose it was collected, or for as long as the law requires us to. In practice that means:

• A cart built without an account — 48 hours from the last time you changed it.
• Cart transfer history — 90 days.
• Price alert delivery records — 12 months.
• Technical error records — 90 days.
• Notification tokens for your devices — until you turn notifications off, sign out on that device, or close your account. Apple also tells us when a token stops working, and we delete it then.
• Records of administrative actions our own staff take on an account — 24 months.
• A waitlist signup — 30 days after we email you to say the site has opened. Ask us sooner and we will delete it straight away.
• Your account and what it holds — until you close it, at which point it is deleted as described below.
• Contact messages — kept while we deal with your enquiry and for a reasonable period afterwards, so we have a record if you write again about the same thing.

What our hosting and analytics providers hold, described in sections 2 and 5, is kept for a period each of them sets, and is not part of your account. Closing your account does not remove them.

When we no longer need information, we delete it or remove what identifies you from it.

Under Australian privacy law, you can:

• Ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you
• Ask us to correct information that is wrong or incomplete
• Complain if you think we have mishandled your information

Separately, and as a matter of our own policy rather than because the law demands it, you can close your Grovena account and have the personal information associated with it deleted — subject to the small amount we may need to keep for legal, security or other legitimate reasons, which is set out below.

You do not need a reason, and asking costs nothing. Email us at privacy@grovena.com.au or use the contact form. We will acknowledge your request within 5 business days and answer it within 30 days. We do not charge for access, though if a request is unusually large we may pass on what it actually costs us to produce, and we will tell you the amount before we start. If we cannot give you what you have asked for, we will explain why in writing and tell you how to challenge that.

Some of this you can do yourself, immediately: your display name and password are editable in your profile, price alert emails and app notifications can each be switched off separately in your notification settings, and you can close your account from your account settings at any time. Your email address cannot be changed after registration from within the app — email us and we will correct it for you.

Closing your account permanently deletes your profile, carts, favourites, saved lists, price alerts, game records, cart transfer history and any notification tokens for your devices. If you signed in with Apple, we also ask Apple to revoke that sign-in, so Grovena stops appearing in your Apple ID settings. Two things outlast it, and we would rather say so than surprise you: any message you sent us through the contact form, which we keep as a record of the conversation, and Stripe's own billing records, which it must keep to meet tax and financial reporting obligations. Apple likewise keeps its own record of any App Store purchase. Request records held by our hosting provider, as described in section 6, are also outside your account, as is anything our analytics provider holds — it is tied to your browser rather than your account, so closing the account does not reach it. Clearing your browsing data starts you again as a new visitor, though recordings already made stay with that provider.

If you want to complain

Tell us first — it is the fastest route, and the OAIC generally expects you to have raised it with us before it takes a complaint. Email privacy@grovena.com.au with what happened. We will acknowledge it within 5 business days, look into it, and give you a written answer within 30 days, including what we found and what we are doing about it.

If you are not satisfied with our answer, or we have not replied within 30 days, you can take it to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner: online at oaic.gov.au, by phone on 1300 363 992, or by post to GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001.

If something goes wrong

If we become aware of a suspected data breach involving personal information we hold, we will assess it promptly and take appropriate steps to contain, investigate and respond to it.

Where we determine that an eligible data breach has occurred under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme and notification is required, we will notify affected individuals and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as soon as practicable, and tell you what happened, what information was involved, and what you can do to protect yourself.

Grovena is intended for people who do the grocery shopping and is not directed at children. Most of the Site, including comparing prices and the daily game, works without an account and without us knowing your name.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you are a parent or guardian and believe we hold personal information about your child, contact us at privacy@grovena.com.au and we will investigate and take appropriate steps.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The “last updated” date at the top of this page always reflects the current version.

Questions or concerns about this policy, or about your information, go to privacy@grovena.com.au, or through the contact form. We’re happy to help.

Grovena is a registered business name of a partnership between S.S Palihapitiya Gamage and A.R Patel (ABN 41 703 356 052). Postal enquiries can be sent care of the email address above, and we will provide a postal address on request.