Privacy Policy

What we collect

Information you give us

• Account: email address, password (stored hashed by our auth provider), optional display name.
• Journal content: prayer requests, gratitude entries, reflections, answered-prayer notes, and any file you attach. This is private to your account.
• Preferences: the "what do you need hope for" topics you select, email preferences, and privacy settings.
• Public posts: anything you submit to the Prayer Wall or Praise Wall, plus the optional first name you choose to display.
• Purchases and gifts: billing email, order and membership records, gift recipient email and note, donation display name and dedication if you provide one.
• Support messages: what you write to us through the contact form or by email.

Information collected automatically

• Essential technical data: IP address (used transiently and stored only as a one-way hash for abuse rate limiting), request logs, and error reports needed to keep the site secure and working.
• Product engagement signals: whether Today's Hope was opened and which sections were tapped, tied to your account so we can improve what we send. This never includes the text of your prayers or reflections, and you can switch it off in Settings.
• Email engagement: delivery, open, click, bounce, and unsubscribe events from our email provider.

We do not run advertising networks, ad pixels, or third-party behavioural analytics on this site.

Sensitive information

Prayer requests and journal entries can reveal deeply personal things — health, mental health, family circumstances, and religious belief. We treat this as sensitive personal information. We collect it only because you choose to write it, we use it only to provide your private journal and the features you ask for (reminders, exports, your weekly digest), and we do not use it for advertising, profiling, or model training. You are asked to consent specifically before your first journal entry, and you can lock individual entries, export them, or delete them at any time.

Why we use it (and our legal bases)

• To provide the service — account, journal, downloads, membership (contract).
• To send what you asked for — daily hope emails, weekly digest, prayer reminders, receipts (consent for marketing; contract for transactional messages).
• To keep the site safe — rate limiting, abuse prevention, moderation, fraud prevention (legitimate interests).
• To improve the product — aggregate engagement signals, opt-out available (legitimate interests / consent).
• To meet legal obligations — tax and payment records (legal obligation).

Where consent is the basis — including sensitive journal content and marketing email — you may withdraw it at any time without affecting processing already carried out.

Who we share it with

We share only with service providers who process data on our instructions, under contract:

• Stripe — payments, subscriptions, and billing portal. Stripe receives your billing details directly; we never see your full card number.
• Brevo — transactional and subscription email delivery and engagement events.
• Our hosting, database, and storage providers — to run the site and store your data securely.

We may disclose information if required by law, to enforce our Terms, or to protect the rights and safety of our members. If the business is ever sold or merged, your information may transfer as part of that transaction and this policy will continue to apply until you are notified otherwise.

We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.

How long we keep it

• Account and journal content — until you delete the entry or close your account, then removed promptly.
• Public wall posts — until removed by you or by moderation.
• Order, donation, and tax records — retained as required by law (generally up to 7 years), even after account closure.
• Email suppression records — retained indefinitely so we never email you again after you unsubscribe.
• Abuse rate-limit hashes and technical logs — short-lived, typically days.
• Engagement signals — retained in aggregate; per-account rows are deleted with your account.

Your rights and choices

Depending on where you live (including Colorado, other US states with privacy laws, the UK and EU), you may have the right to access, correct, delete, port, or obtain a copy of your personal information, to opt out of targeted advertising, sale, or profiling, to limit use of sensitive data, and to appeal a decision we make. We honour these requests for everyone, regardless of location, and we will not discriminate against you for exercising them.

Use Your Privacy Choices to export your data, delete your account, or submit a request. We respond within 45 days and will tell you if we need more time. If we deny a request you may appeal by replying to our response; if you remain dissatisfied you may contact the Colorado Attorney General or your local data protection authority.

Global Privacy Control

We honour the Global Privacy Control (GPC) browser signal. If your browser sends GPC, we treat it as an opt-out of non-essential cookies and analytics automatically — you do not need to do anything else.

Children

This site is intended for adults 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS) and at rest by our infrastructure providers. Access to your private journal is enforced at the database level with row-level security so that no other member — and no unauthenticated visitor — can read it. Files you attach live in a private bucket accessible only through short-lived signed links issued to you. Administrative access is limited to accounts with an explicit admin role. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your information we will notify you and any required regulator without undue delay.

International transfers

We are based in the United States and our providers process data in the United States and the European Union. Where required, transfers rely on Standard Contractual Clauses or an equivalent safeguard offered by the provider.

Cookies

See our Cookies & Tracking page for what is stored on your device and how to control it.

Changes

We will update the version and effective date above when this policy changes, and we will notify account holders of material changes by email or in-app before they take effect.