Privacy Policy

1. Information we collect

Information you provide

• —Account information. When you create an account, we collect your email address and display name. You may optionally provide a bio and areas of experience.
• —Study content. The questions you ask, AI-generated answers you receive, and messages you send to other study participants are stored to provide the Service.
• —Profile photo. If you upload a profile photo, we store the image.
• —Support communications. If you contact us for support, we retain the content of that communication.

Information collected automatically

• —Usage data. We collect information about how you interact with the Service, including sign-in timestamps, features used, and threads accessed. This data is used for product reliability and improvement.
• —Device information. We collect your device type, operating system version, and app version for crash investigation and compatibility purposes.
• —Push notification tokens. If you enable push notifications, we store a device token provided by Apple Push Notification Service (APNs) or Google Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) to deliver notifications.

Information we do not collect

We do not collect your location data, contacts, photos or media beyond what you explicitly upload, browsing history outside the Service, or data from third-party trackers. We do not use third-party analytics services.

2. How we use your information

We use the information we collect to:

• —Provide, maintain, and improve the Service
• —Generate AI-powered answers to your Bible study questions
• —Deliver push notifications you have opted into
• —Send transactional emails (account verification, password reset, study invitations)
• —Investigate and resolve bugs, crashes, and support requests
• —Enforce our Terms of Service

We do not use your information to:

• ✓Train or fine-tune AI models (ours or any third party's)
• ✓Serve advertisements
• ✓Build advertising profiles
• ✓Sell or rent your data to any third party

3. AI processing

When you ask a question in a study, your question and relevant retrieved scripture passages are sent to a third-party AI inference provider (currently Amazon Bedrock, powered by Anthropic's Claude) to generate an answer. This processing is configured with no data retention by the inference provider — your inputs are not stored by the AI provider after the response is generated and are not used to train AI models.

The AI provider processes your question solely to generate a response. No conversation history beyond the immediately preceding question-and-answer pair is sent to the AI provider in any given request.

4. How we share your information

We do not sell, rent, or share your personal information with third parties for their marketing purposes. We share information only in the following limited circumstances:

• —Infrastructure providers. We use Amazon Web Services (AWS) to host the Service. Your data is stored and processed on AWS infrastructure.
• —AI inference. As described in Section 3, questions are processed by Amazon Bedrock (Anthropic Claude) to generate answers.
• —Email delivery. We use Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) to send transactional emails from @alongsidefaith.com.
• —Legal requirements. We may disclose your information if required by law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request. We will resist overbroad requests and will notify you unless prohibited by law.
• —Safety. If we have a credible reason to believe someone is in imminent physical danger, we may access relevant content and contact appropriate emergency services.

The services listed above constitute the complete set of third parties that process your data.

5. Data retention

• —Active accounts. Your data is retained for as long as your account is active.
• —Deleted accounts. When you delete your account, all personal information and study content is permanently deleted within 30 days. This deletion is irreversible.
• —Audit logs. Records of administrative access to user content are retained indefinitely to maintain accountability. These logs do not contain your study content — only metadata about access events.

6. Data security

We protect your data using industry-standard measures:

• —All data is encrypted at rest using AWS Key Management Service (KMS)
• —All data in transit is encrypted using TLS
• —Passwords are managed by our authentication provider (AWS Cognito) and are never stored or transmitted by our application code in any form
• —Administrative access to user content is logged with the accessor's identity, timestamp, and stated reason. These logs are append-only and cannot be modified after creation.
• —We do not maintain a general-purpose interface for browsing user content

No method of electronic storage or transmission is 100% secure. While we strive to protect your information, we cannot guarantee absolute security.

7. Your rights

You have the following rights regarding your data:

• —Access. You may request a copy of all data we hold about you. We will provide it in a machine-readable format within 30 days.
• —Correction. You can update your profile information (display name, bio) directly in the app. For other corrections, contact us at info@alongsidefaith.com.
• —Deletion. You may delete your account at any time from within the app. Deletion is permanent and completed within 30 days.
• —Data portability. You may request an export of your data in a standard format.
• —Withdraw consent. You may stop using the Service at any time. Account deletion is the mechanism for withdrawing consent and removing all stored data.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at info@alongsidefaith.com.

8. Children's privacy

The Service is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we become aware that a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, we will take steps to delete that information promptly. If you believe a child under 13 may have provided us with personal information, please contact us at info@alongsidefaith.com.

9. International data transfers

The Service is hosted in the United States on AWS infrastructure in the US East (N. Virginia) region. If you access the Service from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States. By using the Service, you consent to this transfer.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by email before they take effect. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of any changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.

11. Contact us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, contact us at:

Email: info@alongsidefaith.com

Arclyt LLC