Privacy Policy

In short

Orthodox Atlas has no accounts, no advertising, no tracking, and no third-party analytics. The app and this site collect the minimum needed to know how many people use them, from where, in which language, and what is read — counted by our own server, and never sold, shared for advertising, or combined with data from other companies. The site sets no cookie until you change a setting, and asks before it loads anything from Google.

What the app sends us

Requests from the app to our server carry: a random install identifier (a UUID generated on your device, tied to nothing about you, and reset by reinstalling the app), the app version and surface (app, widget, or watch), the language and the Church (jurisdiction) content was requested in, and the country set in your device's region settings. Our server also notes the country, region, and city your connection appears to come from, as our content delivery network reports them; the network address itself is not stored. These are used only as aggregate usage counts: a count for each day, and, for each install identifier, the first and the last day it was seen. We erase both about 400 days later. Our server also counts what is read: how many requests each day were for the calendar, a saint, the readings or a service, and how often each saint, feast, hymn or text was opened. Those counts are kept apart from the install identifier, so they say what is read and never who read it. The one exception is abuse: when a connection goes over our request rate limit, or fails to sign in to our moderation tools, our server's log records its address, and our hosting provider keeps that log for a limited time.

What this website stores

The site carries no identifier for you: it counts requests, not visitors. When you change a setting it keeps your language, texts language, Church, calendar, and fasting choices in five cookies on your own device for a year, so that pages can be served in them; until then it sets no cookie at all. Your reading typography and light-or-dark choice are kept in your browser's local storage, again as plain preferences. Requests the site makes to our server on your behalf carry the language and the country, region, and city reported by our content delivery network, and nothing that names your browser.

The church map on the site is drawn by Google Maps. It is not loaded until you press "Load map"; from then on Google receives your network address and the map areas you look at, under Google's privacy policy. Your answer is remembered in local storage on that device and can be cleared with your browser's site data. Nothing else on the site comes from a third party: fonts, images, and scripts are served from our own domains.

Location

If you allow location access ("while using the app"), your location is used to center the church map near you. The map asks our server for the churches inside the visible area of the map; your coordinates are not otherwise sent or stored, and location access is never required.

Reports, feedback and searches

When you report a problem with a page, the report — its reason and any note you type — is kept in our moderation inbox so we can fix the content. The network address a report came from is held for one day, only to cap how many reports one address can file, and is then erased; the report itself stays anonymous. Search queries are processed to answer them and are not kept as a search history.

When you report a concern or suggest a feature from Settings, your message is kept in the same way, anonymously and with its network address erased after a day. The apps send it with their own version and the version of your device's operating system, so that a problem can be traced to the build it came from. We cannot reply, since we do not know who sent it.

Sync and backups

On Apple devices, the place you left off in each text follows you between your devices through your own iCloud account (Apple's key-value store); texts you download stay on the device. On Android, your settings, downloads, and reading places stay on the device, and Android's own backup may copy them to your Google account if you have backup turned on. Either way that data belongs to your Apple ID or Google account; it never reaches our servers. The install identifier is left out of Android's backup, so a restored phone or watch starts with a new one. On Apple devices it is part of the app's preferences, which a device backup includes, so restoring a backup brings the same identifier back.

Third parties

The app talks to a small number of services to work at all: our own API and content delivery network (Cloudflare) serve the calendar, texts, and images; the church map is drawn by Apple Maps in the Apple apps, by Google Maps in the Android app, and by Google Maps on the site once you ask for it — each of which receives your network address and the map areas you look at. Versions of the Apple apps before 1.2 may also fetch the day's readings from orthocal.info, an independent Orthodox calendar service, which then sees your network address and the dates requested — nothing more; from 1.2 on, the apps ask only our own API for them. None of these are advertising or analytics services.

Children

The app has no accounts and collects no personal profiles from anyone, children included.

Changes

If what the app or the site collects ever changes, this page will say so, with a new effective date, before the change ships.