Hesed & Emet (“we”) makes Bible reading apps and this website. This policy says what we collect, why, and what you can turn off.
1. What we collect
Without an account. You can read without signing in. Your settings, bookmarks, notes and reading progress stay on your device and never reach us.
If you sign in (optional, to carry your reading between your devices). Google or Apple gives us your account identifier, and our sign-in service holds your name and email address under it. Filed under that same identifier are your bookmarks, notes, reading progress, and the display name and colour you chose. Your profile picture stays on your device only. With Sign in with Apple you may hide your address, and then we never see it. We never use your name or email address for the usage statistics below — those are kept apart, under a separate random identifier.
Community (only if you post). Devotion sharing, prayer requests and notes to Modern Bible are public. When you post we keep your community nickname, the country flag from your device’s region setting (you can hide it), your posts, comments, reactions, the reports you file and the users you block. Bug reports also carry your app version and device model, visible only to us. Because devotions and prayers may reveal your religious belief, post only what you are happy to share publicly; you can edit or delete any post. See the Community Rules.
Group rooms (only if you join one). You enter a room only with an invite, but the room is not secret: its name, introduction, photo, member count and the owner’s nickname appear in a public room list. Members of a room can see your nickname, messages, verse cards, reactions and reading progress numbers (chapters read, today’s portion, streak, chapters this week). The room receives only these numbers, not which chapters you read. Messages are not end-to-end encrypted, and we read a message when it is reported or when we need to deal with abuse. A room photo you upload is shrunk to 256×256 and carries no location data. When a message contains a link, our server fetches that page to build a preview, so the site sees our server, not you. To notify you about rooms and replies we store your device’s notification token under your account, apart from the announcement token below; you can turn notifications off for each room.
Usage statistics — pseudonymous, tied to a random identifier created at install and never linked to your account, name or email: screens opened, features used, session length, errors, app version, device model, OS version, screen size and refresh rate, memory band, languages, and country. On Android we also record once which of our ad campaigns led to the install, using the campaign labels Google Play provides (no ad click identifier). We do not collect your notes, your searches, your IP address, any advertising identifier, or your location. You can turn this off in Settings; in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland it is off until you turn it on.
Announcements. To send announcements, the app uses your device’s notification token and the app language. On Android, Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) holds the token and we only use per-language topic subscriptions. On iOS, we store the device token issued by Apple (APNs) on our server together with the app language. The token is never linked to your account, name, email or usage statistics.
Photos. Saving a verse card writes an image to your photo library. The app asks only for permission to add, never to read, and the image is never sent to us. A room photo is sent to us only if you choose to upload one (see Group rooms).
bible.com window. If you open the bible.com window from the quick menu, the app loads that website directly from YouVersion, with the book and chapter you are reading in the address. YouVersion receives your IP address and standard request data and may use cookies, under its own privacy policy. We do not send it your account, name or email, and we do not receive what you do there.
Website and email. No advertising or analytics cookies. Our host processes standard request data for security. If you write to us, we receive your message.
2. How we use it
Only to run and improve our apps and website, to keep your reading in step across your devices, and to answer your enquiries. We do not sell personal information, do not use it for advertising profiling, and use no third-party analytics or advertising SDKs.
3. Who we share it with, and where it goes
Only the providers who host or deliver our services, and where Korean law requires. Transfers outside the Republic of Korea, in full:
Recipient
Country
What is transferred
Purpose
Retained for
Google (Firebase Authentication, Cloud Firestore)
Republic of Korea (Seoul, asia-northeast3)
Account identifier, name and email address; bookmarks, notes, reading progress, display name and colour
Sign-in; carrying your reading across your devices
While your account exists
Cloudflare
Global network
Installation identifier, usage events, country code
Usage statistics; delivery of translations, fonts and audio
Raw records 400 days; aggregates 25 months
Cloudflare (D1)
Global network
Community nickname, country code, posts, comments, reactions, reports, blocks
Running the community features
Until you delete the post or your account
Google (Cloud Translation)
United States and others
Text of a post or comment, only when someone taps Translate
Translating community posts
Not retained by Google; the translation is stored with the post
Cloudflare (D1, R2)
Global network
Room names, introductions and photos; memberships and removal records; messages, reactions and reading progress numbers; notification tokens linked to accounts
Running group rooms; room notifications
Until you leave, delete the post or delete your account; a closed room is deleted after 30 days
Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging), Apple (APNs)
United States and others
Notification token; notification text (room name, sender’s nickname, start of the message)
Delivering room notifications
Until delivered, under each provider’s terms
Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging), Apple (APNs), Cloudflare (D1)
United States and others; global network
Notification token, app language
Delivering announcements
Until you delete the app or the token becomes invalid
Apple, Google Play
United States and others
Sign in with Apple; email relay; purchase records
Sign-in, distribution, payments
5 years (Korean commerce and tax law)
Purchase records arise only where an app offers payment; this app currently does not.
4. How long we keep it
Data on your device goes when you uninstall. Data on our servers is deleted immediately when you delete your account; encrypted host backups may hold a copy for up to 30 days, after which they expire. Usage statistics follow their own schedule, because they are not linked to your account: raw records 400 days, aggregates 25 months. Purchase records are kept 5 years, as Korean tax law requires. Email is kept only as long as needed. When you leave a room, your membership and progress numbers are deleted; your messages stay in the room until you delete them or your account. A room with no activity for 180 days is closed, after a warning 30 days before, and a closed room is deleted with its messages and photo 30 days later.
5. Your choices and rights
Stop syncing — Settings › turn off synchronisation. Your reading then stays on your device; what is already on our servers remains until you delete your account.
Delete your account — from inside the app, at any time, without writing to us. See Delete Your Account.
Stop usage statistics — Settings › turn it off. This also deletes the random identifier from your device, which breaks the link to everything recorded before.
Stop announcements — turn off notifications for the app in your device settings. Deleting the app invalidates the token, and invalid tokens are removed from our server at the next send.
Access, correction, deletion — under the Personal Information Protection Act of the Republic of Korea, write to contact@hesedemet.com and we will respond without undue delay. Usage records are pseudonymous and we hold no key that would connect them to you, so we cannot look them up by name.
6. Children
Our apps are for general audiences, including children reading with a guardian. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
7. Contact
Hesed & Emet — Privacy enquiries
Personal information protection officer: Park Seolhee
Suji-gu, Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea
Business Registration No. 846-03-03608 contact@hesedemet.com