Privacy Policy

Your account and saved content

Ask Why Bible uses an account to keep your information separate from other users. Account and sign-in services are provided through Clerk. Essential account and billing records are separate from your Journal and study memories.

Before using conversation features, review the Privacy disclosure and save your choices. Local content stays available on its device. Sync across devices has separate choices for Journal conversations, personal Journal thoughts, study preferences (denomination, goal and completed introduction), listening progress (edition, language, chapter, verified verse when available, position, speed and recording), Today questions (visibility and progress), and study memories. Turning a category on authorizes its existing and future content to be stored in your Ask Why Bible account and kept updated across signed-in devices. Information in a category left off stays on each device.

The first-time screen preselects every sync category, but transfers remain off until you save your choices. Sync category choices apply across your account. Each device must sign in and accept the current privacy disclosure; transfers can be paused on one device without changing the account choices or stopping other devices. Turning a category off stops its future uploads across the account, but does not delete existing account copies. Assistant voice stays local. Raw microphone recordings, playback URLs, licensed source excerpts and provider access tokens are not part of this saved-content synchronization.

Personal thoughts and question processing

Personal Journal thoughts are for your Journal only. Ask Why Bible does not send them to question-answering or speech providers, use them to answer questions, summarize conversations, create or recall study memories, or include them in product analytics. Cloud storage for sync does not change this exclusion.

Questions, conversation dialogue and available transcripts may be processed by Ask Why Bible and its configured answer and speech providers to answer questions and produce conversation summaries. Explicit study preferences such as denomination and goal may be processed to personalize answers and live conversations. When study memory is enabled, relevant memories may be used to answer questions, and the eligible saved memory bank may be processed to combine duplicates. Turning memory off stops new collection, consolidation and recall; saved entries remain manageable. Existing voice sessions can retain previously supplied context until ended or restarted. Provider processing and retention are distinct from Ask Why Bible's own saved-content storage; no claim of zero provider retention or wholly on-device processing is made here.

Public conversation links

Creating a shared link publishes the conversation preview, the public name and optional sharing note you choose, source references and any included public research. Anyone with the link can read it without an account. Personal Journal thoughts, hidden study memories and private account preferences are excluded. Public sharing is separate from the optional Help improve Ask Why Bible setting.

Visitors can add up to five written or spoken questions and replies in total per link. Their chosen display name, question and the Ask Why Bible assistant’s reply are visible to everyone with the link. Do not include information you want to keep private. A recipient can sign in and explicitly save an independent private copy. Later questions in that copy are private; revoking the public link does not erase copies already saved by recipients.

Public research and sharing safety

When public research is used, a focused impersonal query is sent to the configured research provider. Personal Journal thoughts, account preferences, saved study memories and full conversation history are excluded from that research request. Findings show sources and retrieval dates and are marked as not vetted; they are separate from Scripture authority.

Text selected for public sharing, public names and notes, visitor questions and replies are processed by the configured content-check provider before publication to help filter abusive or inappropriate material. This does not grant access to personal Journal thoughts. Automated checks can make mistakes and do not guarantee that every problem is detected.

Use Report or block on a shared web conversation, or Sharing safety in the app’s import preview. Reports store the content identifier, selected reason, reporter identity and review status, without creating another copy of the conversation text. Authorized operators can review the reported public content and restrict abusive access. Open reports remain until resolved; resolved report metadata is eligible for deletion after 30 days and removed at the next retention cleanup. Contact care@askwhy.bible for support or urgent concerns.

Anonymous web participation uses a necessary safety cookie lasting 180 days. It is protected from script access and sent only over secure connections to the sharing site; the server stores a hash of its random identifier. Browser blocks are enforced by the server for that anonymous identity and expire with it. Clearing or replacing the cookie resets that browser identity. Signed-in blocks apply to your account, remain until account deletion, and are separate from browser blocks. A shared conversation containing a blocked publisher or participant is unavailable to that viewer, including new imports. Existing private copies are unchanged.

Hosting and protection

Ask Why Bible's configured account-storage service runs on AWS in the United States (us-east-1). Account data is encrypted in transit over HTTPS and at rest on the hosted storage and backups. This is not end-to-end encryption: Ask Why Bible's backend and authorized infrastructure operators can technically read stored content. Access to private account data is limited to authenticated accounts and authorized service operation. Content explicitly published by shared link is publicly accessible as described above. Local device/browser storage is separate; do not treat sign-out as secure erasure or assume another person with access to your unlocked device cannot access files.

Analytics and other service providers

Share conversations with Ask Why Bible is an account-wide control in You → Privacy. When enabled, it collects questions, answers, available transcripts, Bible references, service versions and performance information to review quality. Records are account-linked, redacted where supported, restricted to authorized team members, and retained for 30 days. Authorized team members can review them; automated offline analysis may review dialogue or compare experimental prompts for improvement. Results follow source retention and deletion. Text may still contain personal information. Opting out stops collection and deletes those records and linked results. It does not erase your saved Journal or prevent the processing necessary to answer a question.

Microphone recordings, listening checkpoints and personal Journal thoughts are excluded from analytics. Sync does not backfill Journal content into analytics. Scripture delivery services may receive the separate usage reporting described in Scripture & sources; this sync feature does not add Journal, listening or memory contents to those reports.

Optional study memory review

Share study memories with Ask Why Bible is independent. It starts on for new accounts and is shown in the initial privacy disclosure; existing opt-outs remain off. Change it anytime in You → Privacy. When enabled, authorized Ask Why Bible operators can inspect your saved account study memories and their source references to investigate behavior. This grants human review only, adds no automated analysis and never includes personal Journal thoughts. Turning it off ends operator access; it does not delete your saved memory bank. Study memory for personalization starts on separately; its setting controls new collection, periodic consolidation and recall, without granting review or storage.

Your controls, retention and deletion

You can inspect, edit and delete study memories, disable memory use, delete individual Journal thoughts, and delete Journal conversations with their attached thoughts. Synced deletions reach other devices when they reconnect. A paused or offline device cannot receive an immediate update. Conflicting edits remain available for review before one is selected.

Saved cloud content remains until you delete it or the account is deleted. Turning off a Sync across devices category blocks future uploads across your account; existing cloud copies remain. You → Privacy → Delete saved account data removes saved conversations, personal thoughts, study preferences, listening progress, Today progress and memories, and the corresponding copies on that device. Other devices remove previously acknowledged content when they receive the reset and require review before uploading any retained unsynced edits. Content-free deletion, retry and revocation markers prevent stale devices from recreating removed records. Retry receipts expire after 30 days; deletion/revocation markers are retained.

Encrypted server backup copies expire after 14 days. Recovery must apply current deletion evidence before bringing content back online. Pausing sync stops future transfers from that device; it does not delete server copies or pause other devices. Signing out removes visible account state and stops that session's networking; local copies remain partitioned by account. Clearing browser/site or app data can remove local copies and any changes that have not reached the server.

Account deletion through the account-management service triggers removal of synced Journal, listening and memory data and improvement analytics (including linked evaluations), and revokes further sync/analytics access when the verified deletion event is received. Essential billing records and provider-held data follow their separate retention obligations and policies. Deleting sync data alone does not delete the login, subscription, or analytics records.

Account deletion also revokes your public links and links containing your attributed public participation. Already imported private copies belong to their recipients and are unchanged. Abuse-report metadata follows the report retention above after account deletion.

Account information and providers

Account information can include your email address, optional name and profile photo, and identifiers supplied by the sign-in service you choose. Clerk supports email/password and enabled Apple, Google and X sign-in. Authentication services process device, network and session information, including approximate location derived from an IP address, to operate and protect your account. We do not request precise device location or access to your contacts.

OpenAI provides configured answer and speech processing. Standard abuse-monitoring records for some services may be retained for up to 30 days; this is separate from our saved-content controls. RevenueCat processes App Store purchase and account identifiers to validate subscriptions, restore purchases and provide billing analytics; we do not receive your payment-card details. API.Bible and Scripture delivery partners process Scripture searches and usage reports. Those reports can use a hashed account identifier, random device/session identifiers and a content-view token. Hashing an identifier does not make the reports anonymous.

Your regional rights and privacy requests

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to request access to or a copy of your personal information, correction, deletion, portability, restriction of processing, or to object to certain processing. Where processing depends on consent, you can withdraw it; this does not affect processing already carried out lawfully. Your in-app privacy choices and deletion controls are described above.

To make a privacy request or appeal a response, contact care@askwhy.bible. We may need to verify your identity before acting and will request only information needed for that purpose. Please do not email passwords, payment-card information, or personal Journal thoughts. We handle requests under the requirements and time limits applicable to your request. You may also have the right to complain to the privacy regulator where you live. These rights are subject to applicable law and its exceptions.