Privacy Policy

1. Who is responsible

Bishara (“the app”) is published and operated by Charbel Fayad, Beirut, Lebanon, acting as the data controller for the processing described here.

For anything in this policy, including a request to see or delete your data, write to support@getbishara.app. Requests are answered within 30 days.

2. What stays on your phone

The following is stored only in the app’s own storage on your device. It is not transmitted, it is not backed up to any server, and it is deleted along with the app:

• the first name you enter during onboarding, used to address you inside the app;
• the topics, mood and church background you choose, used to pick which verses you see;
• your favourites, collections and reading streak;
• your theme, app icon, reminder times and reminder count;
• the verse library itself, which ships inside the app so it works with no signal.

Daily reminders are scheduled locally by iOS. There is no push server, so no notification you receive was sent by us or by anyone else — your phone schedules them and your phone delivers them.

3. What is collected

3.1 Usage analytics (PostHog)

The app sends product-analytics events to PostHog, hosted in the European Union. These record what happened, not who you are: screens opened, onboarding steps completed or abandoned, whether reminders were enabled, which theme is active, how long a streak has run, how many verses have been favourited. They are attached to a random identifier generated on your device, not to your name, your email or your Apple ID.

Your name is deliberately never sent. It is the one free-text answer the app collects and it stays on the device.

Alongside the events, the app records a small profile: your church background, whether you practise, how familiar you are with Scripture, your age band, your gender, and how you heard about the app. Your church background and practice say something about your religious beliefs, which the GDPR treats as a special category of personal data. It is used only to understand which readers the app serves well and which it does not, it is never used to target advertising, and you can decline the questions that produce it — every one of them is skippable during onboarding, and skipping does not limit the app.

3.2 Subscriptions (RevenueCat and Apple)

If you subscribe to Bishara Premium, the purchase itself is made with Apple, not with us. We never see your card, your address or your Apple ID. RevenueCat, our subscription processor, receives an anonymous customer identifier and the transaction details Apple returns, so the app can tell whether your subscription is active.

3.3 Technical information

Analytics events carry the device model, the iOS version and the app version, so a crash or a layout fault can be traced to the devices it affects.

4. What is never collected

• No contacts, calendar, microphone, camera or location data.
• No access to your photo library for reading. The app asks permission only to save a wallpaper you chose to save.
• No advertising identifiers, no ad networks, no cross-app or cross-site tracking.
• No selling or sharing of personal data with anyone for their own purposes.

5. Why, and on what legal basis

• To provide the app — on-device personalisation and reminders. Necessary for the performance of our agreement with you.
• To improve the app — anonymous usage analytics. Our legitimate interest in understanding where the app fails its readers, balanced against the fact that the data is pseudonymous and never used to make decisions about you as an individual.
• Religious-belief data (church background, practice) — collected only with your explicit consent, given by answering questions that are clearly marked skippable. Withdraw it at any time by writing to us.
• To manage subscriptions — necessary to perform the purchase you made.

6. How long it is kept

On-device data is kept until you delete it in the app or delete the app. Analytics events are retained by PostHog for a maximum of 12 months and then deleted. Subscription records are kept for as long as the subscription is active and afterwards for the period required by tax and accounting law.

7. Who processes it, and where

• PostHog — product analytics, processed in the European Union ( eu.i.posthog.com).
• RevenueCat — subscription state, processed in the United States under Standard Contractual Clauses.
• Apple — the App Store handles the purchase itself and applies its own privacy policy.

Each acts as a processor under contract and may not use the data for its own purposes.

8. Your rights

You may ask for access to your data, its correction, its erasure, a restriction on its processing, its portability, and you may object to processing based on legitimate interest. Where processing rests on consent, you may withdraw that consent at any time without affecting what came before.

Because the app holds no account, the fastest erasure is in your own hands: deleting the app removes everything stored on the device and stops all further collection.

To have analytics events erased as well, write to support@getbishara.app. Be aware of an honest limitation: those events carry only a random identifier generated on your device and never your name or email, so we usually cannot tell which events are yours from an email address alone. Where we genuinely cannot identify you from the data we hold, the GDPR does not require us to guess — but tell us roughly when you installed the app and on which device, and we will do what we can.

9. Children

Bishara is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has provided personal data, write to us and it will be deleted.

10. Security

All transmission is over HTTPS. On-device data sits in the app’s sandboxed storage, protected by iOS. Because there is no account and no central database of readers, there is no store of credentials to breach.

11. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in substance, the new version is published on this page with a new effective date at the top. Continuing to use the app after that date means the updated policy applies to you, so it is worth a glance when the date changes.

12. Contact

Charbel Fayad, Beirut, Lebanon — support@getbishara.app. See also our Terms & Conditions and the App Store listing.