Privacy Policy

What we collect

Depending on how you use the site:

• Newsletter: your email address and, if you give it, your country — used only to send The Ad Orientem Report and to understand roughly where readers are. Double opt-in: nothing is sent until you confirm.
• Account: email address, and whatever profile details a given role requires (a creator’s bio, an advertiser’s organization name and billing contact, a community organizer’s contact details).
• Saved locations and alerts: the locations you save and the alert preferences you set, tied to your account.
• “Near me” search: if you use your current location to search, your coordinates are rounded to roughly city-block precision before they ever leave your browser and are used only to run that one search. We do not store a history of where you have searched from.
• Community formation: if you organize or join a community-formation group, household size, contact details, and readiness figures (children, servers, musicians, pledged support) are recorded for that group’s organizer and for us. See “Community privacy” below for what is ever made public.
• Ordinary web logs: the standard technical information any server sees (IP address, browser type, requested page), kept only as long as needed for security and abuse prevention.

What we do not collect or do

• We do not sell personal data, precise location data, or religious-interest data to anyone, for any price.
• We do not run third-party advertising trackers or sell advertising inventory through a real-time bidding exchange. Ads on this site are sold directly and targeted only by broad geography and page context — never by an individual’s behavior or by inferred religious practice.
• We do not currently run third-party analytics. If that changes, this page will say so before it happens, and any tool we use will be chosen for being privacy-respecting by default.
• We do not publish which specific individuals attend a Mass, a community-formation group, or any community activity.

Community privacy

Community-formation groups exist to demonstrate readiness for a new or expanded Mass to a diocese or institute — not to create a public membership list. Only aggregate figures (household count, estimated attendance, distance to the nearest existing Mass) are ever shown publicly. Individual participants’ names and contact details are visible only to that group’s organizer and to platform staff who help move the request forward.

Cookies

We use strictly necessary cookies to keep you signed in and to remember basic preferences. We do not use third-party advertising or tracking cookies.

Children

This site is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 13. Family and children’s information mentioned in a location’s amenities (a cry room, a children’s catechism time) is public parish information, not personal data about any individual child.

How long we keep data

Account and submission data is kept for as long as the account is active, plus a reasonable period afterward for security and dispute-resolution purposes. Newsletter addresses are kept until you unsubscribe, which takes one click. Verification history and source records for directory listings are kept indefinitely as an audit trail — this is about the listing, not about you, and is core to how the directory stays honest over time.

Your rights

You can ask us what personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete your account and associated personal data, subject to what we need to retain for legal or security reasons. Write to privacy@adorientem.church and we will respond within a reasonable time.

Security

Passwords are hashed, never stored in plain text or in a reversible form. Access to administrative and editorial tools requires an account with the appropriate role, and sensitive actions are recorded in an audit log.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the platform grows. Material changes will be dated here. See also our Terms of Use.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data: privacy@adorientem.church.