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Privacy Policy

Last updated: 2026-05-30

This site is a small, single-operator project, the Orthodox Christianity Knowledge Repository. This page tells you, in plain language, what data the site collects, why it collects it, who it's shared with, how long it's kept, and how to get it deleted. It is written to be honest rather than comprehensive. If you have a question that this page doesn’t answer, please reach out through our contact form.

What we collect

If you create an account

  • Your email address (used to sign in and to send transactional email).
  • Your name, if you provide one (optional; displayed on your account page and, if you're a member, on the public credits page unless you opt out or set a different display name).
  • A bcrypt hash of your password. The plaintext password is never stored.
  • Account metadata: role (admin / user), active/deactivated flag, account-created timestamp, last sign-in timestamp.
  • For members: your Stripe customer id, membership status, current billing period end, monthly chat-usage counters.

When you use the chat (“Ask the Fathers”)

  • Every question and answer turn is logged server-side for editorial review, we use the logs to understand what visitors are asking and to improve the corpus. Logs include the question text, the assistant's answer, which passages were retrieved, and (for member-paid turns) the token counts and cost.
  • Your IP address is hashed (SHA-256 with a server-side salt) before storage; we never write the raw IP. The hashed IP lets us spot abuse without identifying individuals.
  • Your browser's user-agent string is recorded with each turn for debugging.
  • If you're signed in, chat turns are grouped into persistent threads attached to your account so you can return to them.
  • Anonymous chats are still logged but not threaded, they live in the audit log only.
  • If you use the BYOK ("bring your own Anthropic API key") option, the key lives only in your browser's localStorage. It is sent to our server inline with each chat request and forwarded to Anthropic. We never store it.

If you donate or join membership

  • Stripe processes the payment. We never see your card details, billing address, or full payment information.
  • We store: the Stripe session/payment intent id, the amount, currency, status, your name and email (as you entered them at Stripe), any message you added, and the gap-item the donation is allocated to.

Security & operational data

  • An auth audit log records sign-in attempts (success and failure), password changes, role changes, deletions, and rate-limit hits. Includes a hashed IP and the user-agent.
  • Rate-limit counters live in an opaque-keyed table to slow brute-force attacks. Counters auto-reset.
  • One-time verification and password-reset tokens are stored as SHA-256 hashes only; the raw token only ever lives in the email we send you.

What we don't collect

  • No third-party analytics. No Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Segment, etc. No tracking pixels.
  • No cross-site advertising IDs. No retargeting.
  • No raw IP addresses (only salted hashes).
  • No card data of any kind.
  • No location data beyond what's implied by your IP.

Who we share data with

The site relies on a small set of third-party services. Each one receives only the data it needs to do its job:

  • Anthropic(chat), receives your question, the retrieved passages, and the recent conversation history each time you send a message in “Ask the Fathers.” Subject to Anthropic's privacy policy.
  • OpenAI (embeddings), when you search the corpus or ask the chat a question, your query text is sent to OpenAI for semantic-vector encoding. Subject to OpenAI's privacy policy.
  • Stripe (payments), handles all donations and subscriptions. We never see your card. Subject to Stripe's privacy policy.
  • Resend (transactional email), used to send verification, password-reset, and account-related emails. Subject to Resend's privacy policy.
  • Hosting provider, the site runs on commodity hosting infrastructure that receives normal web-server logs (request paths, timestamps, IPs) as part of operating any website. We don't add anything beyond what the host already logs.

We do not sell your data, share it for marketing, or use it for advertising.

Cookies and similar

The site uses one first-party cookie: the NextAuth session cookie (HTTP-only, secure, SameSite=Lax), which keeps you signed in. There are no analytics cookies, no advertising cookies, and no third-party tracking cookies.

Your Anthropic API key (if you set one) lives in your browser's localStorage. It never leaves your browser except when sent inline with a chat request, and is never stored server-side.

How long we keep things

  • Account data, until you delete your account.
  • Chat threads, until you delete them individually (from the sidebar) or delete your account.
  • Chat audit log, kept indefinitely for editorial review. Anonymous turns are not associated with you; signed-in turns can be linked to your user id (the link survives even if you delete the corresponding thread, but the user-id link is severed if you delete your account).
  • Donations, kept indefinitely to comply with standard financial-record retention.
  • Auth audit log, kept indefinitely for security review.
  • Rate-limit counters, auto-reset after the window expires; old rows are not actively pruned but are tied to opaque keys, not to you.

Your rights

You can:

  • Delete individual chat threads from the sidebar on the chat page.
  • Opt out of the credits page from your account page (if you're a member).
  • Cancel your membership at any time through the Stripe billing portal, linked from your account page.
  • Request deletion of your account through our contact form. Deleting your account will remove your personal information from the active database; donations and anonymized chat audit entries may be retained for the retention periods above.
  • Request a copy of your data through our contact form.

Children

This site is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under that age. If you believe a child has provided information to the site, please contact us so we can delete it.

International users

The site is operated from the United States. If you are accessing it from outside the US, you understand that your data is processed in the US and by the third-party services listed above (which may operate in other jurisdictions). This is a small project that does not currently maintain formal GDPR / CCPA / equivalent registrations; if you are subject to those regimes and that's a concern, please consider whether you wish to use the site, and feel free to reach out with specific questions or requests.

Security

Reasonable measures: bcrypt password hashing, server-side rate-limiting, HTTPS in transit, salted IP hashes, hash-stored verification tokens. No system is perfectly secure; if you discover a vulnerability, please report it responsibly through our contact form.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy materially, we'll update the “Last updated” date at the top of this page and, where practical, notify signed-in users by email. Continued use of the site after a change constitutes acceptance.

Contact

For privacy questions, requests, or to report a concern, use our contact form. Operated by Custom Skills LLC.