Privacy Policy

Version 2026-06-15.2

Church Rating, operated by Decima LLC (Texas, USA) (“we”), helps people find and review churches. This policy explains what we collect, why, and the choices you have. By using the service you agree to this policy and our Terms of Use.

What we collect

• Account information — your email and name, via our third-party authentication provider.
• Your reviews and ratings — including which churches you review. Because this can indicate your religious interests, we treat it as sensitive information and protect it accordingly.
• Your church-match answers — if you take the match quiz: the denominations you say you prefer and what you want in a church. This describes your religious beliefs, so we treat it as sensitive. We use it only to rank churches for you; it is never shown to churches or to other people. The quiz is optional, and deleting your account deletes your answers.
• Optional profile details — if you choose to provide them: age range or birth year, gender, and a home region. These are never required.
• Location — on the web, the country/region (and sometimes city) your activity comes from, derived from your network connection; we do not retain your raw IP address for analytics. In our iOS app, if you allow it, we use your device’s precise location to find churches near you. It is sent with each nearby search and can appear in routine server request logs, which we keep for a limited time for security and reliability. We do not use it to build a profile of you and we do not share it. You can decline, and you can turn it off at any time in iOS Settings.
• Usage data — basic technical information such as timestamps and device type, used to run and improve the service.
• Notification device token — only if you turn on notifications in our iOS app. When you tap Allow at the notification prompt, Apple gives us a device token: an address for that one device, so we can send you an announcement. We store it with your account, along with which device type it is, so we can stop sending if you sign out or turn notifications off. It is not an advertising identifier, we never use it to track you across apps or websites, and we do not share it. Notifications are off unless you allow them, you can turn them off at any time in iOS Settings, and signing out or deleting your account removes the token.
• Search terms — the words people type to find churches, stored only in aggregate (a count per church, never linked to you) and shown to that church’s managers, with low-count terms suppressed.
• How you found us — if you arrive from one of our ads, the campaign details in the link you clicked (its source, medium, campaign and content labels) and the click identifier the ad platform added to that link. We store these in a cookie we set ourselves, for 30 days, and record them with your account if you sign up, so we can tell which campaigns bring people who find the service useful. We use no advertising pixel or third-party tracker: the ad platform is not told that you visited, signed up, or did anything here, and the click identifier is only ever stored — never sent back. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal we set no such cookie and record nothing at all.
• Consent records — the version of this policy you accepted and when.

Why we use it

• To provide the service and compute church “Guide Scores.”
• To understand who uses the service and where, and to improve it.
• To produce aggregate insights and reports.
• To keep the service safe (spam/abuse prevention and moderation).

Our legal basis for collecting the above is your consent, which you may withdraw at any time (see “Your choices”).

We use first-party usage data — such as which pages are viewed and general activity on the site — to monitor and improve the performance of our app. We never sell it or share it with third parties for their own use, and you can opt out at any time via your browser’s Global Privacy Control.

To keep the site fast and available, a limited set of technical performance measurements — how long pages and network requests took, and general browser and device type — is processed on our behalf by a third-party performance-monitoring provider, under contract and only for that purpose. It is never used to build a profile of you, and it is never sold. That provider receives no error content, no review or message content, and no account details, and page addresses that could reveal which churches you looked at, your quiz answers, your search terms, or your location are redacted before they are sent. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, performance monitoring is switched off entirely and nothing is sent at all.

How we share it

We do not sell or share information that identifies you individually. Any insights we publish, license, or share with third parties are aggregated and anonymized, with small groups suppressed so individuals cannot be re-identified. We use trusted third-party service providers (for authentication, hosting, infrastructure, and performance monitoring) who process data on our behalf under contract, and we may disclose information if required by law.

The service providers we rely on fall into these categories, each processing data on our behalf under contract and only for the purpose named: authentication, hosting and application delivery, database and object storage, maps and address lookup, error monitoring, performance monitoring, email delivery, and payment processing (which handles card details directly — we never receive or store your card number). These providers are located in the United States, where the service is operated and where your information is stored and processed.

A church’s administrators may see aggregated, anonymized demographics — age and gender bands — about the people who reviewed their church. We never reveal information about an individual reviewer, and these breakdowns appear only once a church has enough reviews from members who shared their age or gender (at least 20), with any band representing fewer than five people suppressed, so no single reviewer can be identified.

One exception is entirely your choice: if you tap “Tell them you’re coming” to let a church know you plan to visit, we share the details you select on that screen — your name and/or email, your note, your intended date, and (only if you turn it on) your profile photo — with that church. The photo is off by default, shown only in the church’s own dashboard (never in the email), and you can turn it off or stay fully anonymous at any time. Saving a church to your own list is always private and never shared.

Retention

We keep your account information — your profile, reviews, quiz answers, and the record of which ad campaign you arrived from, if any — for as long as your account is active, then delete or anonymize it. You can delete your content or your account at any time.

Usage and diagnostic data is kept on fixed schedules and deleted automatically:

• Activity events (page views and similar usage records) — 90 days.
• Live-visitor signals (used only to show current activity) — 48 hours.
• Aggregated search terms (counts per church, never linked to you) — 400 days.
• Deletion records — when you delete your account we also remove your data from the services that hold copies of it. If one of those removals cannot be completed immediately we retain a minimal record of the outstanding request until it succeeds, and for no more than 30 days after it does.

Your choices

• Access & edit — view and update your reviews and profile details in the app.
• Get a copy of your data — download everything we hold about your account as a file, from your account settings, in a portable format you can keep or take elsewhere.
• Delete — delete individual reviews, or your whole account, which removes your associated data.
• Withdraw consent — stop providing optional data, or contact us to withdraw consent and close your account.
• Anonymous reviews — you can choose to have a review shown without your name.
• Opt out of analytics & performance monitoring — turn on Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track in your browser and we stop both, with nothing sent to any third party.
• Turn off notifications — in iOS Settings, at any time. We delete the device token when you sign out, and stop sending as soon as Apple tells us the app has been removed.

To use any of these, or if you would like us to act on a request on your behalf, contact us at the address below — we do not charge for it and we will not treat you differently for asking. If you believe we have mishandled your information you may also raise it with your local data protection authority.

Security

We use industry-standard measures to protect your data, segregate sensitive fields, and limit access. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to reduce risk and respond to incidents.

Children

The service is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data.

Contact

Questions or requests about your data? Contact Decima LLC at support@churchrating.com.