Your account. You sign in with Apple. From that we receive a stable sign-in identifier and, as you choose to share them with Apple, your name and email address (Apple may give us a private relay address instead of your real one). You may also give the app a first name to greet you by — it’s optional, and you can change it on the You page.

What you bring. The matter you write, your answers to the questions it asks, and anything you add to a matter later. This is the heart of the service, and it is religious and deeply personal by nature — we treat it that way. We process it only with your consent and only to provide the service described below.

What stays on your device. Some of what you write rests only on your device and is not sent to us until you choose to bring it — unfinished tellings you set down, and the reflections you keep along a walk. These are stored encrypted on the device and excluded from device backups.

Notifications. If you turn on notifications, your device gives us an anonymous notification token so we can tell you when a reading is ready, when a question is waiting, or when you asked to be reminded of a walk. The token identifies a device, not a person, it carries none of your words, and you can switch notifications off at any time in your phone’s settings.

What we don’t collect. The app contains no advertising, no tracking SDKs, and no third-party analytics. We do not collect your location, contacts, or photos. We never sell personal information, and we never use what you bring to train AI models.

What you bring is used for one purpose: to prepare your discernment reading and the steps that follow from it.

Preparing a reading involves artificial intelligence, working under our own governance: your matter and answers are sent to our AI provider (OpenAI) to help draft and check the reading, with provider-side storage disabled on those requests, and the result is released to you only after it passes our safety and doctrinal checks. AI output is never shown to you as a final record until our system has validated and released it. Nothing you bring is ever scored, profiled for advertising, sold, or used to train models.

The app also runs automated safety screening (on your device and on our servers) so that, if what you write suggests you may be in danger, it can put real help in front of you. This screening exists only to show you help resources — it does not notify anyone else.

Who can see your words. No one reads what you bring in the ordinary course of the service — readings are prepared and released by the governed system above. One restricted reviewer role, held by the founder alone, can access case records when operating or governing the service genuinely requires it; every such access is recorded, and the record is kept even from us — an access that cannot be logged does not happen.

When you ask for help. Messages in the support room are answered by a real person. So a person can read and answer, your first name and the support messages that need a person’s answer may reach our team’s private Slack, where we read and reply. Support messages only — never your matters, readings, or prayers.

Your data is stored on Amazon Web Services infrastructure and protected in transit with encrypted connections and at rest with industry-standard protections. Access is limited to what operating the service requires. No system is perfectly secure, and we don’t claim to be — but protecting what you bring is treated as a core duty of the product, not an afterthought.

You can delete your account at any time from the You page, inside the app. When you do: your access ends immediately, on every device, and your sign-in identity is unlinked — if you ever return, you begin again with a fresh account; everything kept on your device by the app is removed; your words — your matters, answers, readings, and anything you brought — are permanently erased from our systems within 30 days; and operational records that contain none of your words — kept under internal identifiers no longer linked to your sign-in identity — may be retained, so the integrity of our safety, governance, and billing records is preserved.

Deletion cannot be undone. It is immediate and irreversible — the 30 days are how long our systems take to finish erasing our copies, not a window in which anything can be brought back. If you have questions after deleting, you can still email support@beforegod.app.

You can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it (the in-app door is the fastest way). We handle personal information in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles, and we extend the same courtesies — access, correction, deletion, and consent withdrawal — to everyone, wherever you are. To exercise any of these, email support@beforegod.app. If you’re unsatisfied with our response, you may complain to your local privacy regulator (in Australia, the OAIC).

The beforegod.app website (not the app) uses Google Analytics and an X (Twitter) pixel to understand how people find us, which set cookies in your browser. Neither of them loads until you allow it: we ask on your first visit, and if you decline — or simply never answer — nothing measuring runs at all. You can change your answer at any time using the control below, and declining clears the analytics cookies this site has set. Cookies set on X’s own domain are outside our reach, and we don’t pretend otherwise.

If you join the waitlist, the email you submit is processed by Formspree and used only to contact you about Before God.

Before God is not directed to children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect personal information from them.

Before God offers Christian discernment for reflection. It isn’t professional, medical, or mental-health advice — in an emergency, contact your local emergency services.

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it, and material changes will be told to you plainly in the app. Questions, requests, or concerns: the support room inside the app (the ס door), or support@beforegod.app.