Privacy Policy

LightOfTheCross is a Bible-learning app published by BuildByRK, an individual developer based in India. This policy explains exactly what the app and the website store about you, why, who else can see it, and how to get rid of it.

Who is responsible for your data

BuildByRK is the controller of the data described below. LightOfTheCross is a solo-developer product with no office and no postal address to publish, so the contact channel for anything privacy-related — a question, a request, a complaint — is a support mailbox we actually read: support@lightofthecross.app.

There is no sign-in

LightOfTheCross does not use Google Sign-In, email/password accounts, or any other login. Every install is an anonymous guest identified by a random account id, carried by a session cookie stored on your device. The app never receives your name, your email address, or a profile photo. The only thing that can link an account across a reinstall is a Google Play purchase — Play tells us a purchase belongs to the same account, we never see who you are.

Accounts made on our old website. Before LightOfTheCross was an app, it had a website you could sign in to with Google. If you made an account there, we still hold the email address you signed in with, for that account only, so we can find it if you write to us — to delete it, for example, or about a membership you bought on the website. It is not used for anything else. The name, photo and sign-in id that the website also received are no longer kept. Basis: legitimate interest in answering requests about your own account. Retention: until the account is deleted.

What we collect, and why

Account id and session cookie. A random identifier created on first launch, and the cookie that proves a request belongs to it. This is how the app keeps your progress without asking you to sign in. Basis: contract (providing the service you opened the app for). Retention: the account id lasts until you delete your account; the session cookie is valid for 90 days and is reissued as you use the app.

Onboarding preferences. Your familiarity with the Bible, your study goal, how much time you have, your timezone, and your reminder hour, so the app can pick a starting point and (if you turn reminders on) send them at the right time. Basis: contract for tailoring your path; consent for the reminder itself, which you can turn off in Settings at any time. Retention: until you delete your account.

Motivation and stance. During onboarding we ask why you're here (for example, "to grow in my faith") and how you'd like scripture approached — as your faith, as culture, as history, or still working it out. This can reveal something about your religious or philosophical outlook, so we treat it deliberately rather than folding it into "onboarding preferences" above: the question screen itself carries a clear, plainly worded disclosure, shown right before you answer, explaining that the answer is stored and used only to personalise your reading tone and the content path you're shown. Basis: your explicit consent, given at the point you answer that question and reaffirmed here — not inferred from general use of the app. Retention: until you delete your account.

Learning activity. Which lessons you have finished, your answers, your XP, your streak, which cards you have collected, when each review card is next due, and your daily puzzle results. This is the app working. Basis: contract. Retention: until you delete your account.

Journal and prayer text. Anything you write in the journal is private to your account, is never scored or ranked, and is never shown to another user — there is no social feature in LightOfTheCross and nothing you write is ever visible to anyone but you. When you keep an entry, the app first saves it on your device in encrypted storage, and deletes it from the device once our server confirms it has it. If it cannot be sent (no connection, a membership that has lapsed, or the server refusing it) it stays there, encrypted, until it is sent or you discard it. Deleting your account deletes it from the device too. Basis: contract. Retention: until you delete your account.

First-party behavioural telemetry. Events like starting or finishing a lesson, or leaving one partway through, sent to our own backend (not a third-party analytics network) so we can see what is confusing and fix it. Basis: legitimate interest in understanding and improving the product — you can object at any time by writing to support@lightofthecross.app. Retention: kept roughly 90 days by our hosting provider, Cloudflare, and then aged out automatically; it cannot be deleted for one individual before then (see "Deleting your account" below), but it is pseudonymous and is no longer tied to your account once your account is deleted.

Crash reports. Crash reporting is off by default. If you turn it on — a one-line disclosure appears the first time the choice is offered, and the toggle lives in Settings → Data & privacy from then on — Firebase Crashlytics collects anonymous crash diagnostics so we can find and fix bugs. Basis: consent — the Settings toggle is how you withdraw it. Retention: Firebase's default of about 90 days.

Push notification token. After the age check is passed, the app registers a Firebase Cloud Messaging token for the device so subscription changes — such as a renewal, expiry or refund — can update access promptly. If you opt into a daily reminder, the same token delivers it at the hour you chose. Basis: contract for entitlement updates and consent for the optional reminder. Retention: until you delete your account or the token goes unused for 180 days.

Purchase and subscription status. Whether you have an active trial, subscription or lifetime purchase, the Google Play order id, and the plan you are on. Your card details never reach our servers — Google Play Billing handles the payment itself. Basis: contract, and a legal basis for the billing records we are required to keep for tax and dispute purposes. Retention: subscription status until you delete your account; the underlying billing/entitlement event records are kept 2 years to handle billing disputes.

What we do not collect

• No name, email address, phone number, physical address, or profile photo — apart from the email of an account made on our old website, described above.
• No advertising identifiers. There are no ads in LightOfTheCross and no ad networks in it.
• No contacts, no photos, no files, no microphone, no camera, no precise location.
• No third-party analytics SDK. We removed Firebase Analytics; the only telemetry is the first-party kind described above, sent straight to our own backend.
• We do not sell your data, and we do not share it for advertising. We never have.

Who else can see it

We use a small number of processors, each for one job:

• Google Play Billing — processes your payment and tells us the resulting entitlement (active, expired, refunded). Google never gives us your card details.
• Google / Firebase — delivers entitlement updates and the optional daily-reminder push notification (Firebase Cloud Messaging), and, only if you turn it on, collects crash reports (Crashlytics).
• Cloudflare — hosts the app's backend, our database, and the first-party telemetry pipeline described above.

Google and Cloudflare are both certified under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, and where that does not apply we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses — the recognised mechanisms for moving data outside the EU/UK lawfully. No other user of LightOfTheCross can see anything about you: there is no public profile, no leaderboard, and nothing in the app shows one person to another.

Children and age

LightOfTheCross is intended for a general audience aged 13 and up — 16 and up if you are in the EU/EEA or UK, and 18 and up if you are in India, matching each region's own rules on when a young person can agree to this kind of service on their own. Before onboarding continues, the app asks you to confirm you meet the age that applies to you, and stops there — without creating an account or collecting anything else — if you don't. Where Google Play provides an age signal for your account (it does in some regions, and only if you have agreed to share it), the app also reads that signal at the same check and applies the same rule. It is used only for that, is never stored, and is never sent to us. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone younger than the age that applies to them. If you believe a younger person has used the app and data was collected from them, write to support@lightofthecross.app and we will delete it.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• Access and portability — download a copy of your data. Settings → Data & privacy → Download my data exports it as a file, in-app, whenever you want it.
• Erasure — delete your account and everything attached to it, in the app (Settings → Delete my account) or on the web at lightofthecross.app/delete-account.
• Objection — to the telemetry we process on a legitimate-interest basis; write to us and we will stop for you.
• Withdrawal of consent — for reminders and crash reporting, at any time, in Settings. For your motivation/stance answer, which has no dedicated toggle yet, write to support@lightofthecross.app and we will delete that answer from your profile; deleting your account removes it as well.
• Complaint — to your local data-protection supervisory authority, if you believe we have handled your data unlawfully.

India / DPDP Act. If you are in India, you may also raise a grievance with our grievance officer at support@lightofthecross.app (subject line "Grievance"), and, if unresolved, with India's Data Protection Board.

Deleting your account

In the app: Settings → Delete my account. On the web: lightofthecross.app/delete-account. Either one erases your profile, your progress, your streak, your collected cards, your review schedule, everything you wrote, and your reminder token from our database immediately. Crash reports and behavioural telemetry, which cannot be deleted individually from our analytics provider, age out automatically within about 90 days instead.

Records of payments already made are kept by Google Play under its own legal obligations, and billing/entitlement event records are kept for 2 years to handle disputes; we cannot delete those on your behalf, and deleting your account does not cancel an active subscription. Cancel a Play subscription in the Google Play app.

We do not sell or share your data

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for cross-context behavioural advertising, targeted advertising, or any other advertising purpose. We never have.

Security

Everything between the app and our servers travels over encrypted HTTPS. We never store your Google Play credentials or card details — Google Play Billing holds those. There are no third-party ad networks integrated into LightOfTheCross, which removes a whole class of tracking that most free apps carry.

If something goes wrong

If we ever become aware of a data breach affecting your personal data, we will notify affected users and any regulator we are legally required to notify without undue delay, and within the timeframes the law sets — including the 72-hour window that both GDPR and India's DPDP Act require for notifying a supervisory authority.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes materially we will say so with an in-app notice before the change takes effect. The date at the top of this page always reflects the current version.

Contact

support@lightofthecross.app