Privacy Policy

Vigil is a prayer app. People write down what they need prayer for, and other people pray for it. That only works if you can trust us with what you write — so we collect as little as possible, show it to as few people as possible, and sell it to no one, ever.

Who we are

Milo Grimm ("Vigil," "we," "us") provides the Vigil mobile application. You can reach us any time at [email protected].

What we collect

Information you give us

• Your name. A first name, and optionally a last name. Other people only ever see your first name and the initial of your last name — for example, "Ruth M." Your full last name is never displayed to anyone.
• Optional profile details. A profile photo, an avatar color, and a city label if you choose to add one. The city is free text that you type; we never collect GPS or precise location data of any kind. Your city is shown only to members of your circles, and only if you turn that setting on.
• Prayers you write. The text of prayers you write, and who you chose to share each one with — everyone, a specific circle, or only yourself.
• Circles. The circles you create or join, and their invite codes.
• Account credentials, if you save your account. An email address, or an identifier provided by Apple or Google if you sign in with them. We never see or store your password for those services.

Information created by using the app

• Your prayer activity. When you hold the flame, how long you held it, how many prayers you carried, your weekly rhythm, and the milestones you have earned.
• Your settings. Notification preferences, haptics and sound preferences, and your weekly rhythm goal.
• A push notification token, if you allow notifications, so that we can send the notifications you asked for.

What we do not collect

• No precise or background location.
• No contacts, photos library, microphone, or health data.
• No advertising identifiers, and no third-party advertising or analytics SDKs.
• No cross-app or cross-site tracking of any kind.

How your prayers are shared

Every prayer you write carries an audience that you choose when you write it, and we honor it:

• Everyone. The prayer may be passed to other people to pray for, and your name is never attached to it — there is no way to attach one, and no other user can discover who wrote it. We do store an internal link between you and your prayer so that it appears in your own history and so you can delete it. That link is never shown to other users and is not used to identify you to anyone else — except where we need to act on a safety concern, such as a prayer that suggests someone may be at risk of harm, or where the law requires it. Anything you write in the prayer itself is shared exactly as you wrote it, so please don't include details you wouldn't want a stranger to read.
• My circle. Only members of the circle you chose can read it. Here — and only here — you may choose to attach your name, in which case members of that circle see your first name and last initial. The choice is per prayer, and off unless you turn it on.
• Just me. No other user can ever see it, and it never enters the prayer relay — nothing about it goes to another person. It is not checked by the safety filter that applies to shared prayers, and it cannot be held or flagged. Two things do apply, and we would rather say them plainly: a check runs on your own phone, only to offer you a helpline if what you wrote suggests you are struggling, and its result is never sent or recorded anywhere; and, like everything you keep in Vigil, the text is stored in our database, where the people who run the service can read it — we do that only to keep the service working, to act on a safety concern, or where the law requires it, and never for any other reason.

How long you prayed is shown only to you, on your own screen. It is never shown to other users, never ranked, and never compared.

Prayers are sensitive information, and the law treats them that way

A prayer can reveal your religious or philosophical beliefs, and often your health, your family, or your grief. Under the UK and EU GDPR that is special category data (Article 9), and several US state privacy laws treat religious belief as sensitive personal data. We handle it accordingly.

Our lawful basis for processing it is your explicit consent, given when you write a prayer and choose who it is for. You can withdraw that consent at any time by deleting a prayer, or by deleting your account, and we do not use prayers for anything other than the purpose you chose them for. We never use them to train models, we never sell them, and we never use them for advertising.

Why we process your information

We use the information above only to operate the app: to show you your own prayers and history, to pass prayers to other people according to the audience you chose, to show your circles who is praying, to keep your rhythm and milestones, to send the notifications you have turned on, and to keep the service secure and working. For users in jurisdictions that require a legal basis, we rely on the performance of our agreement with you and, where applicable, your consent — which you can withdraw at any time in Settings.

Automated checks on what you write

Two automated checks exist. Neither is artificial intelligence, and neither involves a human reading your prayer unless you ask us to look at something.

• A safety check on prayers you share. When you send a prayer to everyone or to a circle, it is checked against a fixed list of text patterns for threats of violence against another person and for abusive slurs. If it matches, the prayer is held and not passed on, and you are told so and offered the chance to reword it or keep it private. This is pattern matching — a list of rules written by hand — not a model, and it makes no judgement about you. Prayers you keep to yourself are never checked this way, and never leave your device for it. If you believe a prayer was held wrongly, write to us and a person will look at it.
• A support check that runs only on your phone. Anything you type, including a prayer marked "Just me", is checked on your own device against a list of phrases that can signal despair — solely so the app can offer you a link to a helpline. The result of that check is never sent anywhere, never recorded, never attached to your account, and never seen by us or by anyone else. It is not stored even on your phone. Nothing about it is reported to any person, service, or emergency authority, and seeing that offer does not change who receives your prayer or how.

Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for advertising. We use a small number of service providers who process data on our behalf:

• Supabase — database, authentication, and file storage hosting. Your prayers, profile, circles, and any photo you upload are stored here.
• Expo — delivery of push notifications, and app updates. Expo receives your push token and the text of a notification it is sending you.
• Apple — in three separate roles: delivering push notifications to your device through the Apple Push Notification service; processing any membership you buy through the App Store; and, only if you choose it, confirming your identity when you sign in with Apple.
• Google — only if you choose to sign in with Google, to confirm your identity.
• RevenueCat — managing memberships and purchases. RevenueCat receives an account identifier and details of what you bought and when. It never receives your prayers, your name, or your email address.

We may also disclose information if we are legally required to, or where necessary to protect someone's safety, but we will resist overbroad requests.

Keeping it, and deleting it

We keep your information for as long as your account exists. You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Delete account. Doing so removes your prayers, your circles, your profile and your photos from Vigil entirely — including prayers other people are praying for at that moment — and nothing is kept in any form, anonymized or otherwise.

Apple and RevenueCat hold their own records of any purchase you made, independently and under their own retention policies; we do not control those. Deleting your Vigil account does not cancel or refund an active subscription — manage that in your Apple ID settings under Subscriptions.

If you use Vigil without saving your account, your account exists only on that device. If you delete the app without saving it, that account cannot be recovered by us or by you.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, or export your personal information, to object to or restrict certain processing, and to withdraw consent. Most of these you can exercise directly in the app; for anything else, write to us at [email protected] and we will respond within the time your law requires. We will not treat you differently for exercising a right. If you are in the EEA or UK, you may also complain to your local data protection authority. If you are in California, we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined by the CCPA/CPRA.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit, access to it is restricted at the database level so that your private content is readable only by your account, and we limit who on our side can reach production data. No service can promise perfect security, but we take this seriously — people write vulnerable things here.

Children

Vigil is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has given us information, write to us and we will delete it.

International transfers

We operate from the United States, and your information may be stored and processed there or in other countries where our service providers operate. Where required, we use appropriate safeguards for those transfers.

Changes

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top, and for anything significant we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.

Contact

Questions, requests, or concerns: [email protected].