Privacy

The short version

You can read every word of this Bible without an account, and if you never sign in we hold nothing about you that could identify you. Your reading age, your place, your text size and your progress through a reading plan are stored by your own browser and never sent to us.

We do not sell anything, we do not run advertising, we do not track you across other websites, and there is no third-party advertising or analytics network on this site.

If you never sign in

Stored on your device, not ours. Your chosen reading age, reading mode, text size, the last chapter you were in, your progress through any reading plan, and your narration speed and voice are kept in your browser using local storage. They stay on that device, they are not sent anywhere, and clearing your browser data removes them permanently. We cannot see them and cannot recover them.

Chapters saved for reading offline. If your browser supports it, chapters you open are kept on your own device so they still open when you have no signal. The text is the same public text the site serves everyone; it is stored by your browser, it is never sent back to us, and we cannot see which chapters you have. Nothing is downloaded in advance, so you only ever hold what you have actually read. The offline page lists what is saved, and clearing your browser data removes all of it.

Aggregate visit statistics. We count page views, shares and searches, and measure how quickly pages load. This is cookieless: it sets no cookie and does not follow you to other sites. To count people rather than visits we store a short code derived from your request, which changes every day, so it can tell two readers apart within a day and cannot connect you to yesterday. Your IP address is never stored. We see totals, not people.

Links we hand out. When we tell somebody about this site, the link we give them may carry a short tag saying which list it was sent to, so we can tell whether telling people was worth doing. The tag names the list and never you: everyone who follows that link carries the same one, and it is removed from the address in your browser as soon as the page opens. It is kept for as long as that tab is open and is gone when you close it.

Server logs. Our hosting provider records ordinary request logs, which include IP addresses, for a limited period, in order to serve the site and defend it from abuse. That is a normal function of hosting anything on the internet and is not something we mine.

If you sign in

An account is needed for anything the site has to keep for you: marking and annotating verses, writing by hand in the margin, joining or saving a shared reading, group reading plans, and carrying your place and your progress between devices. Everything you can read here, you can read without one. Signing in is by Google or Apple, and we never see or store the password to either.

From whichever you choose, we receive and our sign-in provider stores:

• your email address, or the relay address Apple gives us if you hide yours
• the name on that account, and a profile picture where one is given

Beyond that, we store only what you make:

• Highlights. Which verses you highlighted, as book, chapter and verse references, plus any note you attach. These are private to you. No other user, signed in or not, can read them.
• Reading sessions. Which session you joined, which verses you marked as read in it, whether your hand is raised, and the display name shown to the others in that session.
• What you say in a session. Questions and replies you write during a shared reading are stored with that session, along with the verse they were about and the name shown beside them. Everyone in the session can see them, which is the point of writing them there.
• Studies you save. Saving a session keeps a copy of it: its title, the passages read, who was there, the highlights made, and a transcript of what was said. It is a copy, so it does not change afterwards and does not disappear when the session ends.
• People you read with. If you invite someone to a session or a reading plan, we store who invited whom, and whether the invitation was answered.
• Group reading plans. Which group you joined or created, its name, and the name you go by in it.
• Which chapters you have read. While you are signed in, opening a chapter records that you have read it: the book, the chapter, how many times, and when you first and last opened it. It is one row per chapter rather than one per visit, so it can tell you how far through the Bible you are and cannot reconstruct a timeline of your reading. Signed out, nothing of this is written at all.
• Where you were up to. The last chapter you opened, a bookmark for each book you have started, and which days of a reading plan you have finished, so you can pick up where you left off on any device.
• How long you read. A count of minutes per day. Not what you read in them.
• Anything you write or draw on a verse. A typed note, and handwriting made in the margin beside a verse. Handwriting is stored as the lines you drew rather than as a picture, so it can be redrawn at any size and comes out of the export as something you can still read. Both are private to you, on the same terms as a highlight.
• Your settings. Reading age, which translations you show, text size, and your narration voice and speed.

Access is enforced by the database itself, using row level security, rather than by application code alone. This application holds no administrative key capable of bypassing those rules.

Reading aloud

The Listen feature uses the speech synthesis built into your own browser and device. No audio is produced by us, nothing is uploaded, and no recording is made. Which voice and speed you prefer is stored on your device. On a television the app routes this through the set’s own text-to-speech instead, because a television browser has none; it is still the device speaking, and still nothing sent to us.

Shared reading sessions can carry live voice, and this describes what happens when they do rather than what might. Nobody is asked for a microphone by arriving: audio is joined by choice, on a button, and until then no permission is requested. Once joined, the sound travels directly between the people in the room, peer to peer. It does not pass through us and it is never recorded. What does pass through our server is the handshake that lets two browsers find each other, which carries network addresses and no audio. Google's public STUN servers are used to work out those addresses; on networks strict enough to need a relay, the audio simply fails to connect rather than being routed through anyone, and the reading carries on without it.

On a television

The television app is a way of opening this same site on a set that has no browser of its own. It is not a separate service and it does not collect anything the site does not: the same page, the same storage on the device, the same counts described above.

What it keeps on the set. Your reading age, mode, place, text size and narration preferences, exactly as a browser would, so the app does not greet you as a stranger every time you open it. It stays on the television and is removed by uninstalling the app or clearing its data.

What it asks for. Network access, and nothing else. No microphone, no camera, no location, no contacts, no account on the set, and no advertising identifier. There is no advertising or analytics library inside the app.

Who else is involved

Running a website means relying on other companies. Each is bound by its own agreement with us to process data only on our instructions:

• A hosting company serves these pages, keeps the ordinary server logs described above, and measures how quickly pages load.
• A database company stores everything listed in the section above: accounts, highlights and notes, handwriting, sessions and what is said in them, saved studies, reading plans and progress, and which chapters you have read. The page-view counts are kept there too.
• Google and Apple handle sign-in, and only the one you choose, and only if you choose to sign in at all. Neither is involved if you never do.

Nothing you read or write here is sent anywhere else. The text on these pages is finished before the page is built and is served as it stands. Reading, highlighting, writing a note or joining a session involves no company beyond the ones above.

Fonts are served from this site rather than fetched from a font provider, so loading a page does not tell anyone else that you did.

If you need to know exactly which companies are involved, for example because you are assessing this site for an organization, write to us and we will tell you.

Children

This site is written to be read by children, and the youngest reading band is intended for ages five to eight. It requires no account to read. We do not knowingly create accounts for children under 13. If you believe a child has signed in, write to us and we will delete the account and everything attached to it.

Getting rid of your data

Write to hello@theplainbible.com and ask, and we will delete your account and everything stored against it. There is nothing we keep back. Anything held only in your browser is yours to clear at any time, without asking us.

One thing that cannot be undone: if you spoke in a shared reading and someone else saved that session, their saved copy keeps what was said, in the same way a photograph someone took of a meeting is theirs. Deleting your account removes your own copy and your account from ours, and cannot reach into theirs. If that matters to you, ask the person who saved it.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects what we collect or what we do with it, the date at the top will change and the new terms will apply from then.

Questions: hello@theplainbible.com · Terms of Use