Privacy Policy

Effective date: August 6, 2026

Faith Journey is a private prayer and encouragement app for small circles — families, friends, and faith communities. This policy explains what information the app collects, how it’s used, and the choices you have. We’ve written it in plain language on purpose.

The short version: your prayers and reflections belong to you and your circle. We don’t run ads, we don’t sell data, and we don’t track you across other apps or websites.

Who we are

Faith Journey is operated by Shannon Formby (“we,” “us”). If you have any questions about this policy or your data, contact us at info@myfaithjourneyapp.com.

Information you give us

When you use Faith Journey, you provide:

Your profile. A display name (usually a first name), and an avatar color and initial. We do not currently require an email address, password, or phone number to use the app.

Your content. Prayer requests, answered-prayer testimonies, journal entries, reflections, praises, encouragement notes, comments, and reactions (hearts and “I’m praying”). Who can see each of these depends on the visibility you choose — see “Who can see what” below.

Your circles. The name of any group you create, its invite code, who belongs to it, and who its leaders are.

Information collected automatically

Sign-in. The app uses anonymous authentication (a random identifier tied to your device) to keep your content secure. You may optionally sign in with Apple so your account survives a new phone or reinstall; if you do, we store the identifier Apple gives us. Apple does not share your email address with us unless you choose to. We do not collect your identity from anonymous sign-in.

Activity signals. To make the app work — streaks, gentle reminders, and the leader dashboard — we record things like when you last opened the app, your daily engagement streak, and a count of encouragements you’ve sent.

Push notification token. If you allow notifications, your device’s push token is stored so the app can send you notifications you’ve opted into (new prayers, encouragement, daily verse, and similar). Every notification category can be turned off in the app.

Stored only on your device (never uploaded): your personal prayer reminders, follow-up nudge schedule, notification preferences for local reminders, and one-time flags like whether you’ve seen the welcome tour.

Who can see what

Private content (private prayers, unshared journal entries) is visible only to you.
Shared content (prayers, testimonies, reflections, and praises you share) is visible to the members of the circle you shared it with.
Private encouragements are visible only to the sender and the people they’re addressed to.
Circle leaders (the circle’s creator and co-leaders they appoint) can see activity signals for their circle — such as who has been quiet lately and streaks — to help them care for the group. Leaders cannot see anyone’s private prayers or private journal entries.
Nobody outside your circles can see your content. Faith Journey has no public feed.

The Guided Prayer companion (AI)

Faith Journey includes an optional Guided Prayer feature. When you use it, the text you type is sent securely to Anthropic (the maker of the Claude AI model) to generate a personalized prayer and matching scripture. Under the API terms we use, Anthropic does not use this content to train its models. Your Guided Prayer text is not shared with your circle unless you choose to save and share the resulting prayer.

If the Guided Prayer feature detects language suggesting a crisis, the app will show the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline instead of a generated prayer. This happens on-screen only; we do not alert anyone.

Keeping circles safe

Every member can report content and block another member from inside the app. Reports are sent to us for review; we aim to review every report within 24 hours and remove content that violates our Terms of Service. The app also automatically screens posts for slurs, explicit sexual content, and threatening language before they are published. Reports include the reported content and who sent it, and are visible only to us — never to other members.

Service providers we rely on

Google Firebase (Cloud Firestore, Authentication, Cloud Functions) — stores and syncs your content.
Expo — delivers app updates and push notifications.
Anthropic — powers the Guided Prayer companion (see above).
Apple — distributes the app through the App Store and provides optional Sign in with Apple.

Each of these providers is bound by their own security and privacy commitments. We share with them only what’s needed to run the feature you’re using.

What we don’t do

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information. Ever.
We do not show ads or share data with advertisers.
We do not use third-party analytics or cross-app tracking.
We do not read your private prayers or journal entries in the course of operating the app, except if strictly necessary to investigate abuse, comply with law, or fix a technical problem you’ve reported.

Your choices and rights

Edit or delete your content at any time from within the app — your prayers, journal entries, praises, and encouragements all have edit/delete controls.
Leave a circle at any time from the Members screen.
Block a member so you no longer see anything they share, and unblock them later from the Members screen.
Turn off any notification category in the app’s notification preferences, or disable notifications entirely in your device settings.
Delete your account and data — right in the app. On the Members screen, tap “Delete my account.” This permanently removes your profile and everything you’ve posted. You can also email us at info@myfaithjourneyapp.com and we will delete your profile and content within 30 days.

When you delete your account, comments you left inside other members’ prayer threads remain part of those conversations, and circles you created that still have other members continue for those members — consistent with the principle that shared circle history belongs to the circle.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional legal rights over your data (such as access, correction, or portability). Contact us and we’ll honor them.

Children

Faith Journey is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 is using the app, contact us and we will remove their information.

Data retention and security

Your content is retained while your account is active so your circle’s shared history (like “On This Day” memories) keeps working. Data is stored with industry-standard protections through Google Firebase, and access is controlled by security rules so only the right people can read or change each piece of content.

No system is perfectly secure, but we’ve designed Faith Journey so that the most sensitive things — your private prayers and journal — are private by default.

Changes to this policy

If we make meaningful changes, we’ll update the effective date above and let you know in the app. Continued use after a change means you accept the updated policy.

Contact

Questions, requests, or concerns: info@myfaithjourneyapp.com

Comments

Suggested text: When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

Suggested text: If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Cookies

Suggested text: If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Suggested text: Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Who we share your data with

Suggested text: If you request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email.

How long we retain your data

Suggested text: If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

Suggested text: If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where your data is sent

Suggested text: Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.