Privacy Policy

Last updated: 10 July 2026 (v3)

Who We Are

Breaking of Bread is operated by Francesco Galassi, based in Leeds, United Kingdom. Francesco Galassi is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. You can contact him at [email protected].

What Data We Collect and Why

Account data (email address, display name)

Collected when you register. Used to provide the service and identify your account. Legal basis: performance of a contract.

Testimony content

Text and other content you submit as a testimony. Retained in anonymised form if you delete your account. Legal basis: performance of a contract; legitimate interest (preserving the archive).

Location data (city, country, coordinates)

Optional. Provided by you when submitting a testimony. The city and country you choose are shown publicly on the testimony itself — including when you publish it anonymously, as anonymity hides your name but not the location you add — and are also used to place testimonies on the public map feature. Coordinates are used only for the map and are never shown as text. If you do not want a location shown, leave the field empty when you submit. Legal basis: legitimate interest.

Comments, votes, favourites, amens, and collections

Activity you perform on the platform, including comments, up/down votes, favourites, "Amen" reactions, and the named collections in which you save testimonies. Used to power interactive features. Legal basis: performance of a contract.

Reading activity (Faith Passport)

When you are signed in, we record which testimonies you read so we can show your Faith Passport (the nations, themes and sections you have visited) and improve recommendations. On a faith platform this reading activity can reveal religious interest, so we treat it as special category data (see "Special Category Data" below). Legal basis: your explicit consent, given when you use signed-in engagement features; you can withdraw it at any time by deleting your account, which erases this history.

Aggregate readership (approximate country)

When a testimony is viewed, we derive an approximate country from request metadata and store it to show authors how far their story has reached. This record is not linked to your account and is kept only at country level. Specific countries are shown to an author only once a testimony has enough readers to keep individual readers unidentifiable. Legal basis: legitimate interest.

Profile picture

An optional avatar you may upload. We re-encode the image and strip embedded metadata (including any camera or location data) before storing it, and it is shown publicly only after moderator approval. Legal basis: consent (recorded when you upload it); removed when you delete the picture or your account.

Account security logs

Records of changes you make to your account credentials and settings: email, password (the event only, never the value), language, profile fields, and notification preferences. Used to protect your account and detect unauthorised changes. Retained for up to 24 months, then deleted. Legal basis: legitimate interest (account security).

App feedback

Feedback you submit through the platform. Used to improve the service. Legal basis: legitimate interest.

Semantic embeddings and keywords

Derived automatically from submitted testimony content to power search and discovery features. These are not directly personal data but are generated from content you provide. Legal basis: legitimate interest.

Admin logs

Records of moderation actions taken on the platform. Used to maintain platform integrity and accountability. Legal basis: legal obligation; legitimate interest.

Retention

Account data: retained for the lifetime of your account. Email addresses are hashed upon account deletion.
Testimony content: retained in anonymised form after account deletion and not removed from the archive.
App feedback: retained for up to 2 years.
Reading activity, amens and collections: retained for the lifetime of your account and erased when you delete it.
Aggregate readership:the approximate-country view records are not linked to your account; they are retained at country level to power authors' reach statistics.
Profile picture: retained until you remove it or delete your account.
IP addresses: IP addresses in server request logs are retained for 30 days and then automatically purged by hosting infrastructure. We never store your IP address in our database; the consent record described below keeps only a one-way hash of it, retained until you delete your account.

Third-Party Data Processors

We use the following third-party services to operate the platform. Each acts as a data processor on our behalf.

Supabase (Supabase Inc., USA): authentication and database hosting.
Ionos(1&1 IONOS SE, Germany): primary server hosting, United Kingdom data centre.
OpenAI (OpenAI LLC, USA): semantic embeddings and keyword extraction.
Anthropic (Anthropic PBC, USA): keyword extraction.
Resend (Resend Inc., USA): transactional email.
Cloudflare (Cloudflare Inc., USA): media storage (R2).

International Transfers

Supabase, OpenAI, Anthropic, Resend, and Cloudflare are based in the United States. Transfers to these providers are made under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. The primary database is hosted in the United Kingdom via the Ionos VPS UK data centre, so testimony content and account data at rest remain in the UK.

Your Rights Under UK GDPR

You have the following rights regarding your personal data:

Right of access
Right to rectification
Right to erasure
Right to restriction of processing
Right to data portability
Right to object

To exercise any of these rights, email [email protected] or use the account settings page.

Marketing Use of Testimonies

We may feature published testimonies to promote the platform. Marketing use shows testimonies in anonymised form (no name, no precise location) unless the testimony was published anonymously. You choose whether a testimony may be used for marketing when you submit it, and you can later opt a testimony into marketing from its edit page. Opting a testimony into marketing is a one-way grant: adverts already published cannot be withdrawn. To stop future marketing use, delete the testimony or contact us at [email protected].

Consent Records

When you submit a testimony we record that you accepted these terms: the version, the time, and a one-way hash of your IP address (never the address itself). These records are deleted when you delete your account.

Special Category Data

Testimonies reveal religious belief and may reveal health information. We rely on your explicit consent (UK GDPR Article 9) to publish this as part of your testimony.

Because this is a faith platform, your signed-in engagement activity — which testimonies you read, save to a collection, or say "Amen" to — can also reveal religious belief. We treat this activity as special category data and rely on your explicit consent (Article 9) to process it for features such as your Faith Passport. You can withdraw this consent at any time by deleting your account, which erases this activity.

Personalized Feed

When you are signed in, we order your home feed around the topics you engage with. The signals we use are your reading activity, the testimonies you say "Amen" to, your favourites, and the testimonies you add to collections. From these we infer which kinds of testimony interest you and show closer matches first. This inference relies on the same explicit consent (UK GDPR Article 9) described under "Special Category Data" above. Withdrawing that consent — by deleting your account, which erases the underlying reading and engagement activity — stops personalization entirely; and you can switch it off at any time without deleting your account (see below), which halts it immediately.

Personalization is on by default and you can turn it off in one tap from your account settings. With it off, your feed is shown newest-first with no targeting. If you are logged out, the feed order is randomized per visit with no profiling or targeting at all.

This ordering is not an automated decision that produces legal or similarly significant effects (UK GDPR Article 22) — it only changes the order in which public testimonies are shown to you. We log only your on/off changes (and an Article 9 consent record when you turn it on); we never log which testimonies you were shown, and the taste profile is computed on the fly and never stored.

Cookies

We use strictly necessary cookies to run the site. Any analytics or marketing cookies are only set with your consent, which you can give or withdraw at any time via "Cookie preferences" in the footer.

How to Complain

If you have concerns about how we handle your data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.