Vinea
Privacy Policy
Last updated 30 October 2026
Vinea is a Catholic prayer and formation app. Faith is personal, and the fact that you use an app like this one says something about you. This policy explains plainly what we collect, why, who else handles it, how long we keep it and how you can erase it.
In short
- You can read the day's readings and pray without an account. We collect nothing about you to do that.
- Bookmarks, novena progress and reminders are stored on your device, not on our servers.
- If you are signed in, we keep a record of which prayers you finished on which days, so that your perseverance in prayer follows your account. It is visible only to you, is never ranked or compared with anyone else, and you can choose to keep it on your phone only instead.
- The examination of conscience is never stored or sent anywhere.
- We show no advertising, use no third-party analytics or advertising SDKs, and never sell your data.
- This website sets no cookies and runs no analytics.
- You can delete your account and everything it holds at any time, in the app or on our account deletion page.
1. Who we are
Vinea ("Vinea", "we", "us") provides the Vinea mobile apps for iOS and Android and this website, catholicvinea.com. We are the controller of the personal information described in this policy. You can reach us at claudeappiahsasraku@gmail.com.
2. Information we collect
When you create an account
- Your email address, a display name and a password. We store only a salted, one-way hash of the password.
- Your date of birth, if you choose to join the community. We use it only to confirm that you are 18 or older, which the community requires.
- Your language, time zone and regional calendar preferences, so that the right feasts fall on the right days.
- Short-lived one-time codes we email you to confirm an address or reset a password.
When you pray while signed in
Each time you finish a prayer — a Rosary, a day of a novena, the Divine Mercy, the Angelus, a prayer you mark with "Amen", or the day's readings — we record which prayer it was and the date, so that your perseverance in prayer is kept with your account. We record only which prayer, never anything you write or mark, and never anything from the examination of conscience. Prayers finished while signed out stay on your device until you next sign in. If you turn on Keep on this phone only (on the Perseverance page in the app), we erase this record from our servers at once and receive nothing more.
When you join the community
- Your public profile: a handle, display name, and optionally a short bio, a place you type in yourself, links and a profile photo.
- What you publish and do: posts, daily reflections, teachings, photos you attach, reactions ("Amen", "I prayed for this", and private saves), the people you follow and block, and the groups and communal novenas you join.
- Prayer intentions you share, and a record that someone prayed for an intention. Intentions are private by default and visible only to the audience you choose.
- Reports you make about content or people, and appeals you make about moderation decisions.
When you apply to be verified
Your claimed role, your parish, diocese, institute or place of work, a phone number on which our reviewers can reach you, an optional photo, and anything you tell us about your ordination, profession or faculties. Our reviewers record how they confirmed your standing, what they were told, and when the verification expires.
When you upload music
If you are a verified musician or choir: the recording, its cover art and lyrics, and the details you give about it, including who wrote it and your declaration of the rights in it.
When you read or listen while signed in
So that the people who publish on Vinea can see how their work is received, we record that your account viewed, played, finished or shared a teaching, reflection or song on a given day. This is how each reader is counted once. Authors see only totals, never who you are. The app sends nothing of this kind when you are signed out.
When you turn on notifications
A push notification token for your device and its platform (iOS or Android), so that we can send you the notifications you opted into, such as the evening reflection digest. Prayer reminders are scheduled on your device and do not involve our servers.
Technical information
Like any online service, our servers process your IP address and your device's user agent to deliver responses, keep the service secure and limit abuse. We store the user agent alongside your sign-in session so that sessions can be recognised and revoked. We do not build profiles from this information.
When the app or our servers run into an error, a report is sent so that we can fix it. It holds technical details of the error and of your device, such as its model, operating system and app version, but not your name or email address.
On this website
This website sets no cookies and runs no analytics. Its fonts are served from our own host. Our hosting provider processes your IP address and browser details to deliver pages and keep the site secure. If you use the account deletion form, your email address and password are sent over an encrypted connection to our servers only to carry out the deletion.
What we do not collect
We do not access your precise location, contacts, camera or microphone, and we do not collect advertising identifiers. We only access your photo library when you choose a photo to upload, and your files when a musician chooses a recording. We do not store your examination of conscience. If you are signed out, or have chosen to keep your record on your phone, we do not record which prayers you pray.
3. How we use your information
| Purpose | Legal basis (where GDPR or similar law applies) |
|---|---|
| Creating and running your account, signing you in, and keeping it secure | Performance of our contract with you |
| Showing what you publish to the audience you chose, and delivering the features you use | Performance of our contract with you; your explicit consent for information revealing religious belief |
| Keeping your record of perseverance in prayer with your account | Performance of our contract with you; your explicit consent for information revealing religious belief |
| Verifying clergy and religious with the body that can confirm their standing | Your explicit consent, given when you apply |
| Sending notifications you opted into, and service emails such as password resets | Your consent; performance of our contract |
| Counting each reader once, to give the people who publish totals of their views, plays and shares | Our legitimate interest in supporting those who publish on Vinea |
| Reviewing reports, moderating content, protecting people from harm and preventing abuse | Our legitimate interest in a safe community; legal obligation |
| Complying with the law and responding to lawful requests | Legal obligation |
We do not use your information for advertising, we do not sell it, and we do not use it to rank other people's content. Where the app offers a personalised feed, your interactions with it shape only your own feed.
4. Sensitive information
Using a Catholic app can reveal your religious beliefs, and prayer intentions can reveal more, such as health or family circumstances. Laws like the GDPR treat this as special-category data. We process it only with your explicit consent, which you give by choosing to share it, and you can withdraw that consent at any time by deleting the content or your account. We apply the same protections to everyone, wherever they live.
5. Who sees your information
Other people using Vinea
Your profile and what you publish publicly can be seen by others, including people without an account where the app shows public content (for example, teachings). Content you share with followers, a group, or only yourself is limited to that audience. Anonymous prayer intentions never show your name to readers.
Service providers
We use a small number of providers who process data on our behalf and only on our instructions:
- Vercel — hosting of our servers and this website.
- Neon — our managed PostgreSQL database and the storage of uploaded photos.
- Cloudflare — storage and delivery of uploaded music, and our domain name service.
- SendByte Africa — delivery of service emails such as confirmation and password reset codes.
- Expo, Apple and Google — delivery of push notifications to your device.
- Sentry — error and crash reports from the app and our servers.
Legal reasons
We may disclose information if the law requires it, or where we believe in good faith that it is necessary to protect someone's safety, including reporting child sexual abuse material to the appropriate authorities.
6. International transfers
Our providers may process information in countries other than your own, including the United States. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
7. How long we keep it
- Your account and profile: until you delete them.
- Your record of prayers finished: until you delete your account, or turn on Keep on this phone only.
- The record of what you viewed or played: until you delete your account. Daily totals for each piece of work hold nothing that identifies you and are kept with that work.
- Prayer intentions: they expire after 30 days by default (at most one year) unless you renew them, and are erased when you delete them.
- Verification decisions: they expire, usually after one year, and are deleted with your profile.
- Sign-in sessions: they expire after 60 days without use. One-time email codes expire after 15 minutes.
- Moderation records, and any appeal you made against a moderation decision: kept for up to seven years as an audit trail. Moderation records refer to content by an identifier rather than copying it.
- Handles: a handle you have used is never given to anyone else, so we keep the handle text itself after your account is deleted, without anything linking it to you.
- Reports you made about others: kept for safety review, no longer linked to you after you delete your account.
8. Your rights and choices
Depending on where you live, you have the right to:
- access the personal information we hold about you, and receive a copy of it;
- correct it — most of it you can edit directly in the app;
- delete it — see below;
- object to or restrict our processing of it;
- withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting processing that happened before;
- complain to your local data protection authority.
To exercise any of these, email claudeappiahsasraku@gmail.com from the address on your account. We will respond within 30 days. You can turn notifications off at any time in the app or in your device settings.
9. Deleting your account
In the app, open Me, scroll to Delete account, and confirm with your password. You can also delete it on our account deletion page. Your account, profile, posts, photos, music, intentions, prayer record, follows, group memberships and verification records are erased immediately and permanently. The few safety records described in section 7 are kept, detached from your account. Data kept only on your device stays there until you uninstall the app.
10. Security
All traffic is encrypted in transit. Passwords are stored only as salted hashes. Sign-in sessions use short-lived access tokens and rotating refresh tokens, and a re-used refresh token ends the session. Deleting your account requires your password, so that a borrowed phone is not enough to erase it. No system is perfectly secure; if we learn of a breach that affects you, we will tell you as the law requires.
11. Children
Vinea is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. The community features are for adults aged 18 and over only. If you believe a child has given us personal information, contact claudeappiahsasraku@gmail.com and we will delete it. See also our Child Safety Standards.
12. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top. If the change is significant, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.
13. Contact
Questions about this policy or your information: claudeappiahsasraku@gmail.com.