Privacy Policy

AfghanApps is a cooperation between the Bible Society of Afghanistan, Pamir Ministries, and other Christian organizations working to provide digital resources for Afghan communities.

One of our main priorities is the privacy of our visitors. This Privacy Policy document contains types of information that is collected and recorded by Bible Society of Afghanistan, within our Apps and on the related website AfghanApps.com, as well as how we use it.

Our apps, sites and courses do not collect any user or personal information, with the exception of the optional verse video feature in our Bible apps (described below) and Facebook login based services (described in the Third Parties section below).

If you have additional questions or require more information about our Privacy Policy, do not hesitate to contact us.

Our Bible apps (including Afghan Bibles)

• No account, no advertising, no tracking. You do not need to sign in, and we do not track you across other apps or websites.
• Your notes, highlights, bookmarks, reading history and settings stay on your device. They are stored in encrypted form and are never sent to us. You can turn reading history off and clear it in the app's Security settings, and everything is removed when you delete the app.
• Photos: if you choose to make a verse picture using one of your own photos, or to save a verse picture, the app accesses only the photo you pick or the picture you save. Nothing is uploaded, unless you choose to use a photo or video as the background of a verse video (see Verse videos below).
• Notifications (Verse of the Day and reading reminders) are created on your device. We do not use push-notification services and do not receive any information from them.
• Downloads: when you download audio or content, or watch a film, your device connects to our server (afghanapps.com) or to our video provider (see Third Parties). As with any website, this request includes your device's IP address, and may contain version or data that identifies your OS type; see Log Files below.
• Verse videos: if you choose to make a video of some verses, the app asks our server (afghanbibles.org) to make it. Nothing is sent unless you choose to make a video. The request carries:
  • the passage and the look you chose;
  • a random identifier that the app makes up for this purpose. It is not your device's own identifier and says nothing about you; we use it only to apply a fair daily limit and to let the app find your own uploads again;
  • as with any request, your IP address, which we use to look up the country it indicates and to prevent misuse. We keep only that country and a scrambled (one-way hashed) form of the address with the request - never the address itself - to apply the daily limit and to see where the feature is used. In some app versions we may also receive your app version number and the type of OS (platform) that you have. This is used only to see which platforms and app versions use the feature and to help with bug reports, is deleted with the record of the request after about four weeks, and does not identify you personally.
  If you add a picture or video of your own as the background, it is uploaded to our server and used only to make your video. Location and other details stored inside the file are removed. The app deletes your picture or video from our server as soon as the video made with it is ready, or when you leave the screen without making one; if the app cannot reach us at that moment, our server deletes it itself within about a week. Records of video requests, and the finished videos on our server, are deleted after about four weeks. The video you made stays on your own device, inside the app, until you remove it.
  The video maker on the afghanbibles.org website works the same way, except that a picture or video you add there is kept for up to about a week after you last used it, so that you can use it again; you can delete it yourself on that page at any time.
• Translation choice count: see Analytics below.
• Film problem reports: from version 1.1.3 of our Afghan Bibles app, if a Gospel Film will not play, the app sends our server (afghanapps.com) a short report so that we can fix the problem: an error code saying what went wrong, which film it was, the device type (e.g. Android, iPhone), the app version, the interface language, and the version of the device's built-in web browser that plays the films. Nothing is sent while films play normally. No personal information or device identifier is sent. As with any request, your IP address is used to look up the country it indicates; we keep only that country and a scrambled (one-way hashed) form of the address - never the address itself - to avoid counting the same problem twice. These reports are deleted after about three months.

Analytics

We use analytics tools to understand how our visitors interact with our apps and website. This helps us improve the user experience by analyzing usage patterns and identifying areas for enhancement. The data collected is aggregated and anonymized, and does not include personally identifiable information. On the afghanapps.com website this includes Google Analytics, provided by Google, which may use cookies and process your IP address in line with Google's Privacy Policy.

In the case of the Bible apps, we DO NOT use any analytics within the apps, with one minor exception (apart from the film problem reports described above, which are sent only when a film fails to play): when you choose a Bible translation, the app tells our server which translation was chosen and which interface language is in use, along with how many times a translation has been chosen on the device, the device type (e.g. Android, iPhone) and app version, so we can see which languages are used. No personal information or device identifier is sent, and we don't keep IP addresses with these counts. We keep only the resulting anonymous totals, which cannot be linked back to you or your device.

The App stores from which you download an app may themselves keep records or data about who downloads what, and you should refer to their privacy policies for more information.

Log Files

afghanapps.com follows a standard procedure of using log files. These files log visitors when they visit websites. All hosting companies do this and a part of hosting services' analytics. The information collected by log files include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date and time stamp, referring/exit pages, and possibly the number of clicks, and information that may identify your app version and data that identifies your OS type. These are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable. The purpose of the information is for analyzing trends, administering the site, tracking users' movement on the website, and gathering demographic information. Log files are kept only for a limited period, for security and administration, and are not shared with anyone else.

Cookies and Web Beacons

Like any other website, afghanapps.com will sometimes use 'cookies'. These cookies are used to store information including visitors' preferences, and the pages on the website that the visitor accessed or visited. The information is used to optimize the users' experience by customizing our web page content based on visitors' browser type and/or other information.

Third Parties

Some of our apps or sites will link to external services through the provision of a phone number, email or web addresses, which the user may use for contact purposes. If the user chooses to send an email or SMS, the application invokes the SMS sending or Email sending Apps on the device and, in the case of some course apps, it may also pass to them an identifier that solely indicates what stage the App has got to (i.e. user progression through the pages). This indicator is clearly visible to the user within the suggested body of the message, and the user is free to remove/modify the message content as is normal for authoring messages.

Films shown in our apps (such as Gospel Films in the Bible apps) are played using Vimeo. When you watch a film, Vimeo receives the information needed to stream it to your device, such as your IP address and device type, and may use cookies, in line with Vimeo's Privacy Policy. We do not send Vimeo any personal information about you.

Some of our services (web landing pages) make use of the Facebook login service. If you are invited to login to our site with facebook, your login id is shared, and your name and/or email address may be shared with us. We only use this information for facilitating our course pages, and we do not provide this information to third-parties other than with facebook for the purpose of facilitating the login service.

On webpages or in apps, we may include a contact-us feature using Facebook Messenger. Where present, all use of the messenger feature is subject to Facebooks standard Terms and Conditions. Whilst our site does not interact with the messenger feature to extract information from it, communications placed into the messenger window will appear in our Facebook inbox and we may then communicate with you through facebook.

Our Privacy Policy does not apply to analytics providers or other websites. Thus, we are advising you to consult the respective Privacy Policies of any referred sites for more detailed information. It may include their practices and instructions about how to opt-out of certain options.

Children's Information

Another part of our priority is adding protection for children while using the internet. We encourage parents and guardians to observe, participate in, and/or monitor and guide their online activity.

We do not knowingly collect any Personal Identifiable Information from children under the age of 13. If you think that your child provided this kind of information on our website or in our apps, we strongly encourage you to contact us immediately and we will do our best efforts to promptly remove such information from our records.

Data Removal

Apart from the verse video feature described above, our Bible apps do not send us any personal information, so there is nothing personal for us to remove: your notes, highlights and other app data stay on your device, and are removed when you delete the app. The anonymous translation counts described above cannot be linked to you, so they cannot be identified for removal. Verse video requests and any pictures or videos you uploaded for them are deleted automatically as described above; if you would like them removed sooner, contact us using the form below and tell us roughly when you made the video.

If your facebook login id, name or email address have been shared with us, we will normally remove them from our systems automatically, between 180 and 365 days after your last login. Should you require confirmation of removal, or wish to expedite removal, you can use our data-protection contact form, or alternatively you can contact us at info@afghanapps.com from the email address that you used for the facebook login, requesting to "Remove my personal data". Our staff will then manually remove your contact information within 30 days of your request. Please understand that we may sometimes need to ask you for other identification in order to fulfill your request.

Online Privacy Policy Only

This Privacy Policy applies only to our online activities and is valid for visitors to our website with regards to the information that they shared and/or collect in our apps and our website. This policy is not applicable to any information collected offline or via channels other than this website or our apps. Our apps do not collect personal information offline.

Consent

By using our website, or our apps, you hereby consent to our Privacy Policy and agree to its Terms and Conditions.

For any enquiries in respect of our site or privacy related queries, contact info@afghanapps.com.