Wayside Prayer privacy policy

Draft: not yet in force. This policy is awaiting data protection advice before the app launches.

Last updated: 1 November 2026

Wayside Prayer is designed so that your prayer life stays yours. There are no accounts, adverts or analytics, and we never sell your data. Almost everything stays on your phone. The main exception is Identify with AI, which only sends anything when you tap the button for a particular photo.

Who we are

Wayside Prayer is run by Jonathan Yates in the United Kingdom ("we"). We are responsible for the personal data described in this policy that leaves your phone.

Questions or requests: hello@waysideprayer.com

What stays on your phone

We cannot see any of this, and the app never sends it to our server:

• Your photos, unless you choose Identify with AI (see below)
• Your prayer history: the saint or prayer, whether it was short or long, the date, and the place if the app found one
• Your journey: places you marked as visited, diary moments with their photos and notes, and your progress and streak
• Your profile: name, avatar and prayer intentions
• Your settings, such as dark or light mode

Your location

If you allow location access, the app checks your position while you are using it, to find a listed church within 1 km. That check happens on your phone, and the app does not track you in the background.

If you turn on Save my location, the app also saves your exact position with each moment or prayer you save, so it can appear along your path. That position stays on your phone, and the app never sends it to us. You can turn this off at any time in My journey. Positions saved earlier stay until you delete that entry.

Your camera may add its own details to a photo, such as where it was taken, and these can stay in the copy kept on your phone. They are removed from any photo sent for identification.

You can refuse location access, skip the photo, and choose a saint yourself.

Android backup

If Android backup is on, your history, journey, saved locations, photos, profile and settings may be copied to your own Google account, encrypted, so they survive a change of phone. Google runs this service and we cannot read that backup. You control it in your phone's settings.

What Identify with AI sends

Identify with AI is optional. The first time you use it, the app explains what happens and asks you to agree. After that, nothing is sent unless you tap the button for that photo.

Each time you tap it, the app sends:

• Your photo, rebuilt so that its location and camera details are removed. A photo can still show people or other details, so please avoid including anyone who has not agreed.
• Your note, if you typed one. Please do not include names or anything personal.
• The listed church you are at, if the app found one. This shows roughly where you are.
• A random ID for this phone, used only to count your scans. It is not linked to your name or Google account.

Your phone's internet (IP) address also reaches our server provider, as with any connection. We use it briefly to limit how many requests one connection can make.

A photo taken in a church, or a choice of saint, can suggest your religious beliefs. The law treats this as specially protected data, which is why we ask for your explicit consent. You can stop at any time by not tapping the button, and every prayer still works without it. Stopping does not affect anything sent before.

Who handles it

• Cloudflare runs our server and scan-count database. Your request passes through it. It also forwards email sent to our address.
• Anthropic provides the Claude AI that suggests which saints a photo may show. Under its commercial terms, it does not use this data to train its models unless we opt in, and we have not. It deletes inputs and outputs within 30 days by default, but may keep them for up to 2 years if its safety systems flag them. See Anthropic's retention information.
• Google provides the Play Store and Android backup. Google will take payment for the Wayside Pass when it is available. We never see your card details.

These companies may handle data outside the UK, including in the United States, under the safeguards in their data protection terms.

What we keep

Our server passes your photo, note and church to Anthropic. It does not store them or write them to logs.

Our database holds only:

• A one-way scrambled version of your phone's random ID, and how many free scans it has used
• The total number of free scans used each day
• When the Wayside Pass is available: a one-way scrambled version of your purchase reference, and how many scans are left

These counts have no photos, notes, places, saints or names. We keep them for as long as Wayside Prayer runs, so the scan limits keep working. If you email us, we keep your message for as long as we need it to help you.

Why we can use this data

• Your photo, note and church: your explicit consent, given when you agree to and then use Identify with AI.
• Scan counts and limiting requests: our legitimate interest in keeping the service affordable and protecting it from misuse.
• Emails to us: our legitimate interest in answering you.
• Wayside Pass: to provide what you bought.

Your choices and rights

You can delete a history entry or a diary moment in the app, and remove intentions in your profile. Uninstalling the app deletes what it holds on your phone. A copy may remain in your Google backup until you delete it there.

You have the right to ask for access to your personal data, or to have it corrected or deleted. You can also object to how it is used, or ask us to limit it. You can make a request by emailing us. Because we hold no names, we may be unable to match a scan count to you, and photos sent for identification will already have left our server.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, please tell us first. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office or your local data protection authority.

Age limit

Wayside Prayer is for adults aged 18 and over. It is not designed for anyone under 18, and they should not use it.

Changes to this policy

We will update this page if anything changes and change the date at the top. If a change affects what is sent from your phone, we will explain it in the app first.