Privacy Policy

Last updated 9 October 2026

This policy explains what Via Catholic (“Via”, “we”) collects, why, and what you can do about it. It covers the Via iPhone app and this website.

Who is responsible for your data

Via Catholic is operated by Via Catholic, a sole proprietorship based in Texas, United States. For any privacy question, or to exercise any right described below, write to privacy@viacatholic.app. We answer at that address; it is not a formality.

What Via stores

On your iPhone, and nowhere else

• Saved conversations. Conversations you save from Ask or from a passage are stored in the app's local database on your device. They are not uploaded to us. Deleting the app deletes them.
• Cached readings and artwork, so the app works offline and opens quickly.
• Your app settings, such as your chosen Bible translation.

On Via's servers

• An account identifier. On first launch the app creates an anonymous account so it can talk to our servers securely. This is a random identifier. It is not linked to your name, your email, or your device's advertising identifier.
• Your account email address, if you choose to create a permanent account. If you sign in with Apple and use Hide My Email, we only ever receive Apple's relay address.
• Preferences that have to follow your account: your liturgical region, your default Bible translation, and your time zone.
• Your daily rhythm and the things you save, so they follow your account to a new phone: the checklist you chose and when you make time, the days you completed it and your streak; the prayers and reflections you save, with any notes you write on them; the Faith Explained videos you save or watch; and the Bible chapters you've read, your place in each book, and your bookmarks.
• Community content. Communities require a permanent account — an anonymous session cannot create one, join one, post, or appear in a member list. If you create an account and use them, we store your membership, your display name and avatar in that community, and the posts, comments, and reactions you write there.
• Usage counters. We count how many requests an account has made in a period, so we can apply fair-use limits and keep the service running. These are counts and timestamps. They do not include what you asked.
• Your subscription status, so the app knows whether your subscription is active.

Lock Screen verse widgets

Your saved widget verses, fixed verse choice, and rotation preferences are stored on your device and shared locally with Via's widget extension. This widget library is not synced to your Via account or sent to Meta or TikTok. It can differ between devices.

The Android waitlist

If you join the Android waitlist on this website, we store your email address and the time you joined in Supabase. Joining asks us to email you about Via for Android becoming available. It does not create an app account or subscribe you to unrelated marketing. You can withdraw that request and have your waitlist entry removed by writing to privacy@viacatholic.app.

To limit automated signups, we temporarily store a salted hash derived from a request's network address, plus an attempt count and time. The waitlist does not store the network address itself. Expired rate-limit records are removed when the signup service handles subsequent requests.

The questions you ask Via

This is the part most people care about, so we want to be exact.

When you ask Via something, your message is sent to our server, which forwards it to a third-party artificial-intelligence provider to generate the answer. The answer is streamed back to your phone.

We do not write the content of your questions or Via's answers to our database, and we do not put them in our logs. Our servers record only that a request happened, so that fair-use limits work.

Our AI providers are OpenAI and Anthropic. They process your message on our behalf under their business terms, which prohibit using it to train their models. They may retain it for a short period for security and abuse monitoring before deleting it. We have no other relationship with them on your behalf.

Please still use ordinary judgement. Via is a good place to bring a spiritual question and a poor place to type a credit card number, a password, or another person's private medical or legal information.

How Via is used, and how we measure it

We use PostHog to understand how the app is used: which screens people open, which features they reach, where they get stuck, and whether a new thing we built was worth building.

These events describe actions, not content. An event records that a reflection was opened, or that a question was asked — never the reflection, and never the question. Events are attached to a privacy-safe internal identifier rather than to your name or email.

When Via hits an unexpected error, PostHog also sends us a crash report: the type of error, and the path through the code that produced it. Those are code locations — which function called which — not the content of what you asked or wrote. We use them to find and fix the thing that broke.

We use PostHog because we would rather fix the parts of Via people actually struggle with than guess. If you would prefer not to be counted, write to privacy@viacatholic.app and we will exclude your account.

Advertising, and how people find Via

Via shows no advertising. Nothing you read, ask, or write in Via is used to target an ad at you.

We do advertise Via itself — on platforms such as Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, and search engines. We want to know which of those actually bring people to Via, so that we are not paying for the ones that do not.

In Via 2.0.1 and later, we use the Meta and TikTok app-event SDKs and Apple's SKAdNetwork to measure installs, app opens, trial starts, and paid subscriptions. Apple sends aggregate campaign reports without identifying you or connecting them to your Via account. These reports can be delayed and contain limited detail.

Meta and TikTok receive generic app-install and app-opening events, confirmed trial and paid-subscription events, and the actual paid amount and currency when available. Their SDKs also receive basic technical information, such as the app and operating-system versions, device model, network address, and an app-scoped installation identifier. TikTok also collects Apple's vendor identifier (IDFV). These direct SDK events are separate from Apple's aggregate reports.

Via does not request App Tracking Transparency permission. Meta's advertising-identifier collection is disabled; iOS withholds its advertising identifier from TikTok without ATT consent. We do not give either SDK your Via account identifier, name, email, purchase receipt, transaction identifier, product identifier, product-analytics events, questions, prayers, or community content. Automatic purchase logging and TikTok's enhanced UI-data collection are disabled. For conversion deduplication, we store hashes of transaction identifiers on your device; we do not send those identifiers to the ad SDKs. Sandbox transactions and old restored subscriptions are excluded. Confirmed trial-to-paid conversions and renewals are recorded when Via next checks your subscription while open. Renewals without an app opening are not sent through a separate server-to-server ad integration.

What Via does not do

• We do not sell or rent personal information, and we never have.
• We do not show advertising inside Via, and we do not sell or hand your personal information to data brokers.
• We do not use your prayer, Bible-reading, or community activity to build marketing profiles or share that activity with advertising platforms.
• We do not log, store, or analyse the content of your questions, Via's answers, or anything you write in a community, for analytics or for any other purpose beyond delivering it.

Accounts and signing in

Via works anonymously. Creating an account is optional and exists so your communities, your subscription, and your history survive getting a new phone.

You can create an account with Sign in with Apple, with Google, or with an email address and password. When you use Apple or Google, we receive a confirmation of your identity and your email address from them; we do not receive your password, and we do not post anything to those accounts. Passwords for Via accounts are handled by our authentication provider and are stored only in hashed form. We never see them.

Communities

Communities require a permanent Via account. This is deliberate: a private space for prayer works only if the people in it are accountable for what they say, and a throwaway anonymous session is not.

Communities are private and invite-only. What you post in a community is visible to the other members of that community. There is no public feed, and communities are not indexed by search engines.

Bear in mind that other members can read, screenshot, and remember what you write. Deleting your account removes your posts, but it cannot undo what another member has already seen.

Subscriptions and payment

Subscriptions are sold through Apple's In-App Purchase. Apple processes the payment, not us. We never see your card number, your billing address, or your Apple Account credentials.

We use RevenueCat to keep track of whether a subscription is active. RevenueCat receives an identifier for your account and the purchase events Apple reports — started a trial, renewed, cancelled, refunded — and tells the app whether to enable access. It does not receive your payment details either.

Companies that process data for us

We keep this list short on purpose.

• Supabase — our database, authentication, file storage, and server functions.
• OpenAI and Anthropic — generating answers, as described above.
• Apple — the App Store, subscriptions, and Sign in with Apple.
• RevenueCat — tracking subscription status.
• PostHog — product analytics, as described above.
• Meta and TikTok — app-event and campaign measurement, as described above.
• Google — only if you choose to sign in with Google.
• Cloudflare — serving this website.

These companies process data under their applicable service terms. The roles and permitted uses can differ by service and jurisdiction. Meta and TikTok may also process advertising-measurement data under their own policies. See Meta's Privacy Policy and TikTok's Partner Privacy Policy.

How long we keep things

• The content of your questions and Via's answers — not stored on our servers at all, so there is nothing to keep.
• Account data, your daily rhythm, your saved things and notes, and community content — until you remove them or delete your account, at which point they are deleted with it.
• Short-term rate-limit records — these cover a window of minutes or hours. Expired records are deleted automatically during subsequent requests.
• Daily and monthly usage counters — a count of how many requests an account made on a given day or in a given month. These are kept for the life of the account and are deleted when you delete your account.
• Analytics events — kept while they are useful for understanding how Via is used, and deleted on our analytics provider's schedule. They record actions, never the content of your questions or Via's answers, and are not used to build a profile of you.
• Support email — kept while we handle your request and for a reasonable period afterwards in case you write again.
• Android waitlist email — kept until Android availability updates are complete, the waitlist is closed, or you ask to be removed, whichever happens first.

Deleting your data

In the app, go to Profile, open Settings, and choose Delete account. This permanently deletes your account, your saved conversations, your saved prayers, reflections and notes, your community profile, and your Via history. It cannot be undone.

If you created a community, it is deleted along with your account — including the posts other members wrote in it. There is no way to keep a community running once its creator has gone, so if it matters to the people in it, tell them before you delete.

Deleting your account does not cancel an Apple subscription. Cancel that in Settings → your name → Subscriptions first.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to see the personal data we hold about you, correct it, delete it, obtain a portable copy, object to or restrict how we use it, and complain to your data-protection regulator. If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, our lawful bases are performing our contract with you (running the app), our legitimate interests (keeping the service secure and within its limits), and your consent where we ask for it.

If you are in California, you can contact us to exercise applicable privacy rights, including requesting access, correction, or deletion. Advertising-measurement disclosures are described above. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any right.

To exercise any of these, write to privacy@viacatholic.app. We will respond within the time your law requires, and within 30 days at the latest.

A note on religious information

Some laws treat information about religious belief as a special category. Using Via can reveal an interest in Catholic practice. Your questions, prayers, saved Scripture, and community content are not sent to Meta or TikTok for advertising measurement. The generic install, app-opening, and subscription events described above tell those providers that you used Via, a Catholic app, without including that religious content.

Where your data is held

Via's servers and service providers are located in the United States. If you use Via from outside the United States, your data will be transferred there. Where the law requires a transfer mechanism, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses with our providers.

Children

Via is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has given us personal information, write to privacy@viacatholic.app and we will delete it.

Security

Traffic between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit. Access to our database is restricted by row-level security so that one account cannot read another's data, and administrative access is limited. No system is perfect, but we treat prayer and Scripture questions as the private things they are.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top. If a change materially affects how we handle your data, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.

Contact

Privacy questions: privacy@viacatholic.app
Everything else: support@viacatholic.app