Privacy

ibelieve.ai is run by Abundance Institute. This page says what we collect, why we have it, who else sees it, and how to make us delete it. It is written to be read, not to be survived.

The short version

• We collect what an account needs to work, and what you choose to write. Nothing else.
• We use Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages are read. It never receives your name, email, beliefs, or belief files, and its advertising features are off. We set no advertising cookies. Necessary cookies support sign-in, referrals, and resuming a study you choose to take.
• We do not sell your data, and we never will.
• A belief file you mark public is public — readable by anyone, served over our public API, and indexed by search engines.

Beliefs are sensitive, and you decide what happens to yours

A belief file describes what you hold to be true. Under laws such as the GDPR that is a special category of personal data, and we treat it that way. We process it for one reason: you chose to write it here. Every file is private unless you make it public, you can change that at any time, and you can delete a file outright — which deletes its revision history with it.

Making a file public is irreversible in one practical sense: while it is public, others may read, download, or fork it, and a fork is their copy. Deleting your original does not delete copies other people made while it was public. Please decide accordingly.

What we collect

Your account. Name, email address, username, and a hash of your password — never the password itself. Optionally a bio and a profile picture, if you add them. If you sign in with Google or GitHub instead, we receive your name, email address, and profile picture from that provider.

Your sessions. When you sign in we store a session record with your IP address and browser user-agent string, so you can stay signed in and so we can spot abuse. Sessions expire, and signing out ends one.

What you write. Your belief files and every revision of them, their titles and descriptions, and whether each is public or private. Also organizations you create or join, invitations, and any claim requests you make.

Activity on files. Stars you give, and per-file counts of forks and downloads.

Belief tests. If you run one, the file’s contents and a fixed set of questions are sent to an AI model, and the answers are stored against that revision. Results are private to you and are never published.

Ordinary server logs. Our host records requests, and we hold IP addresses briefly in memory to rate-limit the public API.

Research survey

If you agree to participate in the research survey, we record your selected tradition, judgments and reasoning, conversations with AI partners, simulated actions, and feedback on proposed belief-file changes. We also retain the case wording, sampling seed, instrument versions, and model information needed to interpret those responses. We collect your name and email before the study for account setup. They are kept out of AI prompts and research exports. If you save your account at the end, we link the study to your account and save your reviewed belief file privately. Please avoid identifying details in your answers.

Submitted responses are saved as you go, including if you leave before finishing. Study responses are available to administrators for research and are not published as belief files. The conversations and responses needed to run the study are sent through Vercel AI Gateway to the selected AI provider. Actions within the study are simulations.

We store a one-way identifier for your study browser and a temporary, keyed hash of your network address to limit repeated requests. The network counters expire daily. Research responses remain stored until removed by the study team or in response to a deletion request. To request a copy or deletion, contact us and include your study reference shown on the survey page.

Movement signatures and church requests

When you sign the letter, we save your name and email, the time you signed, and the version of the Terms and Privacy wording you accepted. Receiving movement updates is optional and has its own checkbox. Signing with email alone does not create an account or verify your identity. Google or Apple sign-in creates or uses your app account, and we link that verified account to your signature.

Your faith tradition is optional. We save it only with your explicit consent; leaving it blank records no affiliation. You can edit or clear it while your letter is open. We do not publish signatures or traditions.

If you submit a church request, we save the church name, city or town, your role, contact email, optional website, and whether you need another way to demonstrate your affiliation. We use these details to review and contact you about the request. Submission does not verify affiliation, reserve a church name, or create an organization or belief file. Sharing the letter does not count referrals or establish ownership.

These records remain private until you ask us to remove them. To request a copy, withdraw consent, unsubscribe from updates, or delete a signature or church request, contact us using the address below.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics to understand how many people visit, how they find us, and which pages and stories they read. It records pages viewed, approximate location (country and city), device and browser type, the site that sent you, and a few actions: signing the letter, saving a belief file, or adding one to an AI. On the app, pages are reported by type only (for example, “a belief file page”), never with a username, file name, email address, secret link, or anything you wrote. Google signals and ad personalization are off, so visits are not linked to your Google account or used for advertising.

Google Analytics sets first-party cookies (_ga and _ga_*) that let it recognize a returning browser; they last up to two years. In the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, these cookies are only set if you accept the analytics notice. Anywhere else you can turn analytics off here, or block it with any standard browser setting or extension.

This browser: no choice made (the default for your region applies). Turn analytics off

Cookies

Sign-in cookies keep your account session active. A referral cookie remembers an invitation link. If you begin the research survey, a separate necessary cookie lets you resume it in the same browser for up to 30 days. It contains a random token, not your answers, and cannot be read by page scripts. Clearing it removes this browser's access to the study; it does not delete submitted responses.

While the letter is open, its details and signature key stay in page memory. If you choose Google or Apple, we temporarily keep your draft and sign-in state in this tab’s session storage so you can return to it. The draft expires after 30 minutes and is discarded when you next open the letter. A short-lived confirmation completes the signature; it cannot sign you into the app. We clear this temporary draft after saving. Closing the tab clears its session storage. Clearing browser data does not delete information already submitted to us.

Who else handles it

We use a small number of service providers, each doing one job under contract, none of them permitted to use your data for their own purposes:

• Vercel — hosting, image storage, and the gateway that routes belief-test, belief-builder, and research-study requests to an AI model.
• Neon — the Postgres database, hosted in the United States.
• Google Analytics — visit counts and page reading, as described under Analytics. It receives no account details or belief content.
• Amazon SES — sending confirmation and invitation emails.
• The AI model provider that answers belief tests, drafts belief files, or runs study conversations, reached through the gateway above. It receives the content needed for the requested generation.
• TypeSafe — while you write a belief file from scratch while signed in, the text you have written so far is sent to TypeSafe's Jev model so it can suggest what to add next. You can turn the suggestions off with the minimize button, and nothing is sent while they are off.
• Google or GitHub — only if you choose to sign in with one of them.

The homepage also embeds the Belief Graph visualizer hosted at belief-visualizer.netlify.app. Loading that embedded page connects your browser to its host, which can receive ordinary request information.

Beyond that, we disclose data only when the law requires it, and we will tell you unless we are forbidden to.

Where it lives

On servers in the United States. If you are writing from elsewhere, your data is transferred there.

How long we keep it

Your files and revisions stay until you delete them or ask us to close your account. Session records expire on their own. Deleting a file deletes its revisions.

What you can ask for

You can see and change your name, username, bio, and picture in Settings, and you can delete any file from its settings page. For anything else — a copy of your data, correcting something you cannot reach, or deleting your account entirely — email [email protected] and we will act within 30 days. Account deletion is by request today; we have not built the self-serve button yet, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.

Depending on where you live you may also have the right to object to processing, to restrict it, to take your data elsewhere, or to complain to your data protection authority. Ask us and we will help rather than argue.

Children

This site is not for people under 13, and we do not knowingly keep accounts for them. If you believe a child has an account here, tell us and we will remove it.

Security

Passwords are hashed, traffic is encrypted in transit, and private files are checked against your session on every request. No service is perfectly secure; if we ever suffer a breach affecting your data we will tell you and the relevant authorities promptly.

Changes

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top, and for anything significant we will say so on the site before it takes effect.

Contact

[email protected]. A person reads it.

See also our Terms of Service.