Privacy Policy

1. Information we collect

We collect information in three ways: information you give us directly, information generated automatically when you visit the site, and information our payment and commerce processors share back with us to fulfill your order.

Information you give us

• Email address — when you join our mailing list or newsletter.
• Name, email, and shipping address — when you place an order.
• Phone number — optional, collected at the donation step for delivery coordination.
• Age confirmation — when you join the church at the donation step (21+).
• Messages you send — when you contact us via the contact form or chat.

Information collected automatically

• Page views and navigation — which pages you visit and in what order.
• Device and browser type — used to improve the experience across devices.
• Referring source — where you came from (e.g. a search engine or link).
• Visitor ID — a random ID kept in your browser that links your page views, including across visits (see “Visit analytics” below).
• Fingerprint ID — a browser fingerprint used to count unique visitors, only if you turn visit analytics on yourself (see “Visit analytics” below), and to power our embedded AI chat assistant (Kit).
• IP address and approximate location — stored with your visit analytics (see “Visit analytics” below).
• Visitor cookie — a first-party cookie holding the same random visitor ID, so our server can connect an error you hit to your visit (see “Visit analytics” below).

Order and payment information

When you place an order, Stripe processes your payment directly. Your card number, CVV, and full card details never touch our servers — they go straight to Stripe and are subject to Stripe's privacy policy. We do receive and store: your order number, the items ordered, shipping address, total amount, and a record of your age and sanctuary acknowledgment, as required for fulfillment and legal compliance.

2. How we use your information

• To fulfill and ship your order.
• To send you a transactional confirmation email after your order is placed.
• To send you sanctuary updates and newsletters — only if you opted in.
• To respond to your messages and support requests.
• To improve the site using aggregate analytics.
• To power the Kit AI chat assistant with session context (no cross-session tracking).
• To comply with applicable law (accounting, tax, regulatory recordkeeping).

We do not use your information to train AI models, build advertising profiles, or sell your data to brokers or marketers. Ever.

3. Third parties we work with

We share personal information only with the processors listed below, and only to the extent each needs it to do its job. All are under contractual obligations consistent with this policy.

We may also disclose information where required by law, court order, or to protect the rights or safety of our community.

4. Cookies and similar technologies

We use a small set of cookies and local storage values to operate the site. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

• Request cookie / localStorage — keeps the sacraments in your request between sessions so you don’t lose them.
• Age confirmation cookie — records that you confirmed you are 21 or older when joining the church at the donation step, so you are not asked again on the same device.
• Visit analytics — a random visitor ID in your browser’s local storage and in a first-party cookie (set only while visit analytics is on), and a cookie that remembers whether you turned visit analytics off or on.
• Stripe cookies — Stripe sets cookies as part of its fraud-prevention system when the payment form is loaded.

Disabling cookies in your browser settings may prevent the offerings from working correctly (your request and the donation step both rely on browser storage).

5. Visit analytics

We count visits to herochurch.org with our own first-party analytics, run on Parlor, the platform this sanctuary's site is built on and operated by Braintied Inc. Nothing goes to an advertising or analytics company, and nothing is sold or shared for advertising. We use it to see which pages seekers find, where they lose their way, and how fast the site answers them.

What we record

• The pages you open and the order you open them in, with the page you came from and any campaign tags in the link that brought you.
• How far you scroll, how long a page is active, when you leave it, and the links you follow to other sites.
• How quickly each page loads and responds (web vitals).
• The steps of the membership invitation you view, finish, or leave, and whether identity verification started, passed, or failed. Never your name, email, address, signature, or anything you type, and never your ID images.
• Your device type, browser, and operating system, read from what your browser reports.
• Your IP address, and your approximate location from our host’s network (Cloudflare): country, region, city, postal code, coordinates, and time zone. When the network gives no location, an IP-location lookup (ipapi.co) supplies the country and city.
• A random visitor ID kept in your browser’s local storage, which links your page views, including across visits.
• The same visitor ID in a first-party cookie on herochurch.org, so that when something breaks on our side we can connect the error to your visit. It is set only while visit analytics is on and removed when you turn it off.
• A fingerprint of how your browser connects (its TLS handshake), when our host provides one. It describes your browser software, not you.

We do not use a browser fingerprint for these counts. If you turn visit analytics on yourself with the switch below, we record that choice, and we also use a device fingerprint of your browser to recognize it as one visitor. Error reports sent to our monitoring service carry only the random visitor ID, never your IP address, location, or cookies; those stay in our own database.

How long we keep it

We have not yet set a retention period for visit analytics. Until we do, these records stay in Parlor's database. We will name the period here before this policy is final.

6. How long we keep your information

• Order records — retained for 7 years to satisfy accounting and tax requirements, then deleted.
• Email marketing lists — retained until you unsubscribe, after which we remove you within 30 days.
• Visit analytics — no retention period is set yet; see “Visit analytics” above.
• Contact messages — retained for 12 months, then deleted unless we are required to keep them.
• Age confirmation records — retained alongside the associated order record.

7. Your privacy rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the following rights over your personal information. We honor these requests for everyone, regardless of jurisdiction.

• Access — request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Correction — ask us to correct inaccurate information.
• Deletion — ask us to delete your personal information. Note: we may need to retain certain order records for legal compliance.
• Opt-out of marketing — unsubscribe from our newsletter at any time using the link in any email, or by contacting us.
• Opt-out of visit analytics — use the switch under “Visit analytics” above, or send Global Privacy Control from your browser.
• Data portability — request your information in a machine-readable format.
• Non-discrimination — exercising these rights will not affect your access to the sanctuary.

California residents: under the CCPA you have the right to know what personal information we collect, to delete it, and to opt out of the sale of your information. We do not sell personal information.

EEA / UK residents: under the GDPR our lawful basis for processing order and fulfillment data is contract performance. Our lawful basis for analytics is legitimate interest. Our lawful basis for marketing emails is consent. You have the right to lodge a complaint with your supervisory authority.

To exercise any of these rights, email us at sanctuary@mail.herochurch.org. We will respond within 30 days.

8. Children

The Hero Church is a sanctuary for adults 21 years of age or older. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 21. If you believe a minor has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.

9. Security

We take reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your personal information — including TLS encryption in transit, access controls, and hosting on SOC 2-certified infrastructure. No system is perfectly secure, but we take the stewardship of your information seriously.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as our practices evolve. When we make material changes we will update the effective date at the top and, where feasible, notify you by email. Your continued use of the site after the updated date constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

11. Contact

Questions, requests, or concerns about this policy can be sent to: