PARDESPrivacy policy
The short version: you can read everything in the app without telling us who you are. What you do in the app stays on your phone unless you sign in to sync it. If you sign in, we keep your name, your email and the provider's id for you, and nothing else. Questions you ask the study partner are sent to an AI provider to be answered and are never shown to advertisers. We do not sell personal data.
Who we are
PARDES is operated by Tarayants Consulting, Israel. For anything in this policy, write to privacy@mypardes.org.
What we collect, and when
Nothing, to read
No account is needed to open the app or the readers on this website. Your reading level, the plans you build, your bookmarks, notes, progress and display settings are stored on your device. If you never sign in, they never leave it.
If you sign in with Google or Facebook
We ask the provider for your name, your email address and its identifier for you (the "sub"), and nothing more: no contacts, no posts, no friends list, no birthday. A Facebook account may have no email; that is fine. Sign-in happens in your system browser using OAuth 2.0 with PKCE; the app never sees your password. The provider's tokens are stored in your device's keychain, not in the app's data file. Signing in stretches the ad-free opening from three days to seven, lets receipts and dedications carry a name, and lets your plans and bookmarks follow you to a new phone.
If you ask the study partner a question
The question, the passage it is about and your reading levels are sent to an AI provider (currently Anthropic's Claude, via Anthropic or Amazon Bedrock) to generate the answer. Providers we use are contractually barred from training on this data. We may keep questions and answers to improve the explanations and to fix mistakes; they are never shown to advertisers and never tied to advertising identifiers.
If you pay
Subscriptions and dedications are billed by Apple, Google or Stripe. We receive a receipt and the tier you bought; we never see or store card numbers. Half of every payment goes to yeshivot and study halls; the monthly ledger on Where the money goes names recipients, never payers.
If you use the free tier
The free tier shows an ad between pages, served by Google AdMob under a written allowlist of what may appear (no dating, gambling, loans, alcohol, astrology, missionary content, or apps competing for your attention). AdMob may use your device's advertising identifier to serve and measure ads; you can limit ad tracking in your phone's settings, and the app requests non-personalised ads where the platform allows. No ad ever appears beside the text, inside an answer, or on Shabbat and Yom Tov. Paid tiers have no ads and no ad SDK activity.
Location
Candle-lighting times, the Shabbat and Yom Tov quiet mode and the Israel/diaspora calendar use the city you choose in the app. If you allow device location, it is used on the device for the same purpose and is not sent to us.
On this website
mypardes.org sets one cookie, pardes_lane, to remember whether you chose the Hebrew or English edition. It has no analytics, tracking or advertising scripts. If you leave your email for early access, we use it for that one message and for the seven-day ad-free opening, and for nothing else. Our host (Amazon Web Services) keeps standard server logs, including IP addresses, for security, for a limited time.
Crash reports and analytics
This version of the app has no third-party analytics or crash-reporting SDK. If one is added, this page will name it before it is enabled.
What we use it for
- To run the app: sync what you signed in to sync, deliver what you paid for, answer what you asked.
- To keep the explanations right: reviewing questions and answers for errors.
- To send the one email you asked for.
- To meet legal obligations, and to keep the service secure.
We do not sell personal data, do not build advertising profiles, and do not share your data with anyone except the processors named here, each bound by contract to use it only for us.
Who else sees it
- Google and Facebook, if you sign in with them, under their own policies.
- Anthropic and Amazon Web Services, to generate answers and to host the service.
- Apple, Google and Stripe, to bill you.
- Google AdMob, to serve ads in the free tier only.
- Authorities, where the law requires it.
How long we keep it
Account data for as long as you have an account. Questions and answers for up to 24 months, then deleted or anonymised. Receipts for as long as tax law requires. Server logs for up to 90 days.
Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask us to show you what we hold about you, correct it, export it, or delete it. Deleting your account removes your name, email and provider id from our systems within 30 days; anything stored only on your phone is removed by uninstalling the app or by "Reset" under Me. Under Israel's Privacy Protection Law, the EU and UK GDPR and the California CCPA you have these rights by law; we grant them to everyone. Write to privacy@mypardes.org. You may also complain to your local data protection authority.
Children
The app is for adults and teenagers learning Torah; it is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their data. If a child has signed in, tell us and we will delete the account.
Security
Data in transit is encrypted (TLS). Provider tokens live in the device keychain. Our servers are on Amazon Web Services with access limited to the people who run the service. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you we will tell you.
Changes
When this policy changes we update the date at the top, and for material changes we tell you in the app. The current version is always at mypardes.org/en/privacy/. The Hebrew version is at /il/privacy/; if the two differ, the English governs.