Unlock the Bible

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Unlock the Bible

Privacy Policy

Effective Date: 2026-01-01

1. Introduction

Welcome to Unlock the Bible (https://unlockthebible.co.za). We are committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring you have a positive experience on our website. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you visit our website, sign up for an account, register for bible study meetings, or interact with our services.
By using our website and services, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with the terms of this policy, please do not access or use our site.

2. Who We Are

Our website address is: https://unlockthebible.co.za. We provide resources and facilitate online Zoom meetings for bible study lessons.

3. Information We Collect

We collect information that identifies, relates to, describes, or is capable of being associated with you. This includes:

  • Personal Identifiable Information (PII) you provide directly:
    • Account Registration: When you create an account, we collect your name, email address, and a chosen password.
    • Meeting Registration: When you sign up for a Zoom bible study meeting, we may collect your name, email address, and any other information required for registration (e.g., your preferred name for the meeting, questions you might have).
    • Comments: When you leave comments on our site, we collect the data shown in the comments form, including your name, email address, and comment content.
    • Communications: If you contact us directly (e.g., via email or a contact form), we may collect the content of your messages and your contact information.
  • Automatically Collected Information:
    • Usage Data: We collect information about how you access and use our website, such as your IP address, browser type, operating system, referring URLs, pages viewed, and the dates/times of your visits.
    • Cookies: As detailed in Section 5, we use cookies to enhance your experience.
    • Device Information: We may collect information about the device you use to access our services, including hardware model, operating system, and unique device identifiers.
3.1 Special Personal Information (Religious Beliefs)

Because our website and services are centered around Bible study lessons, your participation, account creation, and communications with us may infer your religious or philosophical beliefs. Under South African law (POPIA), this is considered “Special Personal Information.” By registering an account or signing up for a meeting, you explicitly consent to our collection and processing of this information solely for the purpose of providing you with our Bible study services and community access.

4. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect for various purposes, including:

  • To Provide and Maintain Our Services:
    • To create and manage your user account.
    • To register you for online Zoom bible study meetings and send you meeting links and reminders.
    • To record and manage online bible study meetings as detailed in Section 4.1 below.
    • To allow you to post comments and interact with other users.
    • To personalize your experience on our website.
  • To Improve and Develop Our Services:
    • To understand how our website is used and to analyze user trends.
    • To troubleshoot problems and enhance the functionality of our site.
    • To develop new features and offerings.
  • To Communicate With You:
    • To send you important notices and updates related to your account or meetings.
    • To respond to your inquiries and provide customer support.
    • To send newsletters or promotional materials, if you have opted-in to receive them.
  • For Security and Legal Purposes:
    • To detect and prevent spam, fraud, and other malicious activities.
    • To protect the security and integrity of our website and services.
    • To comply with legal obligations and enforce our terms and conditions.
4.1 Meeting Recordings

Please be aware that our online Zoom bible study meetings may be recorded. By joining a recorded meeting, you consent to such recording.

  • Purpose of Recording: Recordings are made for several purposes, such as archival purposes, to allow participants who missed the live session to catch up, for training purposes for our facilitators, or to create excerpts for promotional material.
  • Storage and Access: Recordings will be stored securely on our private, password-protected cloud storage. Access to these full recordings is primarily restricted to our facilitators and administrators.
  • Use of Recordings: We may use these recordings for internal reviews, to share with registered attendees, or to create short promotional clips for our website or social media. Note: We will only use your recognizable face or voice in public promotional clips with your explicit, separate consent.
  • Participant Control: If you do not wish to be recorded, please ensure your camera and microphone are off, and consider changing your display name. If you have concerns about a recording, please contact us as outlined in Section 13.

5. Cookies and Tracking Technologies

We use cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on our service and hold certain information. Cookies are files with a small amount of data which may include an anonymous unique identifier.

  • Necessary Cookies: Essential for the website to function correctly (e.g., login sessions, security).
  • Preference Cookies: Used to remember your preferences and various settings (e.g., if you opt-in to saving your name, email, and website in cookies for convenience when leaving comments, these cookies will last for one year).
  • Login Cookies: If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser. When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me,” your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
  • Analytics/Performance Cookies: Used to collect information about how visitors use our website, which pages are visited most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. This helps us improve how our website works. We may use services like Google Analytics for this purpose.
  • Embedded Content Cookies: Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g., videos, images, articles, etc.) from other websites. Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our service.

6. Sharing Your Information

We may share your information in the following circumstances:

  • With Third-Party Service Providers: We use trusted third-party services to help us operate our website and services. These may include:
    • Zoom: For hosting our online bible study meetings. When you register for a meeting, your registration information (name, email) will be shared with Zoom to facilitate your access to the meeting. We encourage you to review Zoom’s privacy policy at https://zoom.us/privacy.
    • Gravatar: An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
    • Spam Detection Services: Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
    • Hosting Providers, Email Services, Analytics Providers.
    • These third-party providers have access to your Personal Information only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose.
  • Meeting Recordings: If recordings are made (as described in Section 3.1), excerpts or full recordings may be shared with other registered participants, our internal team, or publicly only with explicit consent from individuals featured.
  • Legal Requirements: We may disclose your information if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities (e.g., a court or a government agency).
  • To Protect Our Rights: We may disclose your information when we believe it is appropriate to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding potential violations of our policies, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person, or as evidence in litigation in which we are involved.
  • Business Transfers: In the event of a merger, acquisition, or asset sale, your Personal Information may be transferred. We will provide notice before your Personal Information is transferred and becomes subject to a different Privacy Policy.
  • With Your Consent: We may share your information for any other purpose with your explicit consent.
6.1 Cross-Border Data Transfers

To provide our services, particularly the hosting of online meetings via Zoom and the use of certain website plugins, your personal information may be transferred to, stored, and processed on servers located outside of the Republic of South Africa. By using our website and services, you consent to this transfer. We ensure that any third-party service providers we use (such as Zoom) are bound by legal agreements and data protection standards that offer an adequate level of protection similar to that required by POPIA.

7. How Long We Retain Your Data

  • Comments: If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
  • User Accounts: For users that register on our website, we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. This data is retained as long as your account is active.
  • Meeting Registration Data: Information related to your registration for specific Zoom meetings may be retained for a reasonable period after the meeting concludes for administrative and record-keeping purposes.
  • Other Data: Other data is retained for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law.

8. Your Rights Over Your Data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you have the following rights:

  • Right to Access: You can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us.
  • Right to Rectification: You can edit or correct your personal information at any time within your user profile (except for your username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
  • Right to Erasure (“Right to be Forgotten”): You can request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
  • Right to Object/Restrict Processing: You have the right to object to or request restriction of processing your personal data in certain circumstances.
  • Right to Data Portability: You have the right to receive your personal data in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format.
  • Opt-out of Communications: You can opt-out of receiving promotional emails from us by following the unsubscribe link in those emails. Please note that we may still send you non-promotional messages related to your account or our ongoing business relations.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details provided in Section 13.

9. Security of Your Data

We value your trust in providing us your Personal Information, thus we are striving to use commercially acceptable means of protecting it. We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you enter, submit, or access your personal information. However, no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure and reliable, and we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

In the event of a confirmed data breach where your personal information has been compromised, we will notify you and the South African Information Regulator as required by applicable law, outlining the nature of the breach and the steps we are taking to mitigate it.

10. Links to Other Websites

Our service may contain links to other sites that are not operated by us. If you click on a third-party link, you will be directed to that third party’s site. We strongly advise you to review the Privacy Policy of every site you visit. We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third-party sites or services.

11. Children’s Privacy (Minors under 18)

Our website and online meetings are primarily intended for adults. In accordance with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 18 without the explicit consent of a competent person (parent or legal guardian). If you are under 18, you may not create an account or register for a Zoom meeting without your parent or guardian’s verifiable permission. If we discover we have collected information from a minor without such consent, we will delete it immediately. Parents/guardians can contact us to request the deletion of their child’s data.

12. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page. We will let you know via email and/or a prominent notice on our service, prior to the change becoming effective and update the “Effective Date” at the top of this Privacy Policy. You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Changes to this Privacy Policy are effective when they are posted on this page.

13. Contact Us & Information Officer

To ensure POPIA compliance, we have appointed an Information Officer. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, wish to exercise your data rights, or have a complaint about how we handle your data, please contact our Information Officer:

Complaints to the Information Regulator

If you feel that we have not addressed your privacy concerns adequately, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the South African Information Regulator.