You should not need a lawyer to read this. So here it is the way we would say it out loud: what Mercy keeps, why it keeps it, who else can see it, and how to make all of it go away in about ten seconds.
Last updated 9 September 2026 · Applies to the Mercy app, givemercy.app and christianmercy.app
Mercy is made by New Testament Only, a small Christian ministry. We do not sell your information. We do not run ads. We do not let anyone follow you around the internet. We keep the least we can, and you can delete every bit of it from inside the app, without asking us first.
Your prayers are never sold. Ever. That is a promise on the front page of our website, and this policy is how we keep it.
The first time you tap something that needs saving, the app quietly makes you an account with no name in it. It is just a long random number. If you choose Sign in with Apple, Apple sends us an email address instead — and Apple lets you hide your real one, which we would rather you did. We keep the account so your prayers come back when you open the app again.
If you post a prayer request, reply to someone, or write to the founder through the wrench button, we keep those words. That is the point of them. Anything you post in Neighbors can be read by other people using the app, so please do not put your address, your phone number, or anything you would not say out loud in church.
When you tap "I prayed," or say you can help, or keep the day's prayer, we save that. It is how the person who asked gets to see that somebody prayed. Your own record — how many days in a row, how many people you showed up for — is only shown to you. It never appears next to your need or your reply.
Prayer requests carry only the city and the state or country the person typed — never a street, never a doorstep. If a part of Neighbors ever asks your phone for your location, it asks your permission first, and a rough spot about a kilometre wide is all we would use to sort what you see.
If you say yes to notifications, Apple gives us a long code for your phone. We keep it so we can tell you when someone prayed for your need. We do not use it to nag you back into the app, and we never send you guilt about a missed day.
We count things like "someone opened the Needs tab" or "someone finished the prayer." These counts carry a random ID for your copy of the app, made up on your phone, so we can tell one person's path from another's without knowing who either of you is. There is no name, no email, and no ad company attached to it. Deleting the app throws that ID away.
If you become a member, Apple takes the payment. We never see your card, and Apple only tells our app that a membership is active. To stop it, cancel in your iPhone's Settings — deleting your Mercy account does not cancel an Apple subscription.
On the front page you can ask us to tell you the day Mercy reaches the App Store. If you do, we keep the address you typed and nothing else — no name, no location, nothing about how you browsed. Resend stores it and sends the email for us. We do not sell the list or hand it to anyone, and every email has a one-click unsubscribe that takes you off for good. This is the only thing the website itself collects; every other page here you can read without giving us anything.
We use a few outside companies to run the app. They work for us, they are not allowed to use your information for their own purposes, and none of them may sell it.
| Who | What they hold | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Your account, your needs and replies, your taps, your notification code, the usage counts | They are the database and the sign-in system. This is where Mercy actually lives. |
| Anthropic | The text of a need or reply, for a few seconds | A Claude model reads new posts to catch scams, cruelty and danger before anyone else sees them, and translates them into Spanish, Portuguese, Filipino and French. Anthropic does not train on it. |
| Apple | Your sign-in, your payment, your notifications | Sign in with Apple, the App Store, and the notification service. |
| Resend | An email to our founder, and your address if you ask this website to tell you when the app is ready | When a post sounds like someone may be in danger, a real person is paged straight away. That email can contain part of what was written. |
| OpenStreetMap | Nothing about you | Where our list of churches comes from. |
James, the voice you hear, is recorded ahead of time with ElevenLabs and stored as ordinary audio files. Nothing you say or write is ever sent to a voice service, and the app never listens to your microphone.
Mercy will not publish self-harm language. If a post sounds like someone is in danger, it is met right away with the 988 line and a human being, and our founder is paged by email so a person can follow up. We are a ministry, not a crisis service, and we are not doctors. If you are in danger right now, please call 988 in the United States, or your local emergency number.
That is the whole path. You type the word DELETE so it cannot happen by accident, and then it happens immediately — your account, your needs, your replies, your thank-you notes, your taps, your notification code, and your usage counts all go. There is no waiting period, no email to send, and no way for us to bring it back.
Two honest limits. If someone already read your need, we cannot reach into their memory. And if you pay for membership, cancel it in your iPhone's Settings, because Apple handles that and deleting your account will not stop it.
If you would rather a person did it for you, write to support@givemercy.app and we will. Wherever you live, you may also ask us for a copy of what we hold, ask us to correct it, or ask us to stop using it. Same address, and we answer.
Neighbors is written by strangers about hard days, so Mercy is not made for children under 13, and we do not knowingly keep information about them. If you are a parent and you think your child has an account, write to us and we will delete it.
When we change something that matters, we will change the date at the top of this page and tell you in the app. Mercy is made by New Testament Only, and a real person reads the mail.
Contact the ministry
Questions, corrections, deletion requests, or anything that feels wrong. We read every one.