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 19 October 2026 · Applies to the Mercy app on iPhone and Android, 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 to sign in, you can use Sign in with Apple, Google sign-in, or an email address and a password. Whichever you pick, we keep your email address and your account number, and nothing else about you. Apple lets you hide your real email address, which we would rather you did. Your password is handled by our sign-in system and we never see it. We keep the account so your saved prayers and your posts come back when you open the app again, on any phone.
If you post a prayer request, reply to someone, or write to the founder through Tell us on the Me tab, 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, meaning how many days in a row and 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.
This is on iPhone only. 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.
On iPhone, we count things like "someone opened the Needs tab," "someone saved a prayer," "someone started a teaching," or "someone signed in." Each count is sent to our database, Supabase, with only these things: the name of the step, a random ID for your copy of the app (made up on your phone), the app version, and the word "ios." Some counts add a small detail, like which onboarding page you left or which language you picked. There is no name, no email, no account number, and no ad company attached to it, so we can tell one person's path from another's without knowing who either of you is. Deleting the app throws that ID away. The Android app sends no usage counts at all.
If you block someone or report a post, we keep that on your account, so that person's posts stay out of your way and a human can look at the report. The person you blocked or reported is never told it was you.
If you save a prayer, highlight words in yellow, or read a teaching, we keep which ones, the words you highlighted, and where you stopped reading, on your account. That is how they follow you to a new phone when you sign in. It is only the prayer's number, the teaching's name, which words you marked, and how far you got. Only you can see your highlights. Mercy is free, so there is nothing to pay and no card to keep.
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. Besides that, the website counts visits with Plausible, a privacy-friendly analytics service. It sees which page was read, which site sent you here, and your rough country, and it uses no cookies and keeps nothing that could identify you. You can read every page here without giving us anything about yourself.
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 and your notifications, if you use them | Sign in with Apple, the App Store, and the notification service. Mercy is free, with nothing to buy inside it, so Apple never takes a payment for it. |
| Your sign-in, if you choose Google sign-in | Google sign-in and the Google Play store. Mercy is free on Android too, with nothing to buy. | |
| 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. |
| Plausible | Page visits on this website: which page, which site sent you, rough country. No cookies, no personal data | So we know which pages help people. It never runs inside the app. |
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 crisis resources, including the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the United States and a line for your own country, 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 saved prayers, your highlights, your reading progress, 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.
This works the same way on iPhone and on Android. One honest limit. If someone already read your need, we cannot reach into their memory.
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. Using the app also means agreeing to our terms of use.
Contact the ministry
Questions, corrections, deletion requests, or anything that feels wrong. We read every one.