Privacy Policy
Olive is a place to pray, watch, chat and learn with other Christians. That means you trust us with personal things, including your faith. This page says, in plain words, what we collect, why, who helps us run the app, and what you can ask us to do with it.
1. Who we are
A Dove Called Olive ("Olive", "we", "us") is run by Adam Harvey, a sole trader in the United Kingdom, trading as A Dove Called Olive. Adam is the data controller: the person responsible for your data under UK data protection law (the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018).
- Privacy questions and requests: privacy@adovecalledolive.com
- Everything else: support@adovecalledolive.com
- Postal address: [POSTAL ADDRESS: Adam to add a correspondence address]
This policy covers the Olive app on iPhone and Android, the web app, and this website (adovecalledolive.com, including invite links).
2. Your faith is special data
Olive is a Christian app. Simply having an account, and much of what you do here (praying, posting on the Prayer Wall, joining a church community, reading and marking the Bible), shows your religious beliefs. Under UK GDPR, information that reveals religious belief is special category data and gets extra protection.
We handle it on the basis of your explicit consent (UK GDPR Article 9(2)(a)). You give it when you create an account and agree to this policy, and again each time you choose to post or share something. Where you make something public yourself, such as a public video or a public prayer, we also rely on the fact that you chose to make it public (Article 9(2)(e)).
You can withdraw consent at any time by deleting your posts or your whole account (see your rights). Withdrawing does not undo what we did lawfully before, and without it we can't run an account for you, because the whole app is about faith.
Prayer requests can also mention health, family or other people. Please think before naming someone else or sharing their private details; a first name or "a friend" is usually enough for people to pray.
3. What we collect and why
We only collect what the app needs to work. We don't sell your data, we don't show adverts, and the app has no advertising or analytics trackers.
| What | Why we use it | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Account: email address, password (stored hashed by our sign-in provider) or your Google sign-in, display name, username | To create your account, sign you in, reset your password and contact you about your account | Contract (providing the service you signed up for) |
| Profile: photo or built avatar, bio, favourite verse, testimony, church, private-account setting | To show your profile to other people, as you choose | Contract; explicit consent for anything that reveals faith |
| What you post: videos, photos, captions, hashtags, mentions, comments, prayer requests and replies, community posts, course lessons and files, event photos ("memories") | To publish and show your content to the people you choose | Contract; explicit consent (faith) |
| Place names on posts (optional): a town and region you pick or type, plus coordinates if you tap "use my location" | To label a post with where it was made | Consent (you choose each time) |
| Activity: likes, prays, bookmarks, follows, community memberships, event replies, poll votes, reviews, points and levels in communities | To run the feed, communities, leaderboards and your lists | Contract |
| Chats: messages, photos, videos, voice notes, stickers, reactions, read receipts; call logs (who started a call, in which chat, when) | To deliver your messages and show call history | Contract |
| Shared location in groups (optional): your last known position, and who in the group can see it | To show you on a group's map when you switch sharing on | Consent (off until you turn it on) |
| Bible: highlights, notes and your reading place and text size | To keep your Bible marks across your devices | Contract; explicit consent (faith) |
| Push token and device type (iPhone or Android) | To send you notifications you've allowed | Consent (your phone asks first) |
| Safety data: reports you make or receive, blocks, mutes, hidden posts, moderation decisions, appeals, account status (e.g. suspended) | To keep people safe and enforce our Terms | Legitimate interests (a safe community); legal obligation (UK Online Safety Act) |
| Invite codes: which invite brought you in | To add you to the chat or community you were invited to | Contract |
| Waitlist: email address on this website | To tell you when Olive opens | Consent (you can ask us to remove you any time) |
| Payments (when live): plan, subscription status, gifts given and received, and for creators, a Stripe account id | To take payments and pay creators | Contract; legal obligation (tax records) |
| Messages to us: what you email to support or privacy | To answer you | Legitimate interests |
| Technical: IP address and request logs held by our hosting providers | To keep the service running and secure | Legitimate interests |
Kept on your phone only (never sent to us): your prayer streak and reward counts, drafts, recently used place names, onboarding progress, and cached copies of feeds and chats so the app opens quickly.
We don't collect: your contacts, your precise location in the background, your date of birth, or data from other apps.
4. Your phone's permissions
Olive only asks for a permission at the moment you use the feature that needs it. You can say no, and change your mind later in your phone's settings.
- Camera: taking photos and videos, video calls, the event camera, profile photos.
- Microphone: voice and video calls, voice notes, recording videos.
- Photos: picking pictures and videos to post, and saving group photos to your library when you tap save.
- Location (while using the app only): adding a place to a post when you tap "use my location", and sharing where you are with a group when you switch it on. Olive never tracks you in the background.
- Notifications: messages, prayers, replies and community news. Turn them off in Settings in the app or on your phone.
- Clipboard (once): the first time you open the app after tapping an invite link, Olive looks once for an Olive invite code the invite page copied, uses it, and clears it. It ignores anything else on your clipboard and never checks again.
5. Chats and calls: what is and isn't encrypted
Olive chats are not end-to-end encrypted today. Messages, photos and voice notes are encrypted while they travel (HTTPS) and are stored on our database provider's servers, where they are encrypted at rest. That means the Olive team could technically read them. We only look at chat content when someone reports it, or when the law requires it.
Chat photos, videos and voice notes are stored as files with long, hard-to-guess web addresses. At the moment anyone who has one of those exact addresses can open that file. We are moving chat files to private storage before public launch, and will update this page when we do.
Calls run on Jitsi Meet (meet.jit.si), a video-calling service run by 8x8. Each chat has its own call room. Jitsi encrypts calls in transit; unless stated otherwise in the call, Jitsi's servers can process the audio and video to route it. Olive keeps a short log that a call was started, not the call itself. Your display name is passed to Jitsi so others see who joined.
6. Automatic checks and moderation
To keep Olive safe, some of what people post is checked by automated tools, and reports are read by people.
- Automatic check of new posts. The words and pictures of new videos, comments, prayer requests and community posts can be sent to OpenAI's moderation service, which scores them for things like hate, harassment, sexual content, self-harm and violence. Posts it flags are hidden while a person reviews them.
- Report screening with Jev. When you report a post or comment, its words and your reasons can be sent to Jev, a safety classifier made by TypeSafe AI and reached through OpenRouter, to judge how serious it is. Anything rated high or urgent is hidden from everyone until a person checks it.
- Community insights. If a community owner asks for insights, recent posts and comments in that community can be sent to Jev to sort them (a prayer request, a question, good news, a struggle) and to spot posts where someone sounds low, so a leader can check in. Community owners see those labels for their own community.
These tools only help people decide; a person makes every final decision to remove content or suspend an account. None of these providers may use your content to train their models under the terms we use them on [CHECK: confirm OpenAI and OpenRouter/TypeSafe no-training and retention terms]. How moderation works, and how to appeal, is on the Safety page.
7. Who we share with
Other people on Olive see what you choose to share: your profile, public posts, prayers, comments, and whatever you send in chats and communities. A private account limits your posts to approved followers. Community owners and moderators can see what members post in their community, and Olive's own moderators can see reported content.
Service providers (processors) help us run Olive. They may only use your data to provide their service to us:
| Provider | What they do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, sign-in, file storage, real-time chat, server functions. Holds almost everything above. | [SUPABASE REGION: Adam to check in the dashboard, e.g. EU (London/Frankfurt) or US] |
| Vercel | Hosts this website and invite pages; sees IP addresses and request logs. | Global edge network, US company |
| Expo (650 Industries) | Delivers push notifications and app updates to your phone. | US |
| Apple and Google | Deliver push notifications (Apple Push Notification service, Firebase Cloud Messaging); app stores. | US and global |
| "Sign in with Google" (if you use it: we receive your name, email and profile photo); our email (Google Workspace). | US and global | |
| Jitsi Meet (8x8) | Voice and video calls. | US and global |
| OpenAI | Automatic moderation check of new posts (text and images). | US |
| OpenRouter and TypeSafe AI (Jev) | Screening reported posts; community insights for owners. | US [CHECK] |
| Stripe (when payments go live) | Subscriptions, gifts and creator payouts. Stripe collects your card details directly; Olive never sees them. | US, EU and UK |
Things your device fetches directly. Some features load content straight from other services, which then see your IP address: map tiles for group maps (OpenStreetMap and Esri), Bible audio (ebible.org), fonts on this website (Google Fonts), embedded videos in communities (YouTube or Vimeo, using privacy-enhanced embeds where available), and GIF search (GIPHY) if it's switched on.
Other sharing. We will share data if the law requires it, to protect someone from serious harm, or to deal with illegal content (for example, reporting child sexual abuse material to the authorities). If Olive is ever sold or passed to a new owner, your data would go with it under this policy, and we'd tell you first.
8. Data outside the UK
Several of our providers are based in, or use servers in, the United States and other countries. When your data leaves the UK, we rely on the UK's adequacy regulations (including the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, where the provider is certified) or the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses, which these providers include in their data processing terms. You can ask us for a copy of the relevant safeguards.
9. How long we keep it
- Your account and content: until you delete them, or delete your account.
- When you delete your account (Settings → Delete my account): your profile is wiped and your sign-in removed straight away, along with your posts, comments, prayers, likes, follows, memberships, chat messages you sent in direct messages, Bible marks and push tokens. Some uploaded files and group-chat messages may take up to [30 DAYS: Adam to confirm the clean-up period] to be removed from storage, and backups roll off within our provider's backup window [BACKUP PERIOD: e.g. 7 days on Supabase Pro].
- Shared location: only your latest position is kept; it is replaced each time you share and removed with your account.
- Moderation records (reports, decisions, appeals): kept for up to [2 YEARS: Adam to decide] after a case closes, so we can handle appeals and repeat problems and show we meet the Online Safety Act.
- Payment records (when live): kept for 6 years, as UK tax law requires.
- Waitlist emails: until Olive launches and we've told you, or until you ask us to remove yours.
- Emails to us: up to 2 years after the conversation ends.
10. Your rights
Under UK GDPR you have the right to:
- See the data we hold about you (a copy, free of charge).
- Correct it if it's wrong. Most of it you can edit yourself in your profile.
- Delete it. Delete a post from its menu, or your whole account in Settings → Delete my account.
- Object to things we do on the basis of legitimate interests, and restrict our use of your data while a concern is looked at.
- Take it with you in a common format (data portability).
- Withdraw consent at any time: switch off location sharing or notifications, or delete what you've shared.
Email privacy@adovecalledolive.com from the address on your account. We'll reply within one month. If you're unhappy with how we've handled your data, please tell us first, and you can always complain to the Information Commissioner's Office: ico.org.uk, 0303 123 1113.
11. Children and young people
You must be at least [MINIMUM AGE: Adam to decide, 13 or 16] to use Olive. If you're under 18, please use Olive with a parent or carer's knowledge. We don't knowingly collect data from anyone under the minimum age; if we learn we have, we'll delete the account. Parents can contact privacy@adovecalledolive.com.
Because Olive is a social app with chats and communities, we follow the ICO's Children's Code where it applies: location sharing is off by default, we don't profile young people for advertising (we have no adverts at all), and we keep safety tools easy to find. More for parents is on the Safety page.
12. Cookies and storage
This website and the web app don't use advertising or tracking cookies, and we don't run analytics. We use your browser's local storage, and the app uses your phone's storage, only for things that make Olive work: keeping you signed in, holding an invite code until you've joined, remembering settings, and caching content so it loads faster. Because these are strictly necessary, we don't need to ask for cookie consent. This website loads fonts from Google Fonts, which sees your IP address.
13. Security
Everything travels over encrypted connections (HTTPS). Our database controls who can read each row, so, for example, only members of a chat can load its messages. Passwords are never stored in plain text. Only Adam and appointed moderators can see moderation tools. No system is perfectly secure, and chats are not end-to-end encrypted (see section 5). If a breach puts you at risk, we'll tell you and the ICO as the law requires.
14. Changes and contact
We'll update this page as Olive grows (for example when payments go live, or when chat files move to private storage). If a change matters, we'll tell you in the app before it takes effect. The date at the top always shows the latest version.
Questions: privacy@adovecalledolive.com. We'd rather you asked than worried.