Flock (also called Flock Faith) is a Catholic community app for finding and organizing communities, events and faith resources. Flock is published by Isabella Fugaro, an individual ("we," "us" or "our"). Flock is available only in the United States and only to adults aged 18 and older.
This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, who can see it, and the choices you have.
1. Information you provide
- Account information. Your email address and password. Passwords are managed by our authentication provider and are never stored in readable form. If you sign in with Apple, we receive the information Apple shares with us: a unique identifier and, usually, your name and email address. If you use Apple's "Hide My Email," we receive a private relay address instead, and we never display it as your name.
- Age confirmation. When you create an account, you confirm that you are 18 or older. We record that you confirmed and when. We do not ask for your date of birth or for identification.
- Acceptance of our terms. The version of the Terms of Service and of this Privacy Policy that you accepted, and when you accepted them.
- Profile information. Your display name and username and, if you choose to add them, a profile photo, bio, city, and what you are currently reading.
- Content you create. Posts (text and photos), comments, likes, @mentions, events you organize, RSVPs ("Going" or "Interested"), saved items, communities and groups you create or join, requests to start a community, reports you submit, and accounts you block. Flock accepts photos in JPEG, PNG, WebP and HEIC format. It does not accept video.
- Religious beliefs. Flock never asks about your religion. Because Flock is a Catholic community app, the communities you join and the posts and prayer intentions you share may reveal your religious beliefs. We use this information only to provide Flock, and others can see it only as described in Section 4.
- Support requests. If you email us at flockfaith.support@gmail.com, we receive your email address and your message.
- Beta sign-ups. If you request beta access on flockfaith.com, we receive your email address and your device platform. To prevent abuse, we store a one-way code derived from your IP address instead of the address itself. For iPhone and iPad, we share your email address with Apple so that Apple can send you a TestFlight invitation.
2. Information collected automatically
- Push notifications. If you allow notifications, we store your device's push token and platform (iOS or Android) so that we can deliver notifications to that device.
- Event reminders. Reminders are scheduled on your device, and their content stays on your device.
- Approximate location (Discover only). Flock uses your location only when you tap "Use my location" in Discover. You can search by town instead. Your position is rounded to within about 1 kilometer (about half a mile) before it leaves your device, and your exact coordinates are never stored. We keep the broader area that was searched (a region about 20 kilometers across) and a town name so that nearby listings can be found and kept up to date. For fair-use limits, we also record which area your account searched and when (see Section 7). Your location is never shown on your profile or to other members, and Flock does not track your location in the background.
- Link previews. When a post contains a link, our server retrieves that page's public title and image to show a preview, and stores the preview. When the preview is displayed, your device loads the preview image directly from the linked website.
- No analytics or advertising. Flock does not send usage analytics or crash reports to any analytics or advertising company, and Flock contains no advertising.
- Technical logs. Our hosting providers keep technical logs, such as request logs that may include IP addresses, for security and troubleshooting, for the periods those providers set.
3. How we use information
- To provide Flock: accounts, profiles, communities, posts, events, RSVPs, notifications, reminders and Discover.
- To keep Flock safe: enforcing our Terms of Service and community rules, reviewing and acting on reports, supporting blocking, and preventing abuse, including rate limits and an automatic filter for certain words and links. We review every report. Urgent safety concerns, such as threats of harm or anything involving a child's safety, are handled first. We share information with law enforcement or with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) when the law requires it or when someone's safety is at risk.
- To communicate with you: account emails (email confirmation, password reset and account deletion), the notifications you have turned on, and replies to your support requests.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for targeted advertising.
4. Who can see your information
- Your profile. Your name, username, photo and bio can be seen by other signed-in members, subject to your profile visibility setting.
- Search. If you turn off "Discoverable in Search," you will not appear in member search. You will still be visible to members of communities you have joined and next to the content you post.
- Community memberships. Memberships in public communities can appear on your profile. Memberships in private communities are visible only to you and to the other members of that community.
- Member lists and join requests. A community's member list is visible to its members. A pending request to join is visible only to you and to that community's administrators.
- Posts and comments. These are visible according to where you post them. A post in a private community is visible only to that community's members, and a post in a group is visible only to that group's members.
- Anonymous posts. Where a community allows them, anonymous posts are shown without your name, and your identity is not shown to other members, including community administrators. Anonymous posts are text only. We can see who wrote an anonymous post when necessary to handle a report, enforce our Terms of Service or meet a legal obligation.
- Events. Public events can appear in Discover and can be seen by any signed-in member. Community and private events are visible only to the people who are allowed to see them. The list of people attending an event is visible to everyone who can see that event.
- Photos in posts. Post photos are stored privately. To display a photo, the app requests a temporary link, which is issued only if you are allowed to see the post. The link expires after 15 minutes and works for anyone who has it during that time. A photo that has already been displayed may remain in your device's cache. Profile photos and community images are public.
- Notification previews. Push notifications may include a short preview, such as who posted, the community name and the beginning of the post. Previews are delivered through Expo, Apple and Google and can appear on your lock screen. You can turn notifications off in the app or in your device settings.
- Blocking. People you block cannot interact with you, and their content is hidden from you.
5. Discover and third-party listings
Discover shows Catholic churches, Mass times and events gathered from public sources, including OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, GeoNames, diocesan and parish websites, and organizers' public calendars. These listings are not Flock events, and their organizers are not affiliated with Flock. Saving a listing creates a private bookmark in your account; it does not register you with the organizer. Please confirm details with the original source before you go.
6. Service providers
We use the following service providers to operate Flock. They process information on our behalf.
- Supabase: database, authentication, file storage and server functions. Our database is hosted in Canada (Amazon Web Services, Canada Central region), so your information is stored and processed outside the United States.
- Resend: sends account emails (email confirmation, password reset and account deletion).
- Google (Gmail): hosts our support inbox, flockfaith.support@gmail.com.
- Netlify: hosts the flockfaith.com website.
- Expo, Apple Push Notification service and Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google): deliver push notifications.
- Apple: Sign in with Apple, and TestFlight invitations for the iOS beta.
- Google Fonts: provides fonts on some flockfaith.com pages. Your browser requests these fonts directly from Google.
Discover data sources. Our server, not your device, contacts the following services. It never sends them your account details, your IP address or your exact location.
- The Overpass API (OpenStreetMap data) and Wikidata receive the approximate area being searched, to find nearby churches.
- Nager.Date receives only a year and a country code, to list public holidays.
- The U.S. Census Bureau geocoder receives only the public street addresses of parishes and event venues.
- Parish and diocesan websites are visited to read their public schedules.
Town names you type in Discover are matched against a list stored on our own servers, based on GeoNames data.
7. How long we keep information
We keep information only as long as we need it for the purposes described in this policy. Where we have set a fixed period, an automatic daily process deletes the information when that period ends.
- Your account and content: for as long as your account exists. Section 8 explains what happens when you delete your account.
- Discover search records (which approximate area your account searched, and when): deleted after 2 days.
- Discover listings and searched areas: the shared, anonymous record of searched areas, town names and public listings is kept as long as it is needed to keep listings up to date. It is not linked to your account once your search record has been deleted.
- Notifications: notifications you have read are deleted 12 months after they were sent. Unread notifications are kept for as long as your account exists.
- Push tokens: kept while notifications are turned on for a device, and removed when you sign out on that device or delete your account.
- Link previews: stored for as long as they are needed to display the preview, and refreshed from time to time.
- Account deletion requests made on the website: the one-way codes derived from the email address and the IP address are deleted after 2 days.
- Account deletion records (see Section 8): deleted 1 year after the deletion.
- Reports and moderation records: kept as long as needed for safety, to enforce our Terms of Service and to meet legal obligations. When an account is deleted, its identifying details are removed from the reports it submitted and from moderation records. Reports and moderation records about an account that has been deleted are themselves deleted 90 days after the account was deleted, unless the law requires us to keep them longer (for example, material we must preserve after a report to NCMEC).
- Beta sign-ups: kept for no longer than 90 days after the beta program ends, unless you ask us to delete your sign-up sooner, you delete your account, or we must keep it longer for a legal reason.
- Support emails: kept as long as needed to help you and to keep a record of your request.
- Technical logs: kept by our hosting providers for the periods they set.
- Backups: deleted information may remain in our database provider's encrypted backups for up to 7 days, until those backups are overwritten.
8. Deleting your account
You can delete your account at any time:
- In the app: go to Settings → Account Security → Delete my account. For your protection, you must have signed in recently, and you must type DELETE to confirm.
- On the web: visit https://flockfaith.com/delete-account. We will email you a single-use link that expires. Nothing is deleted until you confirm on the page that the link opens.
What we delete: your account and sign-in methods; your profile; your posts, including the comments on them; your comments; the photos you uploaded to posts and your profile photo; your likes, RSVPs, saved items and follows; your community and group memberships; your push tokens, notifications and notification settings; your terms acceptance and age confirmation records; your Discover search records; and any beta sign-up that uses the same email address. Replies that other people wrote to your comments remain, but they are no longer linked to your comment. If you signed in with Apple, we also revoke Flock's access to your Apple Account.
What we keep, and why:
- Communities and groups you own: you can ask another member to take over, and ownership transfers only if they accept. Otherwise, the community or group is archived, because it contains other members' content.
- Events: community events stay with the community if it still has an owner. If it does not, upcoming events are canceled and the people who RSVP'd are notified. Your personal upcoming events are canceled, and the people who RSVP'd are notified.
- Cover images that you uploaded for a community or an event stay with that community or event.
- Reports and moderation records are kept for safety and legal reasons, with your identifying details removed, for the periods described in Section 7. Reports you submitted no longer show that you submitted them.
- A deletion record, containing a one-way code derived from your account ID (not your name, email address or content), the status of the deletion and its timestamps, so that we can confirm the deletion was completed. This record is deleted after 1 year.
- Backups, as described in Section 7.
Account deletion is permanent and cannot be undone.
9. Your choices
You can edit your profile, turn "Discoverable in Search" on or off, choose your profile visibility, manage notifications in the app and in your device settings, allow or deny location access (used only when you tap "Use my location," and only as an approximate area), block or report accounts, leave communities, and delete your account. You can also email flockfaith.support@gmail.com to ask what information we hold about you, or to ask us to correct or delete it.
10. Adults only
Flock is only for people aged 18 and older. New members confirm that they are 18 or older when they create an account, and members who joined before this confirmation was introduced are asked to confirm once. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will delete it. If you believe someone under 18 is using Flock, please contact flockfaith.support@gmail.com.
11. United States only
Flock is offered only in the United States. Our database is located in Canada (see Section 6). Depending on the state where you live, you may have additional privacy rights. To exercise them, email us at flockfaith.support@gmail.com.
12. Changes to this policy
We will post any changes on this page and update the "Last updated" date. If we make significant changes, we will ask you to accept the new version in the app.
13. Contact
Isabella Fugaro
Email: flockfaith.support@gmail.com