ISKCON Chicago
This policy covers ISKCON Chicago: New Seva Kunj on iPhone and Android. It describes the app as it works today. Nothing here is aspirational, and where the app falls short of what you might expect, that is said plainly rather than left out.
Effective 1 September 2026The app is run by ISKCON Chicago (the International Society for Krishna Consciousness of Chicago), a religious congregation in Illinois, USA. The temple is the controller of the information described here. It is not a commercial product, there is no advertising in it, and nothing in it is sold, rented or traded to anybody.
Every screen beyond the sign-in page requires an account. There is no public devotee profile and no guest directory.
ISKCON Chicago
1716 W Lunt Ave, Chicago, IL 60626, USA
tech@iskconchicago.com
That address reaches the temple's technology seva, who answer privacy questions, deletion requests and moderation reports.
Almost everything below is something you type in yourself. Nothing is gathered quietly in the background. Only your name, email address and phone number are required; every other field can be left blank, and leaving it blank costs you nothing.
A child's date of birth is not stored. If you use the date picker to work out an age, only the whole number of years is saved. See Children.
All of this is voluntary. None of it is a requirement for seva, and none of it appears in the Directory.
No coordinate, address or map position is ever recorded. This is a switch you press, not a sensor. Turning it off takes you off today's list at once.
A report is not anonymous to the temple: the President and Tech Admin see who made it. It is never shown to the devotee reported.
No card number, bank detail or billing address ever reaches the app or the temple's database. See Donations and payment processing.
All of these sit in private storage. Opening one requires a signed-in account. See Security measures.
This part matters as much as the list above, so it is stated on its own rather than left to be inferred.
A temple has always kept a record of its congregation, and this app is that record in a form a devotee can read and correct. Every group above is held for a reason that can be named, and this table names it.
| What | Why it is held | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Account and password | To sign you in, and to decide what you are allowed to do. | Performance of the agreement between you and the temple. |
| Phone, email, push token | So a coordinator can reach you about seva you agreed to, and so a reminder can arrive. | Legitimate interests of a congregation in running its community; consent for push notifications, which your phone asks for separately. |
| Personal and family details | To keep the congregation record, so the temple knows the family it is serving and can greet, invite and look after them. | Consent. Every one of these fields is optional. |
| Emergency contact | So the temple can reach somebody who knows you if something happens during a program or a seva. | Consent, and the vital interests of the person concerned. |
| Spiritual practice and ISKCON membership | So weekly seva can be offered that fits where you are in your practice, and so the congregation can be told apart from visitors and newcomers. | Consent, freely given and freely withdrawn. This is religious belief information, so it is collected only from a member of the congregation who volunteers it, and it can be cleared at any time. |
| Seva, attendance and hours | To fill a rota, to credit the seva that was performed, and to keep the temple's service records straight. | Legitimate interests of the temple in running its service. |
| Messages, sangas, care posts | To carry the conversation, and to let the temple answer a safeguarding question honestly. | Performance of the agreement; legitimate interests in the safety of devotees. |
| Reports and blocks | To keep the community a place a devotee is safe in, and to be able to show what was done about a complaint. | Legitimate interests in the safety of devotees, and compliance with the app stores' requirements for community content. |
| Donation records | To thank you, to reconcile the temple's accounts, and to answer an auditor. | Legal obligation. A charity in the United States must keep these. |
Nothing here is used for advertising, profiling, automated decision-making or any purpose other than running this temple's community. If the temple ever wants to use something for a new purpose, it will ask first.
The honest summary is that the temple's leadership can see a devotee's record. That is how a temple works, and it is stated here plainly rather than buried. What the wider community sees is much narrower.
| Who | What they can see |
|---|---|
| Any signed-in devotee | Your name, photo, access level and joined date, and — on your profile page — your email address, gender, date of birth, age and occupation. They also see you on today's temple list while your At the temple switch is on, your name beside seva you share, and your messages in any sanga you both belong to. |
| A devotee you message | What you send them, and any photo attached to it. |
| Whoever posted a seva | Who joined it, and whether each person served, was absent or was excused. If you are marked as not attending, the app tells you, so you can say if it is wrong. |
| Community Heads | The full seva schedule and devotees' completed seva, because arranging seva depends on it. |
| The President and the Tech Admin | Everything in your record. That includes your phone number, home address, birth place, family, initiation and mentor; every direct message and sanga message, including the original text and photo of messages that were deleted; every report made about anybody; every devotee's seva and attendance; and every donation. Blocking somebody does not narrow this: the temple's record is read as it stands, whoever has blocked whom, and the President and the Tech Admin cannot be blocked. This is deliberate — it is what lets the temple answer a safeguarding question or an accounts question — and it cannot be switched off in the app. If that is not something you want, do not write it here. |
| Newsletter editors | Submissions made for the newsletter, and who sent them. |
| Devotees authorised for care | Confidential devotee care posts and replies. |
| Nobody else | Your emergency contact, home address, marital status, spouse, children, chanting rounds, initiation details, ISKCON membership answer and skills never appear in the Directory or on any profile page shown to another devotee. |
Outside the temple, the only parties who handle any of this are the service providers in Third-party services and SDKs, each of which processes it on the temple's instructions and for no purpose of their own. Nothing is sold, rented or traded. The temple will disclose information if the law requires it, or where it is genuinely necessary to protect somebody's safety.
The app has no per-field privacy switches. The two things genuinely in your hands are the At the temple switch and whether you appear on the Seva Yatra leaderboard. Rather than show toggles that change nothing, the app's Privacy and visibility screen explains what is held — and this policy does the same.
This is the complete list. There is no analytics SDK, no advertising SDK, no attribution SDK and no social media SDK in the app.
| Service | What it handles | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Runs the sign-in, the database, the file storage and the server functions. Everything described in this policy is stored on Supabase's infrastructure on the temple's behalf. | Processor |
| Expo | Issues the push token for your phone and delivers the temple's notifications, which means the title and body of a notification pass through Expo's push service on the way to you. | Processor |
| Apple and Google | Apple's push notification service on iPhone, and Firebase Cloud Messaging on Android, carry the notification the last step to your phone. | Processor |
| Zeffy | Takes the donation on its own page, in your phone's browser, and tells the temple that it happened. Zeffy's own privacy policy governs what you enter there. | Independent controller |
| Google Sign-In | Only if you choose it instead of a password. Google tells the temple your name, email address and profile picture. The temple tells Google nothing about you. | Independent controller |
The app also opens ordinary web links in your phone's browser — the temple's own pages, and this policy. Once a page is open in the browser, that site's own terms apply.
When you choose to give, the app opens Zeffy's own donation page in your phone's browser — Safari on iPhone, Chrome on Android. It is deliberately not shown inside the app, so that nothing the app runs can see what you type there.
Your card number, expiry, security code, bank details and billing address are entered on Zeffy's page and are never received, seen, processed or stored by the app or by the temple's database. The temple has no ability to charge you and no stored payment method for you.
The only thing the app passes to Zeffy is your email address, added to the link so that the gift can be matched back to your record. After the payment completes, Zeffy notifies the temple's server, which records the amount, the currency, whether it was one-time or recurring, the campaign, your name and email as you gave them to Zeffy, and Zeffy's own reference for the payment. That is the whole of it.
Donations are voluntary charitable contributions to ISKCON Chicago. They are never required to use the app or any part of it, and giving does not unlock any feature, content or level of access. Whether you give, and how much, changes nothing about what the app will let you do.
Everything is held in the temple's own Supabase project — the database, the sign-in records, and the private storage buckets holding photos and newsletter files. That project is hosted in Amazon Web Services' us-west-2 region, in Oregon, in the United States. Backups are held by Supabase in the same region.
Push notifications pass through Expo's service, and then through Apple's or Google's, both of which operate internationally.
If you use the app from outside the United States, your information is transferred to and processed in the United States, which may not offer the same protections as the law where you live. By using the app you understand that this is where the temple's records live. Where a transfer needs a legal mechanism, the temple relies on the standard contractual clauses in its agreement with Supabase.
A small amount of information is also kept on your own phone so the app works and remembers you are signed in — your session, your preferences, and a cache of what you last looked at. Deleting the app removes it.
There is no automatic clear-out. Your record is kept for as long as you are part of the community, and the temple's records of seva, donations and community life are kept as a temple's records always have been.
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Your profile and personal details | Until you change them, or until you ask to be forgotten — at which point they are erased. |
| Messages and sanga messages | Kept as a temple record for as long as the temple runs the app. Erased when you ask to be forgotten. |
| The original of a deleted message | Kept, and readable by the President and Tech Admin, until you ask to be forgotten. |
| Seva, attendance and hours | Kept indefinitely. Survives being forgotten, with your name removed. |
| Donation records | At least seven years, for the temple's accounts and for tax. Survives being forgotten, with your name removed. |
| Feedback and newsletter submissions | Until you delete them, which really does delete them. Erased when you ask to be forgotten. |
| Reports and moderation decisions | Kept while the account exists, and for up to two years after a decision, so that a pattern of behaviour can be seen. |
| Push tokens | Until the phone stops responding, you sign out, you leave, or you ask to be forgotten. |
| Temple check-in | One row per devotee, overwritten each day. Nothing is accumulated. |
Two things deserve to be said outright, because they are not what people usually assume:
Leaving and being forgotten are two different things, and the app draws the line between them rather than blurring it.
Stepping away from the app. Nothing is erased. Notifications stop and the phone is forgotten, but the temple keeps your record as it stands, the way a congregation roll has always been kept.
Sign in again and everything is where you left it.
Asking the temple to stop holding who you are. Your name becomes A former devotee, and your email, phone, address, date of birth, photo, emergency contact, family and spiritual details are all erased. Your profile photograph is deleted from storage. Your messages are deleted, including the retained originals. Your sign-in stops working.
This cannot be undone, and there is nothing to restore from.
Open Profile, scroll to the bottom, and tap
Leaving, or deleting your account. Being forgotten asks
you to type DELETE first, because of what it does. Both
take effect immediately — neither waits on anybody at the temple to
approve it.
If you no longer have the app, you can ask for the same thing from a web page, without installing anything:
https://app.iskconchicago.com/delete-account
Or write to tech@iskconchicago.com from the email address on your account. The temple will confirm it is you and then carry it out, within 30 days and usually much sooner.
Two things outlive it, and neither of them says who you were:
Your name is removed from both. What is left is an hour and an amount with nobody attached to them.
One exception, and the app says so at the time: if you are the only person left who can administer the app, it will refuse to erase you until somebody else has been given that access. Otherwise the congregation would be left with an app nobody can run.
This app is not directed at children. It is meant for adults. The temple does not knowingly create accounts for anybody under 13, a child should not sign up, and there is nothing in the app aimed at children — no games, no child-facing content, and no advertising of any kind.
A parent or guardian may record their own children within their own profile, as part of the family's congregation record. It is always the parent who enters this, from their own signed-in account. A child never has an account and never enters anything. For each child the app holds their name, age in whole years, gender, whether they practise and since when, and whether they are initiated.
A child's date of birth is not stored. The form offers a date picker to save you the arithmetic, but the date is used to work out the age and is then discarded; only the number of years is saved.
Children's details are never shown in the Directory, never shown to other devotees, and are visible only to the parent who entered them and to the President and Tech Admin. They can be edited or cleared at any moment in Profile → Your details, and they are erased entirely when the parent asks to be forgotten.
If you believe a child has created an account, or that a child's details are in the app and should not be, write to tech@iskconchicago.com and they will be removed promptly.
No system is perfect, and the temple does not claim this one is. If you think an account has been used by somebody else, say so and it will be acted on. If a breach ever affects your information, you will be told, and so will the authorities the law requires.
You can see and change most of what the app holds about you at any time in Profile → Your details. What you save takes effect straight away, everywhere the app shows it. Beyond that, you may ask the temple to:
Write to tech@iskconchicago.com from the address on your account. Requests are answered within 30 days. There is no charge, and asking will never affect how you are treated at the temple.
Depending on where you live you may also have the right to complain to a data protection authority. In Illinois, you may contact the Office of the Illinois Attorney General. The temple does not sell or share personal information as those words are used in California law, and never has.
As the app changes, this policy will be updated to match it, and the date at the top will change with it. If something significant changes — a new kind of information, or a new service handling it — the temple will say so in the app rather than quietly editing this page.
What changed on 1 September 2026. Dietary notes and health notes were removed from the app and deleted from the database. A question about ISKCON membership was added. Account deletion moved into the app itself, instead of being a request by email. The location feature was removed in full. Reporting and blocking were added.
For any question about this policy, your record, a deletion request, or anything above:
Email
tech@iskconchicago.com
Post
ISKCON Chicago
1716 W Lunt Ave
Chicago, IL 60626
USA
Delete your account on the web
https://app.iskconchicago.com/delete-account
For anything urgent, please contact the temple directly rather than relying on an app message. The app is not an emergency service.