Who we are

LightGarden is a Christian non-profit ministry focusing on small groups, film production and online ministry. Our website address is: https://lightgarden.org.

Comments & Contact Requests

When visitors contact us (by email, contact form or schedule a meeting) or leave comments to our website we collect the data that is send to us. Contact forms and website commenting may use spam detection technologies that collect the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. Due to increased amount of spam, we have added reCAPTCHA V2 spam protection tool from Google to the pages that have a contact form. The use of reCAPTCHA is governed by Google’s privacy policy and terms of service.

You can read Google’s privacy policy at:
https://policies.google.com/privacy

You can read Google’s terms of service at:
https://policies.google.com/terms

Currently we have not enabled commenting but if enabled, and when leaving a comment to our website, an anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. While our terms do not allow it, it is technically possible that our website visitors download and extract any location data from images on the website. The images should not include any personal data such as show your name, email address, mailing address etc.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site, you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

Currently we do not offer a possibility to login for our visitors, but if you are part of our team and visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen option cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Links to 3rd party websites

Our website includes links to 3rd party websites. These links are added in a hope that the content would be helpful to our visitors. We are not responsible for the 3rd party websites, the content or accuracy of the information that those websites provide or the privacy policies and practices that they have.

Embedded content from other websites

Pages, articles and other content on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Our website uses a cookie management plugin, that should inform you of your cookie choices and allow you to accept and reject cookies.

Statistical information

Our servers may collect statistical information of our website such as number of visitors, page views, average visit length, device type such as desktop or mobile, approximate location from where our website was accessed such as country, which operative system and browser was used and their screen resolution.

IP address can be used to understand the approximate geo-location of our visitors, such as from which country or city the visitor is connecting to our website. To protect our visitor’s privacy, we have set our statistics plugin to anonymize and hash IP addresses, meaning that part of the IP address is changed automatically, and the IP addresses are not fully stored in our database.

Statistical information is used by us to understand trends and general usage of our website. This helps us to understand several things such as how many people we are serving and what kind of difference we are making. Also, statistical information can help us to serve our visitors better, for example understanding the location of our visitors can give us indicators of the cultural background of our visitors and this in turn can help us communicate better to our audience.

Who we share your data with

If you send us a prayer or other contact request the request may be shared internally within our team members and volunteers to pray for you or to contact you depending on your request. Our team members and volunteers are not allowed to use the data for other purposes or to send a reply from their personal non-lightgarden email addresses.

Meeting Scheduling is handled by Microsoft Bookings App and uses the servers that Microsoft uses for providing their Microsoft 365 Business Basic service.

If you have an account on our website and request a password reset, your IP address will be included in the reset email. Our web and email servers are hosted by a third-party service provider and the email traffic will travel through their servers.

We may share data with law enforcement or to satisfy other legal requirements for example in a case where someone tried to hack our website, causes harm or threatens to cause harm to us, our systems, members, general public or security.

How long we retain your data

Prayer and contact requests are generally deleted within 24 months. If you become a LightGarden member and have regular interaction with us, the email exchanges / email thread may be kept as long as you stay a member or request the data to be erased.

If you leave a comment to the website, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, contacted us by email or send us a prayer request, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us assuming that the data was not already deleted.

Generally, we prefer to delete prayer request data because of the potential sensitive nature of your request instead of providing a copy. For security purposes we may request you to prove your identity. If your identity cannot be reasonable established or we suspect the request to be fraudulent we reserve the right to delete your data instead. The data may not be provided if you cannot prove your identity.

You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where your data is sent and stored

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. The data and emails send to us may be stored in European Union or other countries.

Updates

We reserve the right to update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When the policy is updated, we update the date at the end of the Privacy Policy.

Privacy Policy Date: 2024.11.05

Change Log:
2024.11.05 Added terms to “Comments & Contact Requests” section due to use of reCAPTCHA spam detection tool and corrected text grammar and readability throughout the policy.
2024.08.06 Modified “Embedded content from other websites” section.
2023.10.07 Added section on Links to 3rd party websites.

Cookie Policy

Our website uses cookies to store small amounts of information to our visitors’ browsers. Cookies help the website to remember user’s preferences and perform certain functions.

Cookies are divided into 5 categories: Necessary, Functional, Analytics, Performance and Advertisement.

Necessary Cookies
Necessary cookies are needed for this website to function properly.