Privacy Policy

Effective 20 October 2026 · applies to the AlMasjidi mobile app and almasjidi.com

1. Who we are

AlMasjidi ("we") operates the AlMasjidi mobile application and the website almasjidi.com. Contact: [email protected].

2. What we collect — regular users (no account)

• Location — used on your device to find nearby mosques, calculate fallback prayer times, and point the qibla compass. Your coordinates are sent to our server only as a search query when you look for nearby mosques, and are not stored. If you add a missing mosque (which needs an account), the coordinates you submit become that mosque's public location, and the photo you take of it becomes its public cover photo. Before upload, the app checks on your device whether the photo shows a building and reads any text written on it (the mosque's name board); those labels and lines of text are sent with the photo and shown to our moderators. No face recognition is involved.
• Followed mosques & settings — stored on your device. If you enable push notifications, we store a device token together with the mosques you follow so the mosque can reach you with timing changes and announcements.
• Reports — if you report a problem with a mosque, we store the reason, any note you write, and which device (or account) sent it, so that each phone counts once.
• Camera — used only when you open the QR scanner (and, for mosque admins, timetable photo capture). Images are processed on the device and are not uploaded, except a mosque cover photo an admin chooses to publish.

3. What we collect — mosque admins (optional account)

• Sign-in via Google or Apple — we receive your name, email address, and the provider's account identifier. We never see your password. This is required only to claim and manage a mosque.
• Claiming a mosque — we do not ask for ID or documents. Instead your phone's location is checked once, when you claim, to confirm you are at the mosque. We store that location, its accuracy and your distance from the mosque with the claim, as the record of why it was approved. If the mosque already has admins, they see your name and email address so they can recognise you before approving. You may also add a photo of the mosque's electricity, gas or water bill — instead of being at the mosque, or as well. The app reads the text on it on your device; we store the photo and that text privately (never public, seen only by our moderators) and delete both 30 days after the claim is decided, or when you delete your account. We keep only the result: the utility company, the bill date and whether it matched the mosque. A bill that did not match, sent while you were at the mosque, is not kept at all.
• Content you publish — prayer timings, announcements, and mosque details you enter are public information shown to everyone.
• Photos and videos — images and short clips a mosque admin uploads to a gallery are public. We resize and re-encode every upload on our servers and strip its embedded metadata, which removes the GPS coordinates a phone records in a photo.
• The mosque's team — a mosque can have up to three admins. The other admins and the committee see your name and the position the committee's manager gives you (for example Imam, Muazzin or Finance).
• Activity history (deleted after 7 days) — when an admin changes prayer times, posts, edits or removes an announcement, uploads an azan or a photo, or joins or leaves the team, the mosque's admins can see who did it and when, so that a wrong entry can be traced and corrected. This history is shown only to that mosque's admins and is deleted automatically after 7 days.

4. Mosque committee: accounts and messages (private, invitation only)

A mosque's committee has a private space for mosque business — its accounts book and a group chat. The committee's manager invites specific people to it, up to ten people in all. This feature is hidden unless you have been invited.

• Accounts — the money the committee records (collections, donations, salaries, bills), its starting balance, who added or changed each entry, and any photo or PDF of a bill, receipt or deposit slip the manager attaches to an entry. Stored on our servers (files in private storage, served only to members) and visible only to that committee's members. Only the committee's manager can add or change entries; every change is logged. Statements you download are created on your phone.
• Messages and attachments — stored on our servers so the group has a shared history. Attachments are kept in private storage and served only to members of that group; they are never publicly reachable by URL.
• Who can see them — only members of that mosque's group, and our administrators where required to investigate a report or comply with the law.
• Not end-to-end encrypted — messages are encrypted in transit, but we can technically access them. Please do not send anything you would not share with the mosque's administrators.
• Leaving — you can leave a group at any time, and an admin can remove you.

5. Reporting and moderation

Photos, videos and messages are content created by users. If you see something abusive, unlawful, or otherwise inappropriate you can report it from within the app, or email [email protected]. We review reports and may hide or delete content and suspend accounts. Reported content is retained while it is being reviewed so that abuse can be evidenced.

Followers can also report a mosque's prayer times or its admin. Reports from several followers pause a newly approved admin automatically and undo their recent changes until we review them; the admin's access is restored if the reports turn out to be wrong.

6. What we do NOT do

• No selling or renting of personal data — to anyone, ever.
• No advertising and no third-party ad or tracking SDKs.
• No analytics SDKs — we do not track how you use the app.
• No background location tracking and no location history.
• No access to your contacts.
• We do not read your private messages except to investigate a report or where the law requires it.

7. Services we rely on

Push notifications are delivered through Google Firebase Cloud Messaging. Sign-in uses Google and Apple's own services. Mosque map data may originate from OpenStreetMap. Each processes only what is needed for its function, under its own privacy policy.

8. Retention & deletion

Deleting your account. Signed-in users can delete their account at any time from Settings → Delete account in the app. This immediately revokes all sign-in tokens, removes your mosque-admin roles and committee memberships, and anonymises the account record (name, e-mail, avatar and sign-in identity are erased). You can also request deletion by e-mailing [email protected] from the address you signed in with.

Committee accounts are the mosque's records, not one person's: they stay with the committee when a member leaves or deletes their account (entries added by someone who deleted their account then show "Deleted user"). Gallery photos and videos remain until the mosque's admin deletes them or the album is removed. Committee messages and their attachments remain until deleted by their author or a mosque admin, or until the group is deleted; deleting a group deletes its attachments from storage. A mosque's activity history (who changed prayer times or announcements) is deleted after 7 days. Our internal record of changes made by mosque admins and by our staff (what changed, by which account, and the IP address it came from) is kept for 90 days so that misuse can be undone, then deleted; a record needed to restore a suspended admin is kept until that case is closed. A utility bill sent with a claim is deleted 30 days after the claim is decided. Device tokens are deleted when notifications are disabled or the token becomes invalid. Admin accounts and their data are deleted on request. Uninstalling the app removes everything stored on your device. To request deletion of any server-side data, email [email protected] — we respond within 30 days.

9. Children

The app shows prayer times and is suitable for all ages. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children; accounts are intended for mosque administrators.

10. Security

All traffic uses HTTPS. Server access is restricted, and admin actions are logged.

11. Changes

We will post any changes on this page and update the date above. Material changes will be announced in the app.