Privacy Policy

Hebrew Explorer — hebrewexplorer.com · Effective September 13, 2026

Hebrew Explorer is a Bible-study site. We collect as little about you as we can manage, we do not sell information about you to anybody, we show no advertising, and we run no third-party trackers. This page says specifically what we hold, why we hold it, who else ever touches it, and how to make us delete it. Where the honest answer is complicated — and in one place below it is — we have written the complicated answer rather than a tidier one.

1. Reading the site without an account

You can read most of Hebrew Explorer without telling us anything. No account, no name, no email.

Our server keeps ordinary web logs — IP address, browser, time, and which page was asked for — because that is how a web server works and how abuse gets stopped. They are kept for a short period and then discarded.

Your place in a chapter, your font size, your theme and your device-only notes stay in your own browser. They are not sent to us at all. Clearing your browser data clears them, and we cannot recover them because we never had them.

2. How we count visits, exactly

We keep our own simple counts of which pages and features get used. There is no Google Analytics here, no Meta pixel, no advertising network, and no third-party script watching you — the counting is done by our own code, on our own server, and the numbers never leave it.

What a recorded event contains: which page or feature, your country (from the network, not from your address), your browser language, whether you are on a phone, tablet or desktop, the site or campaign link that brought you here, if any, how long the page was open in front of you and how far down it you scrolled.

A random visitor code, kept in your own browser. So that we can tell a first visit from a return visit, and see whether people who arrive on one page go on to read the Bible text, your browser makes up a random code the first time you visit (for example 3f9a0c51e27b8d46) and keeps it in its own storage, along with a short-lived code for the current visit that ends after 30 minutes without activity. They are not cookies, they are not made from anything about you, they contain nothing about you, and they are never sent anywhere but our own server. We do not attach them to your account, your email or your purchases, and nobody else can read them.

Turning it off. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, no visitor code is kept at all. The pages you open in one visit are counted together, through a note that lives only in that browser tab and disappears when you close it — nothing links one visit to another. You can also remove the codes at any time by clearing this site's data in your browser.

Alongside the code we still store a one-way fingerprint made from your IP address, your browser, today's date and a fixed secret, which changes every day and cannot be reversed. Your IP address itself is never stored.

Requests that look like a search engine or a monitoring robot are not counted at all.

3. Cookies

One cookie. It is called he_sess, it exists to keep you signed in, and it is deleted when you sign out. It is marked HttpOnly and Secure, so it is not readable by scripts and never travels over an unencrypted connection.

There are no analytics cookies, no advertising cookies, and no third-party cookies. (The visitor code described above lives in your browser's own storage rather than in a cookie, and is never sent with other requests.) Nothing here is used for advertising, shared with anyone, or combined with information from other sites, and the visitor code switches off with your browser's privacy signal — which is why there is no consent banner.

Your browser's own storage also keeps a few settings that never leave it — the reader's font, your place, and whether you have already signed up for, or put away, the Hebrew Explorer Weekly box, so it stops asking.

4. If you make an account

We store your email address and a hashed password. Hashed means we hold a one-way scramble and not the password, so we cannot tell you what your password is, and neither can anyone who steals the file.

We ask you to confirm your email address before the account works, so that somebody cannot make an account in your name.

5. Your study material

Anything you save while signed in is kept so that it follows you between devices: highlights, notes, study sheets, PaRDeS studies, word notes, the books on your shelf, where you had got to in each one, and how far through an audio track you were.

This is yours and we treat it that way. We do not read it for any purpose other than showing it back to you, we do not analyse it to build a profile of you, and it is never sent to an advertiser or to an AI service. If you write a review of a book, that one is public — reviews are meant to be read by other people, and they carry the name you chose to put on them.

There is one exception to that, and it is the next section.

5a. Which chapters of a paid book you have opened

For a book you have bought, we record which chapters have appeared on your screen, and the first time each one did. Nothing else: not how long you stayed on a chapter, not how many times you came back to it, and not the time of day you were reading.

Why it exists. We offer a refund on an ebook within seven days if you have opened less than a fifth of it. That promise is unkeepable without knowing how much of it you opened — so this record is the thing that lets us say yes to a refund rather than argue about it.

It is only ever used for that. It does not affect what you are shown, what you are recommended, or what you are sent. It is not used to work out what you are interested in, and it is never shared. When a refund request is looked at, one administrator sees the chapter numbers for that one book, alongside the request, so they can judge whether the figure is believable.

Free books are not tracked at all, because there is no refund to judge, and reading before you buy does not count against you: the record used for a refund starts at the moment of purchase.

If you would rather it were not kept, ask us and we will delete it for your account — the cost is that we can no longer verify a refund request for you, so one would have to be decided on trust instead.

6. Your Profile page

The Profile page has optional boxes for a name, an address and a phone number. They are optional in the real sense: leave them blank and everything on the site works. They exist so we can address you properly and reach you if something goes wrong with an order.

7. If you buy something

We never see your card. Card numbers, expiry dates and security codes go from your browser to Stripe, who take the payment. They do not pass through this site and no part of a card number is stored here — not even the last four digits.

What we do keep, for every purchase: the date, what was bought, what you paid, how much of that was sales tax, and a reference number that identifies the payment at Stripe. Alongside it we keep the name you gave at checkout, your phone number if you gave one, and your town, region, postcode and country.

Why we keep the name and phone number: so that when you write or ring about a purchase, whoever answers can find it. An order record consisting only of an email address is not much use to somebody trying to help you.

What we deliberately do not keep: any card data whatsoever, and your street address. Stripe collects a full billing address to work out sales tax; we take only the town, region, postcode and country from it, because that is enough to tell two customers apart and to check a tax figure, and the door number would add risk without answering anything.

Sales tax. Stripe calculates what is owed where, using the address you give at checkout, and we file and pay it. Tax collected is never ours or the author's — it passes straight through.

Your receipt is issued and held by Stripe, not by us, and you can open it any time from Orders & purchases in your account. We separately send you a confirmation email telling you what you bought and how to get to it.

8. Emails we send you

Emails about your account and your orders — confirming your address, resetting your password, receipts and purchase confirmations — are sent because you did something that needs an answer, and cannot be unsubscribed from separately. Close the account and they stop.

Mailings you chose — Hebrew Explorer Weekly, Verse of the Day and the like — are sent only if you asked for them. Every one carries an unsubscribe link that works in one click, and you can change your choices in your account at any time.

Most of our email is sent from our own mail server. A high-volume mailing may be handed to a specialist delivery provider; where that happens, the provider sends on our behalf and does not get to use your address for anything else.

9. If you send us feedback, or join the beta programme

We keep what you wrote and which part of the site it was about, so we can act on it and tell you what happened.

An AI service reads feedback, and you should know that. Feedback is passed to Anthropic, whose model sorts it by subject and judges how actionable it is, so that a small team can work through it in a sensible order. Two things about that: the text you wrote is sent, so please do not put anything private in a feedback box that you would not want processed by a third party; and it is your words about the site that go, never your notes, your study material, or anything else from your account. Anthropic processes it on our behalf under their own terms and does not use it to train models on our account.

Beta applications are kept with your answers, so we know who is on a term and when it ends.

9a. The support chat

Help & support in your account is a conversation with an AI assistant. What you type there, and what it replies, is sent to Anthropic, who provide the model, and is kept with your account so the conversation makes sense from one message to the next and so we can see what was said if it is passed to a person.

What it can see about you: your own orders — what you bought, when, what you paid, and for an ebook how much of it you have opened. Nothing about anybody else, ever. It is not able to look up another account, and there is no way to ask it to.

What it can do: lodge a refund request, file a bug report or a suggestion, and hand the conversation to a person who will email you. It cannot refund anything and it cannot decide anything — a person does that.

Please do not type anything into it you would not want processed by a third party. If you would rather not use it at all, email support@hebrewexplorer.com and a person will answer — you lose nothing by doing that.

9b. If you email us

Email you send to our support address arrives in an ordinary mailbox. A copy of it — who it came from, when, the subject and the text — is also kept on this site, so that whoever answers can see it alongside your account and reply from one place. Attachments are not copied, and no AI reads it: the support chat in section 9a and your email are separate things.

When we answer, the message is marked as dealt with and filed. The original stays in the mailbox either way — the copy here is a convenience, not the record.

Ask us and we will delete the copies of your emails held on the site.

10. If something breaks

When the site hits an error in your browser, it reports the error back to us so it can be fixed. The report contains the error message, the technical trace, the page you were on, your IP address, and your account number if you were signed in. It exists to make a bug reproducible and it is deleted once the problem is dealt with.

11. If you publish books with us

Publishing is a business relationship and it collects more, but most of it is not collected by us.

We hold your application and its answers, your publisher name, your titles and the files you upload, and a running record of what your books have earned and what we have paid you.

Your identity, tax details and bank account go to Stripe, not to us. Setting up payments takes you to Stripe, who verify who you are and where to send money. The only thing that comes back to this server is an account reference. We could not tell anybody your bank details because we do not have them.

At the end of the tax year the platform reports what it paid you, as the law requires.

12. Everyone else who touches any of this

Not many, and each one has a job:

Stripe — takes payments, calculates and reports sales tax, issues receipts, and holds publisher identity and bank details.
Anthropic — sorts submitted feedback, and provides the model behind the support chat, as described in sections 9 and 9a.
Our web host — runs the servers the site and its database sit on.
Our email delivery provider, where a large mailing calls for one.
ElevenLabs — produces the read-aloud audio. It receives scripture text from our own files and nothing about you: not who is listening, not your account, not anything you have written. The audio is made once and reused, so a passage is generally not sent at all.

When the site fetches scripture or reference material from outside sources, it asks for the passage. It does not tell them who is reading it.

Beyond these, we disclose information only when the law requires it, to protect people from harm, or if the business is ever sold — in which case this policy continues to apply to what is transferred.

13. What we never do

We do not sell or rent information about you. We do not share it with advertisers or data brokers. We show no advertising and run no ad trackers. We do not build a profile of your beliefs, your interests or your reading in order to target anything at you — the chapter record in section 5a is used to judge refund requests and for nothing else, and never touches what you are shown or sent. We do not read your study notes. We do not touch your social-media accounts — we publish our own posts to our own pages, and that is all our software does there.

14. How long we keep things

Your account and your study material: for as long as the account exists.
Web server logs: a short period, then discarded.
Visit counts: indefinitely, but the daily fingerprint described in section 2 stops identifying anybody the moment the day is over.
Error reports: until the bug is fixed.
Which chapters of a paid book you opened: while you own the book, so a later question about that purchase can still be answered. Ask and we will clear it sooner.
Refund requests: with the purchase record they belong to.
Support conversations: with your account, so a question you asked last month can still be picked up. Ask and we will delete one.
Copies of emails you sent us: alongside the mailbox they arrived in, for as long as the mailbox keeps them. Ask and we will delete the copies here.
Purchase records: for as long as tax and accounting law requires them to be kept, which is longer than an account may last. See the next section.

15. Getting your data, and getting rid of it

You can see and change your saved work at any time from your account, and Orders & purchases lists everything you have bought with its receipt.

To have the whole account deleted, email support@hebrewexplorer.com from the address on the account with the subject "Delete my account". We will confirm it is you and then remove the account, your notes, your study sheets, your shelf, your reading positions, your subscriptions and your profile.

One thing survives, and here is the honest reason. The record that a payment happened — the date, the amount, the tax, and the reference at Stripe — is a financial record, and a business is required to keep those for a number of years. We cannot delete them on request without breaking that obligation.

What we do instead is remove you from them: the name, the phone number, the town and the email address are cleared, leaving a payment that is no longer attached to a person. If you would rather we did that at the same time as deleting the account, say so and we will.

Depending on where you live, local law — in the EU or UK, or in several US states — may give you further rights to a copy of your data, to have it corrected, or to have it deleted. We honour valid requests, and we will never treat you worse for making one. You also have the right to complain to your data-protection authority.

16. Security

The whole site is served over an encrypted connection, passwords are hashed, and administrative functions are behind named permissions so that being able to see something and being able to change it are separate.

The strongest thing we can say about security is a matter of what is not here: no card numbers, no bank details, no government identity documents. The worst case for this database does not include any of those, because they are at Stripe and never reach us.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach ever affects personal information, we will say so, promptly and plainly, and do what the law requires.

17. Children

Hebrew Explorer is for a general audience and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has given us information, write to us and we will delete it.

18. Where this happens

The site is operated from the United States and its servers and database are in the United States. If you use it from elsewhere, your information is processed there, where data-protection law may differ from your own.

19. Links to other places

We link to outside resources and stores. Their privacy practices are theirs, not ours, and worth reading.

20. Changes

This policy changes when the site does — that is the rule we hold ourselves to, rather than reviewing it annually and hoping. The current version and its effective date are always at this address, and a change that materially affects what we collect will be announced on the site rather than made quietly.

21. Contact

Anything about privacy, and any request under this policy: support@hebrewexplorer.com

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