Catholic Spot is a search tool for the Catholic world. Here's what we collect when you use it, and what we don't.
What we collect
Your searches, anonymously. We keep every question people ask and reuse them — to see what's missing, to build the right things next, and to show the Church what its people are actually asking for. We don't attach your name to a search unless you're signed in.
An anonymous session cookie. This lets a follow-up question ("and in Denver?") connect to the one before it, without asking you to sign in. It carries no identity — just a random id.
What you tell us through the Contact door. If you use the Contact door on the search page, we keep your name, your email, the organisation you named, and the question — so your question can be worked on. The question itself joins the archive like any other; your name and email do not.
Your email, only if you give it to us. If you join the waitlist or create an account, we keep what you shared and use it to reach you about Catholic Spot — nothing else.
Rough location, if you share it. When you tap "Use my location," your coordinates help us find what's near you. We use them for that one answer; we don't build a location history on you.
How long we keep it
The questions are kept for good. Stripped of anything that identifies a person, they are the record of what the Church's people are looking for, and we reuse that record — to decide what to build, and to hand the pattern back to parishes and dioceses so the gaps become visible. What we do clear is the working memory of an anonymous conversation (the thread that lets "and in Denver?" follow the question before it): that goes after about 30 days unless you've signed in and kept it.
What we'll never do
We map organizations and what they publicly offer — parishes, ministries, groups, and the like. We never collect or serve an individual person's private contact details. If a result points you to a real person rather than an organization, it's because that contact is already public (a ministry leader's listed line, for instance) — never something we gathered ourselves.
We don't sell your data. We don't run ads that track you across the web.