1.Who we are, and whose records these are
Parish Bells is provided by Ceegees Software Solutions Pvt Ltd, [REGISTERED ADDRESS] ("we", "us").
A parish that uses Parish Bells decides what it records about its families and members, and why. For those records the parish is the Data Fiduciary under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and we process them on its behalf. A question about what your parish holds about you is best asked of your parish office first.
For your account itself, this website, and messages sent to us through the Contact us page, we are the Data Fiduciary.
2.What is kept
People and families
- A member’s name, and as the parish or the member records them: email address, phone number, photograph, date of birth (or only the day and month), gender, the name of their father or husband, education, profession, blood group, where they live and their native village, a status (such as active, visitor or deceased) and remarks.
- A family’s name, phone number, address, location on a map if given, photographs, ward or unit, and who belongs to it, from when and until when.
- Each member’s own choices: what the directory shows about them, whether they appear in the celebrations of the day, whether they may be tagged in photographs, and which notices they want and when.
The sacramental registers
- Baptisms, marriages and deaths: the date, the register and serial numbers, the people involved and their part (parents, godparents, witnesses, next of kin), and the details the register records.
- Confessions: only that one happened. Who, with which priest, on what day, and a serial number. Never what was said. A confession is never shown on a profile or in a family’s registers.
- Certificates the parish issues, and requests for them.
Dues, payments and the books
- What a family or member owes, what it has paid, and receipts.
- Payments reported by a family: the method, the UPI reference number (UTR) or a screenshot, and a note. Payments go directly from the family’s own UPI app to the parish; no card, bank account or UPI credentials are handled by Parish Bells.
- The parish’s books: receipts and payments, accounts, and, if the parish records a GSTIN, the tax on its receipts. Suppliers the parish pays may be recorded with their GSTIN or PAN.
The parish’s life
- The calendar and bookings, notices and publications, prayer groups and the committee.
- Pastoral care: who is sick, in hospital, housebound or bereaved, with a note, kept for the clergy.
- Event albums: photographs, who uploaded them, and who is tagged. A tag waits for the person’s acceptance, and anybody can choose never to be tagged.
- Requests to join a parish, and spreadsheets the office imports, with what each import changed.
Your account and its security
- Your name, email address and password. The password is kept only as a hash, never as itself.
- Six-digit codes sent to your email, kept only as a hash, with when they run out and how many times one has been tried.
- If you use a second factor: the authenticator secret, and your recovery codes as hashes.
- Your sessions: when you signed in, when each session was last used, and when it runs out.
The change history
Parish Bells keeps a record of who changed what in a parish’s records, and when: the value before and after, and the internet address and browser the change came from. Values of passwords, tokens, codes and other secrets are never written into it. Nobody can edit or erase this record, which is what makes it worth keeping.
Your devices
If you use the phone app and allow notifications, the push token your phone gives us, so that a notice can reach that phone, together with your quiet hours and time zone.
Messages to us
If you write to us through the Contact us page: your name, email address, and, if you give them, your phone number and parish, what your message is about, the message, the browser you used, and your internet address, kept only as a salted hash, never as itself.
3.Where it comes from
- From the parish office, which records its families, members and registers, or imports them from the parish’s spreadsheets.
- From you and your family, when you record your household, update your details, report a payment or answer an invitation.
- From your devices, when you sign in or allow notifications.
4.Why it is used, and what is never done with it
Records are used to run the parish: to keep its registers and issue certificates, plan its calendar, tell people what is on, care for those who need it, keep its books, and let families keep their own details up to date. Account and security details are used to let you in, and to keep everybody else out.
We do not sell personal data, use it for advertising, build profiles of people, or track children’s behaviour. Parish Bells contains no advertising, and no analytics or tracking service.
5.Who can see what
- The parish office, by role. Each person sees only what their role allows: a treasurer the books, a secretary the people and the registers, and so on. Roles that keep the money or run the parish need a second factor.
- Members, through the parish directory, as each member chooses. Each member can show their phone number, email, address, village, date of birth, blood group and profession to the whole parish, to their prayer group only, or to the office only, or leave the directory altogether. What is hidden is held back by the server, not just left off the screen.
- Somebody from outside the parish, such as an auditor, only what their role allows, read only, and only until the last day the parish set for their access. An auditor never sees the directory.
- Pastoral care notes, by the clergy.
- Other parishes, never. Each parish’s records are kept apart from every other parish’s.
- Our support team, only to help somebody who has asked, with their consent, for at most 30 minutes at a time, and every visit is recorded.
We disclose personal data to anybody else only where the law requires it, for example to comply with a lawful order.
6.Services that handle it for us
- Hosting: Parish Bells, its database and uploaded files run on servers provided by [HOSTING PROVIDER], in [HOSTING LOCATION].
- Email: Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES), in the United States (us-east-1), sends sign-in codes, invitations and replies to messages. It handles the address and the email’s contents.
- Push notifications: Expo, which passes a notice to Apple’s or Google’s push service to reach your phone. It handles the push token and the notice’s text.
Where these services are outside India, your data is transferred there to provide the service, as the law allows.
7.How long it is kept
- A parish’s records are kept while the parish uses Parish Bells. Registers and books are kept as the parish’s permanent record; the parish decides when anything else is removed.
- When a person dies or moves away, the parish records that as their status rather than deleting them, because the registers must still be able to name them. A record entered twice can be deleted.
- The change history is kept as long as the parish’s records are.
- Sign-in codes stop working after 15 minutes (a password reset), 30 minutes (confirming an address) or 7 days (an invitation). A session ends after 14 days unused, and after 30 days at most. These records are deleted after [RETENTION PERIOD FOR CODES AND SESSIONS].
- Messages sent through the Contact us page are kept for [RETENTION PERIOD FOR CONTACT MESSAGES].
- After a parish stops using Parish Bells, its records are kept for [RETENTION PERIOD AFTER TERMINATION], then deleted, except what the law requires us to keep.
8.Your rights
Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 you may:
- ask for a summary of the personal data held about you, how it is used, and who it has been shared with;
- have it corrected, completed or brought up to date. Much of it you can change yourself, on your own and your family’s pages;
- have it erased when it is no longer needed for the purpose it was given for, unless the law requires it to be kept. A register entry recording a sacrament is part of the parish’s permanent record;
- withdraw a consent you gave, as easily as you gave it, for what you consented to;
- have a grievance redressed, by the parish or by us;
- nominate somebody to exercise these rights for you if you die or become unable to.
For what your parish holds, ask your parish office: it decides about its records, and we help it answer. For your account, or if your parish does not answer, write to us. We will answer within [RESPONSE PERIOD].
If you are not satisfied with how a grievance is resolved, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India.
9.Children
Parishes record children as part of their families: as members of a household, and in the baptism register. Under the law anybody under 18 is a child, and the parish must obtain the consent of a parent or lawful guardian before it records a child, unless the law exempts it.
An account is for an adult; a child’s details are kept by a parent or by the parish office. Children under 18 are left out of the parish-wide celebrations of the day unless the parish chooses to include them. A child’s data is never used for advertising, profiling or tracking.
10.How it is kept safe
- Everything between your browser or phone and Parish Bells is encrypted in transit (HTTPS).
- Passwords are at least 12 characters and kept only as hashes. Codes sent by email are six digits, run out after minutes, and stop working after ten wrong tries.
- Roles that keep the parish’s money or run the parish must use a second factor from an authenticator app.
- Signing in is limited per address and per person, so a password cannot be guessed by trying many.
- You can see everywhere you are signed in and sign out of any of them, or all; resetting your password signs you out everywhere else.
- Photographs and documents are reached through links that stop working within seven days.
- Every change to a parish’s records is recorded, and the record cannot be edited.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal data, we will tell the parish, and you and the Data Protection Board of India as the law requires.
11.Cookies and storage on your device
The website keeps your sign-in, and the parish you last worked in, in your browser’s own storage, and the phone app in the phone’s secure storage. These are needed for Parish Bells to work. We use no advertising or analytics cookies.
12.Changes to this policy
We will update this policy when what Parish Bells keeps or does changes. The date at the top says when it last changed; if a change matters, we will tell parishes before it takes effect.
13.Grievance Officer and contact
Grievance Officer: [GRIEVANCE OFFICER NAME], Ceegees Software Solutions Pvt Ltd, [REGISTERED ADDRESS]. Email [GRIEVANCE OFFICER EMAIL].
For anything else about privacy, email hello@ceegees.in, or use the Contact us page and choose "Privacy or my data".