Privacy policy

Who we are

Lauds: Daily Prayer (“Lauds”, “the app”) and this website are made by Verto Studios, a company established in Denmark, in the European Union. We are the data controller for everything described here. Contact: vertosupport@agentmail.to — put “[Lauds]” and “Privacy” in the subject line. Because we are established in the EU, the GDPR applies to how we handle your data wherever you live.

The app: what it holds, and where

There is no account, no login and no email address in the app. Nothing you do in the app is tied to your name.

On your phone only: your settings (the morning time, the translation you prefer, the evening reminder), the intention you type for a candle, optional prayer counts and streaks if you switch tracking on, and a short widget timeline. None of this is sent to us or to anyone else. The first 40 characters of a candle intention are shared with the app's own widget on the same phone so it can show them on your Lock Screen; they go nowhere else.

Purchases: Lauds Pro is sold through Apple. Apple handles payment under its own terms and privacy policy. To know whether your purchase is active, the app uses RevenueCat, a subscription service, in anonymous mode: RevenueCat assigns a random identifier to the app installation and stores the purchase receipt and subscription status against it. It never receives your name, email or Apple ID. RevenueCat is a US company; the transfer rests on the EU standard contractual clauses in their data-processing agreement. You can see your anonymous identifier in Settings → Delete my data.

Usage statistics: if a build of the app has analytics switched on, it sends anonymous events (for example “opened Today”, “viewed the paywall”) with a random identifier to PostHog, hosted in the European Union (Frankfurt). We do not store your IP address, we do not record your screen, and we never link these events to a person. They are kept for one year.

Notifications are scheduled on your phone. The app has no remote push; no device token exists anywhere.

The readings: tapping “Read today's readings” opens the day's page on bible.usccb.org in a Safari view inside the app. That is the USCCB's own website, shown unchanged; their privacy policy applies to that visit, exactly as if you had opened it in Safari. The app fetches nothing from that site in the background and stores nothing from it.

There are no ads and no advertising networks in the app. We don't sell or share your data with advertisers. There is no Meta or Facebook software in the app.

The voice, the texts and the art

The prayer audio in Lauds Pro is a synthetic voice, generated from the prayer text before the app ships. No recording of a person is involved, and nothing you say or type is ever sent to a speech service. The app says so under every track: “Read by a synthetic voice.”

Every text and picture in the app is in the public domain or written by us, and the app names its sources: the Douay-Rheims and Catholic Public Domain Version translations, prayers from a 1909 prayer book, Butler's Lives of the Saints (1894), and paintings from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's open-access collection. Lauds is an independent app; it is not affiliated with any diocese, bishops' conference or publisher.

Deleting your data

Settings → Delete my data erases everything the app keeps on your phone: settings, the candle, tracking counts and the widget timeline, and cancels the scheduled notifications. Deleting the app does the same.

The anonymous purchase record at RevenueCat is deleted on request: email vertosupport@agentmail.to and quote the identifier shown in Settings → Delete my data. We delete it within 30 days. Your Apple purchase history stays with Apple under Apple's terms; it is what “Restore purchases” uses if you reinstall the app.

This website

This website is where we measured interest before the app was built. If you joined the waitlist, we hold the email address you gave us and your answers to the short questionnaire (how you follow the daily readings, what you would pay for), plus the page you came from and your browser type. They are stored with Supabase, our database provider, and used for one thing: to tell you about Lauds. We never join the waitlist to anything the app does; the app has no way to know you signed up here.

We keep waitlist entries until 30 days after we send the launch notice, and no later than 31 December 2026 if the app has not launched by then. Page-view records are kept for 90 days after the test ends. Deleted entries can remain in database backups for up to 7 days.

This website uses the Meta Pixel to measure whether our ads reach the right people. It records a page view when you arrive and a “Lead” event when you finish the questionnaire, together with your IP address, browser type and a cookie, and sends them to Meta Platforms in the United States under Meta's terms. In the United States the pixel is on by default and the banner tells you so; choose “No thanks” there, or “Your privacy choices” at the foot of any page, to switch it off. Everywhere else it stays off unless you accept it. If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we treat that as “No thanks”. Nothing on the page depends on the pixel, and it exists only on this website, never in the app.

To leave the waitlist or have your entry deleted, reply to any email from us or write to vertosupport@agentmail.to. We delete the entry within 30 days.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you may ask what we hold about you, have it corrected or deleted, object to how we use it, or receive a copy. For the app there is almost nothing to hand over — a random identifier and a purchase status — but the request is honoured all the same. For the website we can find your entry by the email address you gave us.

On this website only: a Meta pixel measures page views and signups. Outside the United States it loads only after you accept it in the banner; in the United States it is on by default and you can switch it off in the banner or under “Your privacy choices”. Either way your choice is stored on your device, and a Global Privacy Control signal counts as switching it off. The app itself contains no Meta code.

The legal bases we rely on: delivering the subscription you bought (contract); anonymous usage statistics (our legitimate interest in knowing which screens are used, kept minimal); and the waitlist (your consent when you signed up, which you can withdraw at any time).

If you are unhappy with an answer from us you can complain to the Danish Data Protection Agency (Datatilsynet, datatilsynet.dk) or to the supervisory authority where you live.

Children

Lauds is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect anything from anyone under 13. The app holds no identity, so there is nothing to collect in the first place.

Changes

When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it and the new text is published at this address. A change that affects what the app sends anywhere will also be mentioned in the app's release notes.