Privacy Policy

Who We Are and Information We Collect

Beth Immanuel, Inc. operates this website. We collect information that you choose to provide, such as your name, email address, phone number, topic, and message when you use the contact form or otherwise communicate with us.

For member accounts and services, we process information needed to confirm membership, authenticate your account, provide the correct access, and assist with account problems. This can include your name, email address, website account information, Breeze person ID, membership status, and organizational tags.

Membership applications submitted through Breeze may include contact, household, and dependent information. Donation forms collect the contact, transaction, and payment information needed to process and administer a contribution.

Member prayer requests can include English and Hebrew names, gender, an optional description of the prayer need or ailment, reminder preferences, and the privacy level selected by the person submitting the request.

How We Use Information

We use website information to:

• respond to questions, prayer requests, and other messages you send us
• provide access to member resources and protect restricted content
• verify membership and help members set up or troubleshoot website accounts
• maintain the website, diagnose issues, and improve content and usability
• detect spam, duplicate submissions, and other misuse of website forms
• communicate about synagogue services, events, classes, and related organizational matters

Essential Cookies, Sessions, and Security

We use essential cookies and session data to keep the site functioning, remember login state, secure forms, and preserve temporary preferences. These are not advertising cookies.

Server and security records can include IP addresses, browser details, requested pages, timestamps, and referral data. We use this information for security, maintenance, spam prevention, troubleshooting, and ordinary site administration.

Website Analytics

We use a self-hosted Matomo installation to understand how the website is used. Matomo can record pages visited, timestamps, referring pages, approximate location, and browser or device characteristics. Two bytes of each visitor's IP address are masked, and the current tracker does not send a member account identifier to Matomo.

Matomo is configured not to use analytics cookies. It therefore does not reliably recognize a browser across separate visits. We retain detailed visit-level analytics records for no more than 180 days and may keep aggregate reports longer to understand website trends.

Contact Forms and Spam Prevention

Contact submissions are stored with technical information such as the submitting IP address and browser user agent. We use local automated checks to identify duplicate, unusually rapid, or likely spam submissions. These checks can consider submission timing, repeated attempts, and characteristics of the submitted content.

Messages classified as spam are normally deleted after 30 days. Other contact messages are retained as synagogue correspondence while they remain useful for ministry, administrative, security, or legal purposes; they do not currently have an automatic deletion period.

Member Setup and Account Assistance

We compare Member Setup and login information with records in Breeze, our organization management system, to verify membership and provide appropriate access. For troubleshooting and abuse prevention, we retain a limited record of Member Setup attempts for seven days. That record can include the submitted email address, Breeze person ID, outcome, timestamps, attempt count, and a protected hash derived from the IP address.

Authorized staff may access account and membership information to provide support. When necessary, an authorized administrator may temporarily view the website as a member to troubleshoot an account or verify access. We record the administrator and member account identifiers when this access starts and ends.

Prayer Requests

The member prayer list is visible only to signed-in members. The person submitting a request chooses whether members may see all details, only the person's name, or none of the request. When the selected public duration expires, the request becomes private to its submitter rather than being automatically deleted.

Prayer requests remain available to their submitters until they delete them or the records are removed for administrative or legal reasons. Optional reminder emails are sent only when the submitter requests them.

Third-Party Services

We use Breeze for membership records, membership applications, account eligibility, event and organizational information, and donation forms. Information entered in an embedded Breeze form is submitted to Breeze. Donation information can also be processed by payment service providers involved in the transaction.

The website may also rely on service providers for email delivery, hosting, embedded media, mapping links, and scripture data. Loading embedded content or following an external link may allow that provider to receive ordinary request information such as an IP address and browser details.

When you interact with those services, their own terms and privacy policies may apply in addition to this one.

Sharing and Retention

We do not sell personal information. We may share information only when reasonably necessary to operate the site, support synagogue administration, comply with legal obligations, or protect the safety, rights, and integrity of our congregation and users.

We apply the specific periods described above where available. Account, membership, donation, accepted contact-message, and other organizational records may be kept longer when reasonably needed for ministry, administration, accounting, security, or legal obligations. Where no fixed period is stated, records may remain stored until they are manually removed.