Privacy

Effective 16 October 2026

Orthodox Forge is a reading and listening site. There are no accounts, no logins, and no advertising or analytics trackers. Three things you do here send what you type anywhere: joining the daily devotional, asking a question, and searching the catechism. We do not store searches with anything that identifies you, though our host’s request logs and cache may briefly hold the search text. Like any website, we also see your IP address, and use it briefly to limit abuse.

What we collect

Your email address, and only if you type it into the signup form. We keep your email address, where you signed up, the date, and the date you confirmed it, plus two private codes: one for the confirmation link we email you, and one for your unsubscribe link. Nothing else. Unsubscribing deletes all of it. We record the date of each deletion, without your address.

The question you ask. Text typed into Ask the Forge is sent to our own retrieval system to be answered. We also keep the text of each question, without your name, email address or IP address, for 90 days, to see what readers are asking and improve what we write. Then it is deleted. If a question inspires something we publish, it is still deleted after 90 days. Your IP address is also passed to Alexandria, only to enforce the daily limit. It is not stored with your question. Do not type anything private or identifying into it. It is a question box about the Church Fathers, not a confessional and not a support channel.

Some things you save are kept only in your own browser: the catechism questions and Fathers you save, and your ten most recent Ask the Forge answers with their questions, so you can reopen them. They are saved only on this device, are cleared when you clear this site’s data, and are never sent to us or anyone else.

Ordinary request information. Our host records standard web server logs, including IP addresses. We also use your IP address itself, for up to about two days, to enforce the daily question limit and our other rate limits, and to keep bots off the signup form and the question box. We do not use either to build a profile of you.

Who receives it

These are every third party this site actually sends data to. If that list changes, this page changes with it.

• Supabase: stores the email list.
• Vercel: hosts the site and keeps standard request logs.
• Cloudflare: runs the bot check on the signup form and the question box, which your browser loads from Cloudflare. When you sign up or ask a question, we also send it your IP address, to check the request is not automated.
• Upstash: holds the counters that enforce rate limits.
• Alexandria: our own corpus and retrieval system, which receives the text of questions asked here and keeps it for 90 days. It also receives your IP address, only to enforce the daily limit.
• Anthropic: the model provider Alexandria uses to draft an answer, so question text reaches them too.
• Voyage AI: turns the text of a question into the numbers Alexandria searches by meaning, so question text reaches them too, and nothing else.
• Substack: hosts the newsletter, which has its own sign-up and unsubscribe. Addresses collected here are not sent to it. The “Subscribe on Substack” button on the homepage takes you to Substack’s own site.
• Resend: sends the confirmation email when you sign up, and the daily devotional after that. It receives your email address and each email itself, including your personal confirmation and unsubscribe links.
• YouTube: plays the Forge Classes videos. Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play on a class. Then the player loads from youtube-nocookie.com, YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode, and YouTube receives your IP address and what you watch, and may store data in your browser, under Google’s own privacy policy.

We do not sell your information, share it for advertising, or hand it to data brokers. There is no advertising on this site and no pixel tracking you across the web.

Google, and what it is not used for

Orthodox Forge is published with an internal tool that uses two Google services on a single account belonging to Andrew Assad. It is named here because that tool’s Google authorisation screen points at this page, and it should say plainly what it does.

The tool writes drafts into that account’s own Google Drive as Docs, reads back the edited text once a draft is approved, and sends a review notice by email to that same account. It holds only the narrowest permissions for this: it can see and change only the files it created itself, not anything else in that Drive, and it can send mail but cannot read any.

No visitor to this site ever connects a Google account, and nothing you do here reaches Google except a class video you choose to play, which YouTube serves. Your email address is not sent there; your questions are not sent there. The Google account involved is a working account for producing the writing you read, not a place your information goes.

How long we keep it

Email addresses stay until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete them; either way, they are deleted. An address that is never confirmed is deleted within three days. Rate-limit counters expire on their own within about two days. Questions asked in Ask the Forge are kept for 90 days, then deleted. Server logs follow our host’s retention, which we do not extend.

Removing your data

Use the unsubscribe link in any devotional email and your address is deleted or email us and we’ll delete it. To ask what we hold, email theorthodoxforge@gmail.com. A person reads it, and we will delete the address rather than merely suppress it.

Wherever you live, you can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it, at the same address. Readers in the EU, the UK and California have these rights in law; we give them to everyone.

Where it is processed

Orthodox Forge is run from the United States. The services named above may store and process your information there, or in other countries where they run their systems.

Children

This site is written for adults and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child has given us an address, write to the address above and we will remove it.

Changes

If this policy changes materially, the effective date at the top changes with it. We do not backdate.

Questions about any of this go to theorthodoxforge@gmail.com.