Greetings!

The privacy of visitors to Apologetics Index is important to us.

Therefore we want to let you know what types of personal information we and third parties receive and collect when you visit apologeticsindex.org or apologeticsindex.com — and how we safeguard your information.

On this page we let you know what kind of information is collected when you visit this website, how and why it is used, and how you can manage your own data.

GDPR

Apologetics Index meets the requirements of the European privacy law called General Data Protection Regulation (or GDPR).

See Also:

Terms and Conditions/Disclaimer
Cookie Policy

Who we are

Apologetics Index is published by DutchAmsterdam, located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The company is registered with the Kamer van Koophandel, the Dutch Chamber of Commerce, under registration number 62798995.

In this Privacy Policy, the term ‘Apologetics Index’ refers to the website at https://apologeticsindex.org, also accessible at http://www.apologeticsindex.com.

Apologetics Index is an online ministry operated from a private home in Amsterdam.

We do not have a visiting address.

How to contact us

The best and fastest way to contact us is via our contact form.

Our postal address is listed on the same page.

If you prefer, you may email us at privacyapologeticsindex.com

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Apologetics Index does not store personal data, or so-called personally identifiable information (PII)

Apologetics Index collects two kinds of information:

  1. Anonymous information via Cookies, and/or
  2. Information you decide to provide (e.g. when contacting us)

In addition, several third party services also collect information. See below for details.

We never sell, trade, share or barter any personal information.

Requesting Your Data

We do not store any personally identifiable information, so while you’re welcome to contact us, we can not send you what we do not have.

Software

The Apologetics Index website runs on WordPress software, which is published by the WordPress Foundation..

Cookies

A cookie is a small text file (often including a unique identifier), that is sent to a user’s browser from a website’s computers and stored on a user’s computer’s hard drive or on a tablet or mobile device (collectively, “Computer”). A Cookie stores a small amount of data on your Computer about your visit to the Site.

For detail, including information on how to refuse and/or delete cookies, see our Cookie Policy.

Plugins

Plugins are small programs that enhance or extend the functionality of WordPress.

The companies that provide these plugins have their own data collection, data storage, and privacy policies.

Below we list those plugins that collect, transmit, and/of store various types of anonymous and/or personally identifiable information.

Jetpack

The Apologetics Index website runs on WordPress software. We use a plugin called Jetpack. It is published by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com.

Note: WordPress.com (Automattic) is a blogging platform that uses a modified version of WordPress (WordPress Foundation). These are two separate entities.

Jetpack enhances several aspects of the website. The following information, provided by Jetpack, pertains to the various modules integrated in the Apologetics Index website:

Data Used: If image view tracking is enabled, the following information is used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID (if logged in), WordPress.com username (if logged in), user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.

Activity Tracked: Image views.


Jetpack Comments

Data Used: Commenter’s name, email address, and site URL (if provided via the comment form), timestamp, and IP address. Additionally, a jetpack.wordpress.com IFrame receives the following data: WordPress.com blog ID attached to the site, ID of the post on which the comment is being submitted, commenter’s local user ID (if available), commenter’s local username (if available), commenter’s site URL (if available), MD5 hash of the commenter’s email address (if available), and the comment content. If Akismet (also owned by Automattic) is enabled on the site, the following information is sent to the service for the sole purpose of spam checking: commenter’s name, email address, site URL, IP address, and user agent.

Activity Tracked: The comment author’s name, email address, and site URL (if provided during the comment submission) are stored in cookies. Learn more about these cookies.

Data Synced (?): All data and metadata (see above) associated with comments. This includes the status of the comment and, if Akismet is enabled on the site, whether or not it was classified as spam by Akismet.


Comment Likes

This feature is only accessible to users logged in to WordPress.com.

Data Used: In order to process a comment like, the following information is used: WordPress.com user ID/username (you must be logged in to use this feature), the local site-specific user ID (if the user is signed in to the site on which the like occurred), and a true/false data point that tells us if the user liked a specific comment. If you perform a like action from one of our mobile apps, some additional information is used to track the activity: IP address, user agent, timestamp of event, blog ID, browser language, country code, and device info.

Activity Tracked: Comment likes.


Contact Form

Our primary contact form is provided by Google Forms.

You may encounter some older forms on the website. Here are the details covering those forms:

Data Used: Akismet — a spam-detection and removal service — is enabled on the Apologetics Index website, which means that with some of our contact forms submission data — IP address, user agent, name, email address, website, and message — is submitted to the Akismet service (also owned by Automattic) for the sole purpose of spam checking. The actual submission data is stored in the database of the site on which it was submitted and is emailed directly to the owner of the form (i.e. the site author who published the page on which the contact form resides). This email will include the submitter’s IP address, timestamp, name, email address, website, and message.

Data Synced (?): Post and post meta data associated with a user’s contact form submission. If Akismet is enabled on the site, the IP address and user agent originally submitted with the comment are synced, as well, as they are stored in post meta.

Note: Apologetics Index uses your email address only to reply to your message. Your information is not stored by us longer than necessary to complete our correspondence. At the conclusion of our email correspondence the information is deleted from our Apologetics Index database.


Likes

This feature is only accessible to users logged in to WordPress.com.

Data Used: In order to process a post like action, the following information is used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID, WordPress.com username, WordPress.com-connected site ID (on which the post was liked), post ID (of the post that was liked), user agent, timestamp of event, browser language, country code.

Activity Tracked: Post likes.


Protect

Data Used: In order to check login activity and potentially block fraudulent attempts, the following information is used: attempting user’s IP address, attempting user’s email address/username (i.e. according to the value they were attempting to use during the login process), and all IP-related HTTP headers attached to the attempting user.

Activity Tracked: Failed login attempts (these include IP address and user agent). We also set a cookie (jpp_math_pass) for 1 day to remember if/when a user has successfully completed a math captcha to prove that they’re a real human. Learn more about this cookie.

Data Synced (?): Failed login attempts, which contain the user’s IP address, attempted username or email address, and user agent information.


Sharing

Data Used: When sharing content via email the following information is used: sharing party’s name and email address, IP address (for spam checking), user agent (for spam checking), and email body/content. This content will be sent to Akismet (also owned by Automattic) so that a spam check can be performed. Additionally, if reCAPTCHA (by Google) is enabled by the site owner, the sharing party’s IP address will be shared with that service. You can find Google’s privacy policy here.


Subscriptions

Data Used: To initiate and process subscriptions, the following information is used: subscriber’s email address and the ID of the post or comment (depending on the specific subscription being processed). In the event of a new subscription being initiated, we also collect some basic server data, including all of the subscribing user’s HTTP request headers, the IP address from which the subscribing user is viewing the page, and the URI which was given in order to access the page (REQUEST_URI and DOCUMENT_URI). This server data used for the exclusive purpose of monitoring and preventing abuse and spam.

Activity Tracked: Functionality cookies are set for a duration of 347 days to remember a visitor’s blog and post subscription choices if, in fact, they have an active subscription.


WordPress.com Stats

Data Used: IP address, WordPress.com user ID (if logged in), WordPress.com username (if logged in), user agent, visiting URL, referring URL, timestamp of event, browser language, country code. Important: The site owner does not have access to any of this information via this feature. For example, a site owner can see that a specific post has 285 views, but he/she cannot see which specific users/accounts viewed that post. Stats logs — containing visitor IP addresses and WordPress.com usernames (if available) — are retained by Automattic for 28 days and are used for the sole purpose of powering this feature.

Activity Tracked: Post and page views, video plays (if videos are hosted by WordPress.com), outbound link clicks, referring URLs and search engine terms, and country. Jetpack also tracks performance on each page load that includes the Javascript file used for tracking stats. This is exclusively for aggregate performance tracking across Jetpack sites in order to make sure that our plugin and code is not causing performance issues. This includes the tracking of page load times and resource loading duration (image files, Javascript files, CSS files, etc.). The site owner has the ability to force this feature to honor DNT settings of visitors. By default, DNT is currently not honored.

More about Jetpack Cookies
Automattic Cookie Policy

Askimet

Askimet is a spam-detection and removal service. See this information for details. It is part of Automattic.

Automattic Privacy Policy
Automattic Cookie Policy

iThemes Security

iThemes Security keeps our website safe from the bad guys.

iThemes Privacy Policy

Algolia

Our site search will soon be powered by Algolia.

Algolia Privacy Policy

Server Log Files

SiteGround, the company that hosts our website, collects and stores information that your browser automatically places in “server log files”. This includes (but is not limited to) the following information:

– Browser type and browser version
– Operating system used
– Referrer URL
– Host name of the accessing computer
– Time of the server request
– IP address

These data will not be combined with data from other sources.

SiteGround collects this information for the limited and legitimate purpose of detecting and preventing fraud and unauthorized system access, and ensuring the security of their systems and our websites.

The basis for data processing is Art. 6 (1) (b) DSGVO, which allows the processing of data to fulfill a contract or for measures preliminary to a contract.

View SiteGround’s Privacy Policy.

Contact Form

Our primary contact form is provided by Google Forms. See Google’s Privacy Policies.

Note: Apologetics Index uses your email address only to reply to your message. Your email address (and other information you provide) is not used in any other way. We do not share it with others — unless compelled by law enforcement.

On various pages within the site you may encounter old contact forms (those not provided by Google Forms). For details, see here.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics shows us where our visitors come from, and how they interact with the site. No personally identifiable information is shared. In other words, we won’t know who you are, but we’ll know how many people found apologeticsindex.org via, say, a search engine, another website, or a social media app.

Details, including the Google Analytics Privacy Policy
You can use this browser add-on to prevent your data from being used by Google Analytics.

Advertisers

Apologetics Index is provided to you free of charge. It is funded in part by donations and support from private individuals, and from income derived from displaying advertisements and using affiliate programs.

We use the following advertising services and affiliate programs, each with their own privacy policy.

Google Adsense

Google Adsense displays personalized and non-personalized ads on our website.

Personalized ads use cookies and other tracking methods to note your interests and present you with relevant ads.

Non-personalized ads (contextual ads) try to match content of the pages they display on.

How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services (and how you can control your information).
How Google uses cookies
Google Privacy Policy

Booking.com

From time to time our pages carry ads by Booking.com, which grew from an Amsterdam-based start-up to one of the largest travel e-commerce companies in the world.
Many visitors to Apologetics Index travel for spiritual reasons, for instance to learn about other religions, or to visit religion-inspired attractions. (And face it, everyone needs a vacation at times, right?)

Booking.com Privacy Policy
How Booking.com uses cookies

GetYourGuide.com

We may from time to time displays ads from GetYourGuide for the same reason as described under Booking.com (above).

GetYourGuide allows people to book tours, excursions, activities and ‘skip-the-line’ tickets to museums and other tourist attractions around the world.

GetYourGuide Privacy Policy

Amazon.com

Apologetics Index is an Amazon.com affiliate. When you visit Amazon.com via a link on this website we receive a small commission on each item you purchase — at no additional cost to you. [Details]

Privacy Policy

External links

Apologetics Index links to external sites where appropriate. Those sites are not under the editorial control of Apologetics Index and this privacy policy does not extend to those sites. The privacy policies of external sites may be in line with or conflict with this one.

Questions

If you have any questions regarding the Apologetics Index privacy policy remain, or there is lingering doubt, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Pfft! Did you read this far? Honest, we had to write all that stuff in other to comply with privacy laws.

Time for something different: Have your ever wondered whether certain types of people are more likely than others to join a cult?

The Apologetics Index Team