BuddhaMind Privacy Policy

Last updated: 29 October 2026

BuddhaMind is provided by the London Buddhist Centre (LBC). We take your privacy seriously and only collect the data needed to support your meditation practice and to improve the app.

This policy covers the BuddhaMind apps for iPhone, iPad and Android, and BuddhaMind on the web at web.buddhamind.app. Where this policy says "the app", it means all of them.

Some of the information you share with us relates to your personal wellbeing or spiritual practice. We treat this data with particular care and never use it for advertising or profiling.

Who we are

The London Buddhist Centre, 51 Roman Road, London E2 0HU, United Kingdom.

Registered charity in England and Wales (charity number 255420).

Email: buddhamind@lbc.org.uk

The London Buddhist Centre is the data controller for BuddhaMind.

What data we collect

When you create an account or use BuddhaMind, we may collect:

We only access your camera or photo library when you choose to upload a profile picture. We do not collect your precise location, contacts, microphone data, or any background audio. Google Analytics does estimate an approximate location, such as the city you are in, from a masked version of your device's IP address, as part of the usage data above.

How we use your data

We use your information to:

We do not sell your data or share it with advertisers.

Emails from BuddhaMind

When you create a BuddhaMind account we'll send you a few emails to help you get started — a welcome, and a short series about the app and who makes it. These are part of the service.

BuddhaMind is a project of the London Buddhist Centre, a registered charity (no. 255420). We may also email you about becoming a Friend of BuddhaMind and about supporting the app financially, so that it can stay free.

We rely on our legitimate interest in telling the people who use the app how it is funded; we keep these emails infrequent and you can stop them at any time.

Every email we send carries an unsubscribe link, and you can also ask us to stop at any time by emailing buddhamind@lbc.org.uk. Stopping them doesn't affect your account.

Lawful basis for processing

Under UK GDPR, we process your data on the following bases:

You can object to any processing we do on the basis of legitimate interests. See "Your rights" below for how.

Analytics

We use Firebase Analytics to understand how the app is used and to improve its reliability and design. We rely on our legitimate interest in maintaining and improving the app. We do not use analytics for advertising, we do not build advertising profiles, and we do not share analytics data with anyone else for their own purposes.

This data is tied to your account, so it is not anonymous. It is used to understand how the app is used, never to identify you to anyone else.

You can turn this off. In BuddhaMind 2.0 and later, open Settings and tap "Share usage data". The same setting turns off crash reports (see "Crash reports" below). If you are using an earlier version, which has no such setting, email us at buddhamind@lbc.org.uk and we will switch it off for you.

Cookies on the web

When you use BuddhaMind in a web browser, Google Analytics keeps two cookies of ours in that browser: "_ga", which tells one browser's visits apart from another's, and one whose name starts "_ga_" followed by an ID, which keeps track of the current visit. Each lasts until two years after your last visit. They are used only for the analytics described above.

On the web, "Share usage data" applies to the browser you set it in. Turning it off stops usage data being sent from that browser. Cookies it has already set stay until they expire, or until you delete them in your browser's settings.

Once usage data has been on, Firebase Analytics also keeps an identifier for your copy of the web app in your browser's storage, and sends it with the usage data while that stays on. Like the cookies, it stays until you clear your browser's storage.

The web app also keeps what it needs to work in your browser's storage: that you are signed in, and your settings.

Crash reports

When the iOS or Android app crashes, or runs into certain errors it recovers from, it sends a report to Firebase Crashlytics so that we can find and fix the problem. A report says what the app was doing when it went wrong, and gives details of the device, such as its model and system version. It also carries a random identifier for your copy of the app, so that repeated crashes on one phone can be counted together. We rely on our legitimate interest in keeping the app working.

In BuddhaMind 2.0 and later, crash reports are not linked to your account: they carry no account ID, name or email address. Crashlytics keeps them for 90 days and then removes them. The web app sends no crash reports.

You can turn this off with the same "Share usage data" setting as analytics. The change takes effect from the next time you open the app, and any reports not yet sent are deleted.

Versions of the app before 2.0 also send crash reports, and theirs do carry your account's ID (see "Crash reports from versions before 2.0" below).

App updates

The iOS and Android apps can receive small fixes without a new version from the App Store or Google Play. To find out whether one is waiting, the app asks Expo, the service that delivers these fixes, each time you open it. That request carries:

It carries no account ID, name or email address. We rely on our legitimate interest in keeping the app working. Expo keeps this information only as long as it needs it, under its own privacy policy.

This happens whether or not "Share usage data" is on, because without it the app couldn't receive fixes. The web app doesn't ask: it is updated when you reload the page.

Checking that requests come from our app

Other apps have copied whole libraries of Buddhist recordings from services like ours. To make that harder, the iOS and Android apps send proof with their requests that they come from a genuine copy of BuddhaMind on a genuine device. To get that proof, the app asks:

Firebase App Check (Google) turns the answer into a short-lived pass that goes with the app's requests. The check involves details of your device and of the copy of the app on it. It carries no account ID, name or email address, and we don't receive the details of your device, only whether the check passed. It happens about once an hour while the app is open.

We rely on our legitimate interest in protecting the recordings our teachers have entrusted to us. This happens whether or not "Share usage data" is on, because it guards the app's content rather than measuring how the app is used. The web app doesn't do this check.

Feedback you send us

In BuddhaMind 2.0 and later, Give Feedback opens a short form in the app. Along with your message, we store:

The form lists what goes with your message before you send it. Your message is read by the small team who make BuddhaMind. When a new one arrives, the team is sent an email with the start of it, and that extract is also kept in our system logs, which are deleted automatically after 30 days.

If you said we may email you, we may write to you about it from buddhamind@lbc.org.uk. We only write if you said we may.

So that whoever answers you can see the whole conversation, we keep the emails you and our team exchange with your feedback, whether or not you said we may email you: those with buddhamind@lbc.org.uk and the app's other team mailbox, and those with the two members of our team who look after feedback, from their own lbc.org.uk addresses, when they mention BuddhaMind or feedback and began within 30 days of it. They're deleted with your feedback and your account. Copies also stay in those mailboxes, as any email to us does.

To help us handle feedback, we use Claude, an AI service from Anthropic. When your message arrives, and when you reply to us, its text and our conversation about it go to Claude, with the app's version and the screen it came from. Claude suggests which piece of planned work it matches and drafts our next reply. We take your name and email address out first, and Claude never receives your account, but anything else you wrote goes as you wrote it. A person on our team reads every suggestion and decides what to do: nothing is filed or sent to you without them. Claude's suggestion is kept with your feedback and deleted with it.

If your message describes something we need to fix or build, we may copy its text into the private system we use to plan work on the app (GitHub), without your name, email address or account. If you mention personal details in your message, we leave them out.

Versions of the app before 2.0 open a form hosted by Airtable instead, which asks for your name, email address, phone model and operating system as well as your message. What you send through it is held in Airtable, and we copy it into our own feedback records, without your name, together with the emails we exchanged with you about it. If the email address you gave is the one on your BuddhaMind account, the copy is filed under your account. Either way, if you delete your account, copies that carry its email address are deleted with it.

We keep feedback for as long as it helps us improve the app. If you delete your account, the feedback you sent from the app is deleted with it.

Notes on your home practice

Some LBC courses give you home practice each week, and the app lets you note it down: a few words about what you mean to try that week, how something felt, or a list of things you're grateful for. Your notes are kept with your account, so that they follow you to a new phone and to BuddhaMind on the web, and so that the course page can show them back to you. We also record which days you made a note for a week's practice, beside your course progress, but not what you wrote. If you save a note while you're offline, it waits on your device until it reaches your account, and is then removed from the device.

Only you can read your notes. The app lets your account alone read or change them: not your teachers, not the BuddhaMind team, and not the people who read feedback. We never send them to Claude or any other AI service, and they are never in our analytics or crash reports. When you save a note, Google Analytics is told only that a note was saved or changed, for which course and week, and what kind of note it was, and only if "Share usage data" is on.

Your notes are stored in our database like the rest of your account (see "Data storage and security"), and copied into our backups with everything else in it (see "Backups"). They are protected there, but not encrypted with a key that only you hold, so the few people who look after that database could technically open them. We don't, and nothing we have built reads them, apart from making those backups.

You can change or delete a note at any time in the app. A note you delete goes from your account straight away, but stays in our backups until they expire, after up to 98 days (see "Backups"). Deleting your account deletes all your notes.

The London Meditation Challenge

The London Meditation Challenge (10 to 30 January 2027) is for people aged 18 and over.

If you join it on its website, we keep a record of your sign-up: your email address, when you joined, which advert or link brought you there, if one did, and when we've emailed you about the Challenge. When you first sign in to BuddhaMind by email, we link that record to your account.

In BuddhaMind you choose the centres you'd like to go to on the Challenge's Saturdays, as many as you like, or online only. The London Buddhist Centre runs the Challenge with the North London, West London, Croydon and Brixton Buddhist Centres, each a charity of its own. If you choose any of them, we'll pass your email address, and your name if your BuddhaMind account has one, to each centre you chose, so that it can welcome you and add you to its newsletter. Once sharing with the centres is set up, we pass them on as soon as you choose, usually by adding you to the centre's mailing list ourselves. We pass nothing else, and nothing at all if you choose online only.

The box that says so is ticked when you first see it. Untick it and we won't pass your details. If you untick it later in the app, or ask us to by emailing buddhamind@lbc.org.uk, we take you off the mailing list of each centre we added you to, and delete you from its account once the Challenge ends, or ask the centre to delete you, which it has agreed to do within 7 days. Choosing different centres does the same for any you no longer choose. If you were on a centre's list before the Challenge, you stay on it as you were. Each centre has agreed to use your details only to welcome you and to send you its newsletter, never to pass them on, and to put an unsubscribe link in every newsletter. To stop a centre's newsletter, use that link or contact the centre.

We rely on our legitimate interest in helping the people who join the Challenge take part at the centres they chose, and in those centres staying in touch with them.

We keep your sign-up and your choice of centres so that we can invite you to next year's Challenge. You can ask us to delete them at any time by emailing buddhamind@lbc.org.uk, and if you delete your BuddhaMind account, both are deleted with it.

Payments

Payments for courses or donations are handled outside the app via Beacon CRM and secure third-party payment processors. We do not store card details or payment information within BuddhaMind.

Data storage and security

Your data is stored securely using Firebase, managed by Google Cloud. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and access is restricted to authorised personnel only.

We work only with service providers who process data under GDPR-compliant terms.

Who else processes your data

How long we keep your data

We keep your data for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account or request deletion, we will delete or anonymise your personal data, with the exceptions set out below.

Donation and course-booking records

When you donate to the London Buddhist Centre, or when we check your course bookings with our ticketing provider, we keep a record of that transaction — including the name and email address attached to it. These are financial and booking records, and we keep them for 7 years from the date of the record, as UK law requires us to.

Because we hold these records to meet a legal obligation rather than by your consent, they are not removed when you delete your account, and a request to erase your data does not extend to them. After 7 years they are deleted.

What we keep when you delete your account

Deleting your account removes your account and everything personal in it: your profile, your details, anything you have uploaded, and any notes you have written.

We keep a record that a meditation was played and that a course was joined — which practice or course it was, and the dates and durations — with your name, your account and everything else identifying removed. These records are tagged with a random ID so that our overall figures can still count how many different people used the app in a given month, and so those figures don't change retrospectively when someone leaves. We do not keep anything that maps that random ID back to you, and we cannot use it to identify you or contact you. They are kept indefinitely in this form.

We keep them because our overall figures — how many people practised, for how long, and how many joined a course — need to stay accurate and not change retrospectively when someone leaves. The charity's trustees rely on those figures. We keep these records on the basis of our legitimate interests in understanding how the app is used.

Because they exist only to produce those overall figures, and deleting them would leave our past figures wrong, these particular records are not deleted when you close your account — everything that identifies you is. If you'd like to talk to us about this, you can contact us using the details at the end of this policy.

Analytics data

Usage data sent to Google Analytics while you were signed in is tied to your account's ID (see "Analytics" above). Deleting your account stops any more being sent. From BuddhaMind 2.0, we also ask Google Analytics to delete the usage data linked to your account.

That request does not reach everything. We also keep a copy of all usage data in our own analytics storage (Google BigQuery, part of Google Cloud), which we do not currently delete person by person; and usage data sent before you signed in, or from a version of the app before 2.0, is not linked to your account in a way the request can find. All of it is deleted automatically within 14 months of your last use of the app. Overall figures that cannot identify you, such as monthly totals, are kept.

Crash reports from versions before 2.0

Versions of the app before BuddhaMind 2.0 send crash reports to Firebase Crashlytics, and those reports carry your account's ID. Deleting your account does not remove them; Crashlytics keeps them for 90 days and then removes them. Crash reports from BuddhaMind 2.0 and later are not linked to your account, and are removed after 90 days too.

Backups

We keep backup copies of our database so that we can recover the app if something goes wrong. Each backup is a copy of everything in the database at the moment it was made, so your data stays in the backups made before you deleted your account until they expire. Each backup is deleted automatically after 98 days. Files you have uploaded, such as a profile photo, can be recovered for 7 days after they are deleted, and are then gone. We use backups only to recover the app after a failure.

The optional question we ask when you leave

When you delete your account we ask, optionally, why you're leaving. You can skip it, and skipping it records nothing.

If you answer, we store your answer with no name, email address or account reference attached — we cannot tell who gave it. We keep these answers indefinitely, to understand why people stop using the app. If you choose "Another reason" and write something in your own words, please don't include personal details in it: that box is free text, so anything you type is stored exactly as you wrote it and can be read by our team.

Your rights

Under data protection law, you have the right to:

You can exercise these rights by contacting us at buddhamind@lbc.org.uk.

Children

BuddhaMind is intended for users aged 13 and over. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 13.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. If we make significant changes, we will notify users through the app or by email.

Contact us

If you have any questions or privacy concerns, please contact:

Email: buddhamind@lbc.org.uk

London Buddhist Centre, 51 Roman Road, London E2 0HU, United Kingdom.

The London Buddhist Centre is a registered charity in England and Wales (charity number 255420).