BuddhaMind Privacy Policy

Last updated: 31 August 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.

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:

• Your name, email address, and login method (via Firebase Authentication)
• Your meditation logs, streaks, and course progress
• Journal entries or reflections you choose to record
• Profile photos you upload from your camera or photo library
• Anonymous or aggregated usage data (via Firebase Analytics) to help us improve the app

We only access your camera or photo library when you choose to upload a profile picture. We do not collect your location, contacts, microphone data, or any background audio.

How we use your data

We use your information to:

• Provide core app features, such as saving your progress and syncing across devices
• Display your profile and course activity within the app
• Communicate with you about your account and your courses
• Send you the emails described in the next section
• Understand how BuddhaMind is used so we can improve it

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.

For accounts created before September 2026 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:

• Performance of a contract: to provide the BuddhaMind service you sign up for, including the service emails described above
• Legal obligation: to keep the donation and course-booking records described under "How long we keep your data"
• Legitimate interests: to maintain and improve the app using minimal and proportionate analytics; to keep the usage records described under "How long we keep your data"; and, for accounts created before September 2026, to tell the people who use the app how it is funded
• Consent: for certain analytics

You can withdraw consent at any time by contacting us.

Analytics

We use Firebase Analytics to understand how the app is used and to improve its reliability and design. Analytics data is used in an aggregated way and is not used to identify you personally.

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

• Google (Firebase / Google Cloud) — hosts the app's database, accounts, file storage and analytics.
• Mailchimp (Intuit) — sends our emails and holds your email address, name, and your email preferences. Mailchimp is based in the United States; transfers are covered by the UK's data bridge and Mailchimp's standard contractual terms.
• Beacon CRM — records donations to the London Buddhist Centre.
• Ticket Tailor — our ticketing provider; we check your course bookings against the email address on your account.

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.

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:

• Access the personal data we hold about you
• Request corrections to inaccurate or incomplete data
• Request deletion of your account and associated data
• Object to or restrict certain types of processing
• Object to direct marketing at any time. You can do this using the unsubscribe link in any email we send, or by emailing us at buddhamind@lbc.org.uk. We will stop, and it will not affect your account.
• Lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)

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).