Privacy policy
The German and English versions of this text are binding.
Overview
This policy explains which personal data Mosque-Search processes when you use the website mosque-search.com, the installed web app or the Mosque-Search apps, for which purposes and on which legal basis, who receives the data, how long it is kept and which rights you have. It describes what the service actually does today.
- You can search the map, mosques, prayer times and events without an account.
- We use no analytics, no advertising, no tracking and no social media plugins.
- We do not sell personal data and do not use it for profiling.
Controller
Controller within the meaning of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) is the private individual resident in Switzerland who operates Mosque-Search free of charge and non-commercially:
- Name
- Armin Sahinovic
Contact for data protection: info@mosque-search.com or the contact form (category “Privacy request”). Further details: legal notice.
Hosting, delivery and security (Cloudflare)
The website, our server (API), the database (D1, located in Western Europe) and the file storage (R2) run on Cloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc., USA), which processes the data on our behalf. When you open a page, your browser sends your IP address, information about the browser and device, the address of the page and the time. Cloudflare uses these data to deliver the pages and to protect the service against attacks and misuse.
We do not keep access logs of our own; error messages of our server are designed not to contain personal data. Cloudflare’s bot protection runs a script on our pages and may set the cookies cf_clearance and __cf_bm — security cookies that Cloudflare documents as strictly necessary (see Storage on your device). Browsers may send reports about failed connections to Cloudflare (Network Error Logging).
Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; our legitimate interest is a reliable and secure service. Cloudflare is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework; its data processing addendum includes the EU standard contractual clauses. Further information: Cloudflare privacy policy.
Approximate location and your position
Until you share your position, the map may start near the approximate location of your network. Cloudflare derives it (city, region, country and rounded coordinates) from your IP address; we do not store it, do not log it and do not put it in the page address. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (showing nearby mosques without asking for your position).
If you tap “My location”, your browser or device asks for permission. Your position is used on your device to centre the map and calculate distances. To load mosques and events, the website sends only the map area shown (not your position) to our server; the apps send your position (latitude and longitude) so that the server can find nearby mosques and calculate distances. Neither is stored on our server. Your device keeps the position for 30 days (see Storage on your device); “Clear saved location” and signing out delete it. Legal basis: your permission and Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR. You can withdraw the permission at any time in your browser or device settings.
Map images (OpenStreetMap)
The map images are loaded by your browser directly from the tile servers of the OpenStreetMap Foundation (tile.openstreetmap.org, United Kingdom). The Foundation receives your IP address, information about your browser, the map area shown and our domain as the referring site, and processes them under its own responsibility: OSMF privacy policy. For the United Kingdom there is an adequacy decision of the European Commission.
Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; our legitimate interest is showing a free, openly licensed map. Your device keeps up to 300 map images for 7 days so the map loads faster.
Place search
Place names suggested while you type come from a file on our own server (GeoNames data); nothing is sent to third parties. Only when you submit a search, or look up an address when suggesting a mosque, our server forwards the search text or the coordinates and your language to the OpenStreetMap Foundation’s Nominatim service (United Kingdom) — without your IP address. Results are cached at Cloudflare for up to 24 hours; we store nothing else. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.
Your account
To create an account we need your name, your e-mail address and a password. We store the name, the e-mail address, the password only as a secure hash (bcrypt), your role, the account status, the date you joined and the time of your last sign-in. Without these data no account can be created. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR. The data are kept until you delete the account.
After you sign in, the server sets the cookie openmosque_session (in the apps: a token in the device’s secure storage). It contains your user ID, your role and a session version, is valid for 30 days and cannot be read by scripts. Signing out ends all your sessions on all devices.
Our support staff can see the user directory (name, e-mail, role, status, date joined, managed mosques); platform administrators can also see the last sign-in and change or block accounts.
Password reset and e-mails (Resend)
If you request a new password, we store a protected (hashed) one-time code that is valid for one hour, together with the IP address and browser information of the request, to investigate misuse. The request is deleted when it is used, when you request a new one or when you delete the account; an expired request is deleted the next time someone requests a password reset.
We send e-mails only when needed for a function you use: the password-reset link and messages about your mosque claims (received, approved, rejected with the reviewer’s note). They are sent by Resend (Resend, Inc., USA) on our behalf; Resend receives your e-mail address, your name and the content of the message and stores data in the USA. Resend is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework; its data processing addendum includes the EU standard contractual clauses: Resend privacy policy. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR, for the IP address Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (security).
Contact form and e-mails to us
If you use the contact form, we process your e-mail address, your name (optional), the category you choose, your message and the language of the page. Our server checks the form against automated misuse — a hidden field that people leave empty, a minimum time to fill in the form, and at most 5 messages per hour and 20 per day per IP address (for IPv6 per network block of the address, /64), counted as described under Protection against misuse, plus a daily limit for all senders together so that our other e-mails can still be delivered — and then sends the message by e-mail via Resend (see Password reset and e-mails) to our inbox, with your address as the reply address. The message is not stored on our server or in our database. In our mailbox it is kept by our e-mail hosting provider (see Recipients).
We use your details only to answer your request and keep the e-mail only as long as needed to handle it and any follow-up; for legal notices and data-protection requests, as long as we need to document how we handled them. E-mails you send us directly are treated the same way. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (answering your request); for data-protection requests Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR.
Favourites and event registrations
Favourites and event registrations can reveal your religious beliefs. They are therefore special categories of personal data (Art. 9 GDPR) and particularly sensitive personal data under the FADP (Art. 5(c)). We store them on our server only with your explicit consent. Without consent:
- Your favourites are saved only on your device (browser local storage or app storage, not encrypted) — also when you are signed in. We do not receive them. A device keeps one list for use without an account and a separate list for each account that signs in on it.
- Only the list of the current user (no account, or the signed-in account) is shown. A list is never shown to, merged into or uploaded for another account; favourites saved without an account are added to an account only if you choose “Add to my account”.
- When you sign out, your account’s list stays on the device, hidden, and is shown again when that account signs in; anyone who uses the same browser profile or device can read this storage. Deleting your account on the website deletes its list in that browser. Other browsers or devices keep their copy of the favourites until you clear the site data there. Without consent you cannot register for events.
We ask for one explicit, separate consent that covers both the syncing of your favourites and event registrations: when you turn on account sync (in the favourites list or under Account → Data & privacy; in the app: Profile → Data & privacy) and before your first event registration. The consent is voluntary; without it, favourites keep working on your device. We record when you gave it and which version of the consent text you were shown. With consent:
- Your favourites are stored with your account on our server (account ID, mosque, time). The server copy is authoritative: every change is saved there immediately, and your device keeps only a copy for display, which is deleted when you sign out. Favourites you had already saved on this device for the account are uploaded once when syncing starts.
- Your event registrations are stored with your account (account ID, event, time). The managers assigned to the mosque, our moderators and platform administrators see your name and when you registered; everyone sees the number of registrations. Only registrations of accounts with an active consent are counted and listed.
- No other user sees your favourites; platform administrators do not see the favourites or the consent of other accounts.
You can withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future: Account → Data & privacy → “Withdraw consent” (in the app: Profile → Data & privacy). We then delete all favourites and event registrations (upcoming and past) stored with your account on our server in one step and record the time of the withdrawal; the favourites on your device stay. You can give your consent again later.
Favourites and event registrations that were stored in accounts before this consent existed remain stored for now, but are not counted or shown to mosque managers. At your next sign-in we ask you once, and copy nothing to your device before you answer: “Keep syncing” (this is your consent) or “Remove from server”; if you remove them, you can choose to keep a copy of your favourites on this device for this account. The question appears again only while such data exist without consent. If you do not answer, a daily cleanup deletes these data from 2 November 2027, 12 months after the consent was introduced.
Legal basis: your explicit consent (Art. 9(2)(a) and Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR; Art. 6(6) and (7) FADP). We keep the record of your consent and of its withdrawal as proof until you delete your account (Art. 7(1) GDPR). Deleting your account deletes this record and all favourites and event registrations stored on our server; deleting an event or a mosque deletes the registrations and favourites concerning it. We never use these data for advertising or profiling.
Claiming a mosque
If you request to manage a mosque’s listing, we store your request with your account, your role at the mosque, an optional phone number and message, a proof document you upload (image or PDF, at most 5 MB — for example a letter with the mosque’s letterhead), the language for our e-mails and the moderators’ decision with an optional note. Only moderators can open the proof document. We use the data to check that you may act for the mosque. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR.
The proof document is deleted when you withdraw the request; otherwise a daily cleanup deletes it once 90 days have passed since the decision (up to 200 documents per run, so it can take a little longer when many are due). If a file cannot be deleted at once (withdrawal, deletion of your account or of the listing), it stays on a deletion list that the daily cleanup works through. The request itself is kept until your account or the listing is deleted.
Photos of mosques and facilities
The managers of a claimed mosque and our moderators can publish photos (for example of the building or a flyer) on the mosque’s public page — at most 20 images and 25 MB per mosque, at most 1 MB per image. Before the upload, the image is reduced in size and re-encoded on the device, which removes embedded data such as the location and camera details; our server refuses images that still contain such metadata (Exif or XMP). We store the image, an optional description, its format, size and dimensions, the upload time and which account uploaded it. The original file name is not stored; each image gets a random name.
Everyone sees the images and their descriptions while the listing is public; who uploaded an image and when is never shown publicly. The mosque’s managers and our moderators also see the upload times and the storage used. Images of a hidden listing are not delivered. Our server delivers the images directly from storage, without a CDN or server cache; your browser may keep a copy but checks with our server before showing it again.
Images are deleted when the mosque’s managers or our moderators remove them, when the listing is deleted, or when the account that uploaded them is deleted (if a file cannot be deleted at once, the daily cleanup retries it). Please upload only images you may publish, and avoid recognisable people without their consent. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR.
When facilities (for example a wheelchair-accessible entrance) are added or edited, a photo can be attached as proof, at most 300 KB. It is re-encoded in the browser in the same way, and our server refuses new JPEG and WebP photos that still contain camera or location data (Exif, XMP or IPTC). These photos are stored with the listing, visible to the mosque’s managers and our moderators, and public only if the managers choose to show them; they are deleted when the facility is removed from the listing or the listing is deleted.
Suggesting a mosque
If you suggest a new mosque, we store its details (name, address, location, description, facilities), a contact e-mail address of the mosque, your confirmation and its time, a verification document (image or PDF, at most 5 MB, visible only to moderators) and a reference to your account. Once moderators publish the listing, its details including the contact e-mail address are public.
Suggested listings and their verification documents are currently kept without a fixed deletion period; if you delete your account, the reference to you is removed but the listing and the document remain for moderation. If moderators delete the listing, its verification document is deleted as well (retried by the daily cleanup if needed). Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR.
Reports and notices
If you report a problem with a listing, we store the report with your account, the reason, your message, its status and which moderator closed it. Moderators use reports to correct listings and to handle notices about illegal content. Reports are kept until your account or the listing is deleted. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; for notices about illegal content Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR together with Art. 16 of the Digital Services Act.
Listings, events and data from OpenStreetMap
Mosque listings are public. Many come from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL) and can include a phone number, website or e-mail address; others are added or edited by the mosques’ managers, who also publish events, prayer times, facilities and, if they choose, images. Such details can relate to individual people, for example a contact person. We publish them to provide a useful directory (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). If a listing contains data about you, you can ask us to correct or remove it (Your rights).
Moderation and staff access
Our moderators (people with the role moderator or platform administrator) see reports, claims with their proof documents and suggestions with their verification documents, and can hide, publish or delete listings and approve or reject claims; platform administrators can also block accounts. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (a reliable directory) and Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR (duties under the Digital Services Act).
Protection against misuse
To prevent password guessing, spam and overload, we count attempts per e-mail address (sign-in), per IP address (sign-in, registration, password reset, place search, mosque suggestions, contact form) and per account (reports, claims, suggestions, password changes, photo uploads). We store only a keyed hash (HMAC with a secret key) of the e-mail address, IP address or account ID, together with the counter and times. A daily cleanup deletes counters once the longest counting window (24 hours) has passed and no block is active; it works in batches (up to 5,000 per day), so deletion can take longer when many are due. The counters of your account and of its e-mail address are deleted with the account, and the e-mail counter also after a successful sign-in. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (security of the service and of your account).
Directions and links to other services
When you tap “Directions”, we open the maps service you choose (Apple Maps, Google Maps, Waze, OpenStreetMap or Bing Maps) with the mosque’s location; for some services your current position is passed on as the starting point if it is known. Links to mosque websites and other sites work the same way: from then on the privacy policy of that service applies. Your choice of maps app is stored on your device.
Voluntary donations (Liberapay)
Mosque-Search is free. If you want to support it, you can make a voluntary donation on Liberapay. We only link to Liberapay; nothing is embedded and we pass no data to Liberapay. Liberapay (a non-profit organisation in France) processes your data as a separate controller under its own privacy policy. We only see what Liberapay shows to recipients under your settings. A link to GitHub Sponsors may be added later; GitHub would then also be a separate controller, and we will update this section.
Storage on your device
We use no cookies or other storage for analytics, advertising or tracking and show no cookie banner. Cloudflare’s Network Error Logging is reliability monitoring based on our legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; see Hosting, delivery and security). All other entries serve functions you use — signing in, favourites, your language choice, location and map view, recently viewed mosques, your maps app, the checklist for mosque managers and offline use — or protect the site against automated attacks (Cloudflare’s bot protection with cf_clearance and __cf_bm on our site). For Switzerland, this section is the information required by Art. 45c of the Telecommunications Act (FMG). You can refuse or remove the storage at any time in your browser or device settings (block or clear cookies and site data for mosque-search.com); without it, signing in, saved favourites and offline use do not work. In a normal browser tab, the map view and the recently viewed mosques are kept only until you close the tab (session storage), and your language is saved only when you choose it in the language menu; the installed app keeps them on the device so that it reopens where you left off. Signing out deletes your saved location, the recently viewed mosques and the cached public lists.
| Name | Type | Purpose | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|---|
| openmosque_session | Cookie | Keeps you signed in (only after you sign in) | 30 days or until you sign out |
| cf_clearance | Cookie (Cloudflare) | Shows that the bot check was passed; protects the site against automated attacks | 1 year |
| __cf_bm | Cookie (Cloudflare) | May be set by Cloudflare’s bot protection to tell people from automated traffic (encrypted; not used to recognise you on other sites) | 30 minutes without activity |
| language | Local storage | The language you chose in the language menu; in the installed app, the language last used. Otherwise the language of the page address is only kept in memory | Until deleted |
| mosque_search_last_viewport | Session storage (installed app: local storage) | The map view you last moved to, restored when you reload the page (in the installed app: when you open it again) | 30 days, or until “Clear saved location” or sign-out; in a browser tab at the latest until the tab is closed |
| mosque_search_last_location | Local storage | Your position after you used “My location” | 30 days |
| mosque_search_location_ok | Local storage | Notes that locating worked, so the installed app can locate on start | Until “Clear saved location” or sign-out |
| mosque_search_recent_mosques | Session storage (installed app: local storage) | Up to 12 mosques you opened (name, address), readable offline | Until deleted or sign-out; in a browser tab at the latest until the tab is closed |
| mosque_search_notification_read_ids | Local storage | Which notifications you have read (when signed in) | Until deleted |
| directionsProvider | Local storage | The maps app you chose for directions | Until deleted |
| mosque_search_favorites_v3:guest, mosque_search_favorites_v3:user:<account ID> | Local storage / app storage | Your favourite mosques (ID, and name, address and location for display): one list without an account and one per account on this device; with consent only a copy of the list on our server | Until you remove them or clear the storage; a synced copy until sign-out; an account’s list is deleted with the account (website) |
| openmosque_auth_signal | Local storage | Tells other open tabs of this site that you signed in or out or changed your consent (time, account ID, consent yes/no) | Until the next change (after sign-out without account ID) |
| mosque-search.onboarding.… | Local storage | Checklist progress of mosque managers | Until deleted |
| Service worker, workbox-precache-… | Service worker, cache | App files, so the app starts quickly and works offline | Until the next version |
| om-map-tiles-v1 | Cache | Up to 300 map images you have seen | 7 days |
| om-public-api-v1 | Cache | Up to 80 public mosque and event lists you viewed (without your favorites or registrations) | 24 hours; deleted at sign-out |
| workbox-expiration | IndexedDB | Expiry dates of the two caches above | Together with the caches |
Mobile apps
The Mosque-Search apps for iOS and Android process the same data as the website. To load nearby mosques and events, they send your position (or the place you searched for) to our server, which uses it for that request only and does not store it. They store your sign-in token, your account details and your last position (30 days) in the device’s secure storage, and recent lists of mosques, events, your registrations and favorites as well as your choice of maps app in the app storage; signing out deletes the token and the lists. Your favourites themselves are kept in the app storage as described under Favourites and event registrations. The map in the apps is provided by the map service of your operating system (Apple Maps on iOS, Google Maps on Android); its provider receives your IP address and the map area shown and processes them under its own privacy policy. The apps use your position only after you allow it.
Recipients and transfers outside the EU
- Cloudflare, Inc. (USA) — hosting, database, file storage, security; processor; EU-US Data Privacy Framework and EU standard contractual clauses.
- Resend, Inc. (USA) — sending e-mails, including contact-form messages; processor; EU-US Data Privacy Framework and EU standard contractual clauses.
- Our e-mail hosting provider — keeps our mailbox, including the e-mails you send to info@mosque-search.com and contact-form messages; processor; data may be processed in the USA, safeguarded by the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or EU standard contractual clauses.
- OpenStreetMap Foundation (United Kingdom) — map images (directly from your browser) and address search (via our server, without your IP address); own responsibility; adequacy decision for the United Kingdom.
- Managers assigned to a mosque — names of the people registered for its events (only with their consent).
- The public — published listings and events (no data about your account).
- Authorities and courts — only where we are legally obliged.
For transfers from Switzerland, the Federal Council recognises the United Kingdom as offering adequate protection; transfers to the USA rely on the Swiss-US Data Privacy Framework or on standard contractual clauses. You can request a copy of the safeguards at info@mosque-search.com.
How long we keep data
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Account (name, e-mail, password hash, role, dates) | Until you delete the account |
| Sign-in cookie or app token | 30 days, or until you sign out |
| Favourites | On your device until you remove them or clear the storage (the display copy of a synced account until sign-out); on our server only with consent — until you remove them, withdraw consent, the mosque is deleted or you delete the account |
| Event registrations | Only with consent — until you cancel them, withdraw consent, the event or mosque is deleted or you delete the account; a daily cleanup deletes them automatically, in batches, once 12 calendar months have passed since the event ended (for an event without an end time, since its start; for a weekly series, since the end of the series — sign-ups for a series without an end date are kept while it runs) |
| Consent record (time given, text version, time withdrawn) | Until you delete the account |
| Favourites and registrations stored on our server before the consent existed, without your answer | Deleted by a daily cleanup from 2 November 2027 (12 months after the consent was introduced), in batches |
| Contact-form messages | Not stored on our server; in our inbox as long as needed to handle the request |
| Mosque photos (with description, upload time and uploading account) | Until removed by the mosque’s managers or our moderators, until the listing is deleted or until the uploading account is deleted |
| Facility photos (proof) | Until the facility is removed from the listing or the listing is deleted |
| Reports, claims (request and decision) | Until your account or the listing is deleted |
| Proof documents of claims | When the claim is withdrawn; otherwise by the daily cleanup once 90 days have passed since the decision (in batches) |
| Suggested listings and their verification documents | No fixed period; kept for moderation after the account is deleted |
| Password-reset requests (with IP address and browser) | Until used or replaced; when expired, until the next reset request |
| Counters against misuse (hashed e-mail, IP address or account ID) | Deleted by the daily cleanup after 24 hours without an active block (in batches); with the account |
| Approximate location from the IP address | Not stored |
| Data on your device | See Storage on your device |
Your rights
You have the right of access (Art. 15 GDPR), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction of processing (Art. 18), data portability (Art. 20) and to object to processing based on our legitimate interests (Art. 21). Where you have given permission, you can withdraw it at any time with effect for the future. In Switzerland you have the corresponding rights under the FADP.
In your account under “Data & privacy” you can download a copy of your data (name, e-mail, role, dates, managed mosques, your consent record, and the favourites and up to 1,000 most recent event registrations stored on our server; the website adds the favourites saved in that browser) and delete your account. The download does not include reports, claims, suggestions or photos you uploaded, and the apps offer no download; for a complete copy and for all other requests write to info@mosque-search.com.
You can complain to a data-protection supervisory authority. In Switzerland this is the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC): edoeb.admin.ch.
If you live or work in the EU, you can also complain to the supervisory authority of your Member State, in particular where you live, work or where the alleged infringement took place (Art. 77 GDPR).
Do you have to provide data?
You can use the map, search, listings and events without providing any data beyond what your browser sends technically. An account requires a name, an e-mail address and a password; a claim requires a proof document; a suggestion requires a verification document and your confirmation; the contact form requires an e-mail address so that we can answer. Without them we cannot provide these functions.
Automated decisions
We do not make decisions based solely on automated processing that have legal effects for you or affect you similarly (Art. 22 GDPR, Art. 21 FADP). Automatic limits only block too many attempts for a short time; moderation decisions are made by people.
Children
Accounts are for people aged 18 or older. Everyone can use the service without an account. If we learn that an account belongs to a younger person, we delete it.
Changes to this policy
We update this policy when the processing changes; the version date is shown at the top. Earlier versions are available on request.