Policies, Terms, and Legal

We attempt to make all our policies as clear, fair, and readable as possible.

Terms of Service

Thank you for using our web application, DiscipleLink.

When we say “Company”, “we”, “our”, or “us” in this document, we are referring to The DiscipleLink Foundation.

When we say “Services”, we mean any product created and maintained by The DiscipleLink Foundation. That includes DiscipleLink.net, whether delivered within a web browser, desktop application, mobile application, or another format.

When we say “You” or “your”, we are referring to the communities, groups, or members that own an account with one or more of our Services.

We may update these Terms of Service in the future. Whenever we make a significant change to our policies, we will refresh the date at the top of this page and take any other appropriate steps to notify members.

When you use our Services, now or in the future, you are agreeing to the latest Terms of Service. That’s true for any of our existing and future products and all features that we add to our Services over time. There may be times where we do not exercise or enforce any right or provision of the Terms of Service; in doing so, we are not waiving that right or provision. These terms do contain a limitation of our liability.

If you violate any of the terms, we may terminate your account. That’s a broad statement and it means you need to place a lot of trust in us.

Account Terms

  1. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account and password. The Company cannot and will not be liable for any loss or damage from your failure to comply with this security obligation. We recommend users set up two-factor authentication for added security. In some of our Services, we may require it.

  2. You are responsible for all content posted and activity that occurs under your account. That includes content posted by others who either: (a) have access to your login credentials; or (b) have their own logins under your account.

  3. You must be a human. Accounts registered by “bots” or other automated methods are not permitted.

Payment, Refunds, and Plan Changes

  1. If you are using a free version of one of our Services, it is really free: we do not ask you for your credit card and — just like for members who pay for our Services — we do not sell your data.

  2. For paid Services that offer a free trial, we explain the length of trial when you sign up. After the trial period, you need to pay in advance to keep using the Service. If you do not pay, we will freeze your account and it will be inaccessible until you make payment. If your account has been frozen for a while, we will queue it up for auto-cancellation.

  3. If you are upgrading from a free plan to a paid plan, we will charge your card immediately and your billing cycle starts on the day of upgrade.

  4. All fees are exclusive of all taxes, levies, or duties imposed by taxing authorities. Where required, we will collect those taxes on behalf of the taxing authority and remit those taxes to taxing authorities. Otherwise, you are responsible for payment of all taxes, levies, or duties.

  5. We process refunds according to our refund policy.

Cancellation and Termination

  1. You are solely responsible for properly canceling your account. You can find instructions for how to cancel your account in Settings. An email or phone request to cancel your account is not automatically considered cancellation. If you need help cancelling your account, you can always contact our support team.

  2. All of your content will be inaccessible from the Services immediately upon account cancellation. Within 30 days, all content will be permanently deleted from active systems and logs. Within 60 days, all content will be permanently deleted from our backups. We cannot recover this information once it has been permanently deleted. If you want to export any data before your account is cancelled, we‘ve provided instructions.

  3. If you cancel the Service before the end of your current pay period, your cancellation will take effect immediately, and you will not be charged again. We do not automatically prorate unused time in the last billing cycle.

  4. We have the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of our Services for any reason at any time. Suspension means you and any other users on your account will not be able to access the account or any content in the account. Termination will furthermore result in the deletion of your account or your access to your account, and the forfeiture and relinquishment of all content in your account. We also reserve the right to refuse the use of the Services to anyone for any reason at any time. We have this clause because statistically speaking, out of the hundreds of thousands of accounts on our Services, there is at least one doing something nefarious. There are some things we staunchly stand against and this clause is how we exercise that stance.

  5. Verbal, physical, written or other abuse (including threats of abuse or retribution) of Company employee or officer will result in immediate account termination.

Modifications to the Service and Prices

  1. We make a promise to our customers to support our Services until the end of the Internet. That means when it comes to security, privacy, and customer support, we will continue to maintain any legacy Services. Sometimes it becomes technically impossible to continue a feature or we redesign a part of our Services because we think it could be better or we decide to close new signups of a product. We reserve the right at any time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, any part of our Services with or without notice.

  2. Sometimes we change the pricing structure for our products. When we do that, we tend to exempt existing customers from those changes. However, we may choose to change the prices for existing customers. If we do so, we will give at least 30 days notice and will notify you via the email address on record. We may also post a notice about changes on our websites or the affected Services themselves.

Uptime, Security, and Privacy

  1. Your use of the Services is at your sole risk. We provide these Services on an “as is” and “as available” basis. We do not offer service-level agreements for most of our Services — here’s the one exception — but do take uptime of our applications seriously.

  2. We take many measures to protect and secure your data through backups, redundancies, and encryption. We enforce encryption for data transmission from the public Internet.

  3. When you use our Services, you entrust us with your data. We take that trust to heart. You agree that 37signals may process your data as described in our Privacy Policy and for no other purpose. We as humans can access your data for the following reasons:

    • To help you with support requests you make. We’ll ask for express consent before accessing your account.

    • On the rare occasions when an error occurs that stops an automated process partway through. We get automated alerts when such errors occur. When we can fix the issue and restart automated processing without looking at any personal data, we do. In rare cases, we have to look at a minimum amount of personal data to fix the issue. In these rare cases, we aim to fix the root cause as much as possible to avoid the errors from reoccurring.

    • To safeguard DiscipleLink. We’ll look at logs and metadata as part of our work to ensure the security of your data and the Services as a whole. If necessary, we may also access accounts as part of an abuse report investigation.

    • To the extent required by applicable law. As a US company with all data infrastructure located in the US, we only preserve or share customer data if compelled by a US government authority with a legally binding order or proper request under the Stored Communications Act. If a non-US authority approaches DiscipleLink for assistance, our default stance is to refuse unless the order has been approved by the US government, which compels us to comply through procedures outlined in an established mutual legal assistance treaty or agreement mechanism. If DiscipleLink is audited by a tax authority, we only share the bare minimum billing information needed to complete the audit.

  4. We use third party vendors and hosting partners to provide the necessary hardware, software, networking, storage, and related technology required to run the Services.

Copyright and Content Ownership

  1. All content posted on the Services must comply with U.S. copyright law.

  2. We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Services. All materials uploaded remain yours.

  3. We do not pre-screen content, but reserve the right (but not the obligation) in our sole discretion to refuse or remove any content that is available via the Service.

  4. The names, look, and feel of the Services are copyright© to the Company. All rights reserved. You may not duplicate, copy, or reuse any portion of the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or visual design elements without express written permission from the Company. You must request permission to use the Company’s logo or any Service logos for promotional purposes. We reserve the right to rescind this permission if you violate these Terms of Service.

  5. You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit any portion of the Services, use of the Services, or access to the Services without the express written permission by the Company.

  6. You must not modify another website so as to falsely imply that it is associated with the Services or the Company.

Features and Bugs

We design our Services with care, based on our own experience and the experiences of customers who share their time and feedback. However, there is no such thing as a service that pleases everybody. We make no guarantees that our Services will meet your specific requirements or expectations.

We also test all of our features extensively before going live. As with any software, our Services inevitably have some bugs. We track the bugs reported to us and work through priority ones, especially any related to security or privacy. Not all reported bugs will get fixed and we don’t guarantee completely error-free Services.

Liability

We mention liability throughout these Terms but to put it all in one section:

You expressly understand and agree that the Company shall not be liable, in law or in equity, to you or to any third party for any direct, indirect, incidental, lost profits, special, consequential, punitive or exemplary damages, including, but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, goodwill, use, data or other intangible losses (even if the Company has been advised of the possibility of such damages), resulting from: (i) the use or the inability to use the Services; (ii) the cost of procurement of substitute goods and services resulting from any goods, data, information or services purchased or obtained or messages received or transactions entered into through or from the Services; (iii) unauthorized access to or alteration of your transmissions or data; (iv) statements or conduct of any third party on the service; (v) or any other matter relating to this Terms of Service or the Services, whether as a breach of contract, tort (including negligence whether active or passive), or any other theory of liability.

If you have a question about any of the Terms of Service, please contact our Support team.

Privacy Policy

The privacy of your data—and it is your data, not ours!—is a big deal to us. In this policy, we lay out: what data we collect and why; how your data is handled; and your rights with respect to your data. We promise we never sell your data: never have, never will.

Identity & access

When you sign up for a DiscipleLink product, we ask for identifying information such as your name, email address, and maybe a company name. That’s so you can personalize your new account, and we can send you product updates and other essential information. We may also send you optional surveys from time to time to help us understand how you use our products and to make improvements. With your consent, we will send you our newsletter and other updates. We sometimes also give you the option to add a profile picture that displays in our products.

We’ll never sell your personal information to third parties, and we won’t use your name or company in marketing statements without your permission either.

Billing information

If you sign up for a paid DiscipleLink product, you will be asked to provide your payment information and billing address. Credit card information is submitted directly to our payment processor and doesn’t hit DiscipleLink servers. We store a record of the payment transaction, including the last 4 digits of the credit card number, for purposes of account history, invoicing, and billing support. We store your billing address so we can charge you for service, calculate any sales tax due, send you invoices, and detect fraudulent credit card transactions. We occasionally use aggregate billing information to guide our marketing efforts.

Product interactions

We store on our servers the content that you upload or receive or maintain in your DiscipleLink product accounts. This is so you can use our products as intended, for example, to create Journals in DiscipleLink or to receive email. We keep this content as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we’ll delete the content within 60 days.

Geolocation data

For most of our products, we log the full IP address used to sign up a product account and retain that for use in mitigating future spam. We also log all account access by full IP address for security and fraud prevention purposes, and we keep this login data for as long as your product account is active.

Website interactions

We collect information about your browsing activity for analytics and statistical purposes such as conversion rate testing and experimenting with new product designs. This includes, for example, your browser and operating system versions, your IP address, which web pages you visited and how long they took to load, and which website referred you to us. If you have an account and are signed in, these web analytics data are tied to your IP address and user account until your account is no longer active.

Advertising and Cookies

DiscipleLink runs contextual ads on various third-party platforms such as Google, Facebook, and YouTube. Users who click on one of our ads will be sent to the DiscipleLink marketing site. Where permissible under law, we may load an ad-company script on their browsers that sets a third-party cookie and sends information to the ad network to enable evaluation of the effectiveness of our ads, e.g., which ad they clicked and which keyword triggered the ad, and whether they performed certain actions such as clicking a button or submitting a form.

We also use persistent first-party cookies and some third-party cookies to store certain preferences, make it easier for you to use our applications, and perform A/B testing as well as support some analytics.

A cookie is a piece of text stored by your browser. It may help remember login information and site preferences. It might also collect information such as your browser type, operating system, web pages visited, duration of visit, content viewed, and other click-stream data. You can adjust cookie retention settings and accept or block individual cookies in your browser settings, although our apps won’t work and other aspects of our service may not function properly if you turn cookies off.

Voluntary correspondence

When you email DiscipleLink with a question or to ask for help, we keep that correspondence, including your email address, so that we have a history of past correspondence to reference if you reach out in the future.

We also store information you may volunteer, for example, written responses to surveys. If you agree to a customer interview, we may ask for your permission to record the conversation for future reference or use. We will only do so with your express consent.

When we access or share your information

To provide products or services you’ve requested. We use some third-party subprocessors to help run our applications and provide the Services to you.

We may share your information at your direction if you integrate a third-party service into your use of our products. For example, we may allow you, at your option, to connect your Gmail account to your DiscipleLink account so that you can use DiscipleLink to receive and respond to your Gmail email. Email that you receive and respond to through DiscipleLink from your Gmail address will be stored by both DiscipleLink and Google and will be available to you from your Gmail account as well as DiscipleLink HEY account.

No DiscipleLink human looks at your content except for limited purposes with your express permission, for example, if an error occurs that stops an automated process from working and requires manual intervention to fix. These are rare cases, and when they happen, we look for root cause solutions as much as possible to avoid them recurring. We may also access your data if required in order to respond to legal process (see “When required under applicable law” below).

To exclude you from seeing our ads. Where permissible by law and if you have a DiscipleLink account, we may share a one-way hash of your email address with ad companies to exclude you from seeing our ads.

To help you troubleshoot or squash a software bug, with your permission. If at any point we need to access your content to help you with a support case, we will ask for your consent before proceeding.

To investigate, prevent, or take action regarding restricted uses. Accessing a customer’s account when investigating potential abuse is a measure of last resort. We want to protect the privacy and safety of both our customers and the people reporting issues to us, and we do our best to balance those responsibilities throughout the process. If we discover you are using our products for a restricted purpose, we will take action as necessary, including notifying appropriate authorities where warranted.

When required under applicable law.

DiscipleLink is a U.S. non-profit organization and all data infrastructure are located in the U.S.

  • Requests for user data. Our policy is to not respond to government requests for user data unless we are compelled by legal process or in limited circumstances in the event of an emergency request. However, if U.S. law enforcement authorities have the necessary warrant, criminal subpoena, or court order requiring us to share data, we must comply. Likewise, we will only respond to requests from government authorities outside the U.S. if compelled by the U.S. government through procedures outlined in a mutual legal assistance treaty or agreement. It is DiscipleLink’s policy to notify affected users before we share data unless we are legally prohibited from doing so, and except in some emergency cases.

  • Preservation requests. Similarly, DiscipleLink’s policy is to comply with requests to preserve data only if compelled by the U.S. Federal Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. Section 2703(f), or by a properly served U.S. subpoena for civil matters. We do not share preserved data unless required by law or compelled by a court order that we choose not to appeal. Furthermore, unless we receive a proper warrant, court order, or subpoena before the required preservation period expires, we will destroy any preserved copies of customer data at the end of the preservation period.

  • If we are audited by a tax authority, we may be required to share billing-related information. If that happens, we will share only the minimum needed, such as billing addresses and tax exemption information.

Finally, if The DiscipleLink Foundation is acquired by or merges with another organization — we don’t plan on that, but if it happens — we’ll notify you well before any of your personal information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

How we secure your data

All data is encrypted via SSL/TLS when transmitted from our servers to your browser. The database backups are also encrypted. In addition, we go to great lengths to secure your data at rest.

Location of site and data

Our products and other web properties are operated in the United States. If you are located in the European Union, UK, or elsewhere outside of the United States, please be aware that any information you provide to us will be transferred to and stored in the United States. By using our websites or Services and/or providing us with your personal information, you consent to this transfer.

Changes & questions

We may update this policy as needed to comply with relevant regulations and reflect any new practices.

Have any questions, comments, or concerns about this privacy policy, your data, or your rights with respect to your information? Please get in touch by emailing us at info@disciplelink.net and we’ll be happy to try to answer them!