Privacy Policy

Igbo Gospel Music Ministers Association looks after your details. This policy says exactly what the platform collects, who can see each part, how long it is kept, and what you can ask us to do about it.

We do not sell your data. We do not share it with advertisers. There is no advertising on this site and no third-party tracking.

What we collect

To create your account — required

Your name, email address, date of birth, and a password. The password is hashed with bcrypt before it is stored: nobody at the ministry can read it, including administrators.

Your date of birth is required for one reason — to check you are old enough to have an account. It is not shown to anybody unless you turn on your birthday (see below).

Everything else — optional

A photograph, phone number, home address, neighbourhood, profession, the department you would like to join, a short bio, your spiritual gifts, what you are happy to help with, and your interests. All of it is optional, at registration and afterwards. You can add, change or remove any of it from your profile at any time.

What you create as you use the site

Community posts and comments, chat messages, event bookings, music and video you submit to the library, the birthday wishes you send other members, and what you have liked.

Collected automatically

• A session cookie so you stay signed in. Strictly necessary; the site cannot work without it.
• An anonymous browser id so a visitor who is not signed in can still be counted once when they tap "I prayed for this", and so guest submissions can be rate-limited. It is a random value and is not linked to a person.
• A short-lived httpOnly cookie holding the id of an anonymous salvation decision, so you can return to it. It is httpOnly so that it cannot be read or forged by a script.
• Ordinary server logs, including IP addresses, kept briefly for security and to stop abuse.

There are no analytics or advertising cookies on this site.

Who can see what

Not every detail is equally safe to publish, so they do not share one switch.

What	Default	Who can see it
Name and photo	Shown	Signed-in members
Profession, neighbourhood	Shown	Signed-in members
Birthday	Hidden	Only if you switch it on
Phone and email	Hidden	Only if you switch it on
Home address	Hidden	Only if you switch it on — its own separate switch
Care and benevolence requests	Private	Pastors and administrators only
Private prayer requests	Private	Pastors and the prayer team
Direct messages	Private	You and the person you are talking to

Your home address is the most guarded field here, because it is the one that tells a stranger where you sleep. It is off by default, it never appears in the member directory, and turning on "show my contact details" does not turn it on.

Leaving the member directory hides you from the member list and makes your profile page return "not found" for everybody else. A switch that hid you from the list but left your page answering would be worth very little.

Birthdays are opt-in and off by default. If you tick the box, the celebrations page shows your photograph, your name, your ministry and — unless the secretariat has switched it off — where you are based, on your birthday. Your date of birth itself is never shown, and your age only if the secretariat has enabled it. Untick the box and you disappear from it.

What leaves this server

Nothing on this platform is sent to an external AI provider. Not your messages, not your profile, not your submissions, not anything you write to another member.

The platform once carried an AI-assisted question box for sermons. It has been removed along with the rest of the church-era features, and no AI provider is called from anywhere in this application.

What does leave: your browser fetches your own uploaded files from this platform's storage, and a video you chose to watch loads from YouTube or Vimeo only after you press play — until then nothing has been requested from them.

Where your data is stored

In a PostgreSQL database and in file storage operated by the ministry's hosting providers, which may be in a different country to you. Uploaded files are stored under random names, and files attached to anything non-public are served through a route that checks you are allowed to see them first.

How long we keep it

• Your account and profile — until you ask us to delete it.
• Chat messages — deleted automatically after the retention period set by the ministry.
• Files uploaded but never sent — deleted after a day. The file goes before the database record, deliberately: a leftover record is untidy, a leftover file is a privacy problem.
• Prayer requests, testimonies and posts — until you or a moderator remove them.
• Server logs — a short period, for security.

Your rights over your data

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:

• See what we hold about you.
• Correct anything wrong — most of it you can edit yourself from your profile.
• Delete your account and your data.
• Take a copy of what you have given us.
• Object to a particular use, or withdraw consent you gave earlier.

Email info@igmma.org and we will respond as quickly as we can. We may ask you to confirm who you are first — otherwise the right to see your data becomes a way for somebody else to read it.

Some things cannot be deleted on request: records the law requires us to keep, and somebody else's side of a conversation you were part of.

Children

This platform is for adults. Nobody under 18 can create an account, and we do not knowingly hold personal data about children. If you believe someone under 18 has an account here, tell us at info@igmma.org and we will remove it.

See Safeguarding for how the association protects children and vulnerable adults at events and in ministry.

Photographs of people

A photograph of a recognisable person is that person's data as much as yours. Do not upload one without their agreement — and never a photograph of a child who is not yours without a parent's written permission.

Security

Passwords are hashed with bcrypt. Two-factor authentication is available to every account and is strongly encouraged for anyone with a leadership role. Administrative pages are guarded twice over. Sign-in failures give one generic message, so the form cannot be used to work out which email addresses are registered.

No system is perfectly secure. If you find a vulnerability, please tell us privately at info@igmma.org before telling anyone else.

Changes to this policy

We will update this page and change the date at the top. If a change materially affects you, we will say so on the site.

Contact

info@igmma.org · +234 803 328 2359 or +234 803 347 5809

National Secretariat, Lagos