Open the Bible - Your Guided Journey Through the Bible

Copyright Policy

Open the Bible seeks to put the gospel in peoples’ grasp through a broad array of modern media. Our ministry wants to provide visitors to our website with easy access to Pastor Colin Smith’s materials. It is important to us that the integrity of the content is maintained, so please read the following guidelines before distributing content in any way.

Audio, Video, and Sermon PDFs

You have permission and are encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format you choose, as long as you do not alter or change the wording in any way and do not charge a fee (beyond the cost of reproducing these materials). For posting on the web, a link to our website (www.openthebible.org) is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Open the Bible—please call (866) 865-6253.

This statement must be included on every copy distributed:
By Colin S. Smith. © Colin S. Smith. Used with permission. Website: www.openthebible.org.

Please contact the ministry directly regarding other requests.

Blog Articles and Devotionals

We allow reposting of unaltered excerpts (up to 40%) of our articles and devotionals provided that you credit the author and include a backlink to the full resource on our website.

Please include this statement when you republish:

Please contact us regarding other requests.

ESV Bible

Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Text provided by the Crossway Bibles Web Service.

Privacy Policy

Personal information released willingly to us will be used:

1) For online purchases through our e-commerce platform;
2) For online donations through a third-party platform;
3) For email subscriptions to receive online content;
4) For sample resource requests;
5) For responding to inquiries from our Contact Us page.

Information We Collect

Any personal information freely provided to Open the Bible for the processing of donations, purchases, or other requests is considered of utmost value; therefore, we will do everything in our power to ensure that your information stays secure. Your transmitted information is secured through SSL (secure socket layer) encryption. Your private information will remain confidential and will not be sold or distributed outside the ministry.

Remember, there is always the chance that personal information could be leaked over the Internet, and for that reason, if applicable, we ask that you please keep track of your usernames and passwords; log out of our website each time you transact; and make sure you are using a secure Internet connection when you do transact.

Information You Provide to Us

It’s probably no surprise that we collect information that you provide to us. The amount and type of information depends on the context and how we use the information. Here are some examples:

Basic Account Information: We ask for basic information from you in order to set up your customer account. For example, those who make a donation, make purchases, or request information and resources related to Open the Bible provide a name, organization name, email address, and/or phone number, and if applicable, a password.
Transaction and Billing Information: If you buy something from us—such as through the online e-commerce platform—or if you make a donation, you will provide additional personal and payment information that is required to process the transaction and your payment, such as your name, credit card information, and contact information.
Communications With Us: You may also provide us with information when you request resource materials, respond to surveys, communicate with our staff about a support question, or post a question using the Contact Us link.

Information We Collect Automatically

We also collect some information automatically:

Log Information: Like most websites, we collect information that web browsers, mobile devices, and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, IP address, unique device identifiers, language preference, referring site, the date and time of access, operating system, and mobile network information. We collect log information when you use our website.
Location Information: We may determine the approximate location of your device from your IP address. We collect and may use this information to, for example, display a message about upcoming events in your area.
Information from Cookies & Other Technologies: A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Pixel tags (also called web beacons) are small blocks of code placed on websites and emails. Open the Bible uses cookies and other technologies like pixel tags to help us identify and track visitors, usage, and access preferences for our website and its content, to inform future content creation decisions, as well as track and understand email campaign effectiveness and to deliver targeted ads.

Information We Collect from Other Sources

We may also get information, such as an email address or phone number from third-party services about individuals who are not yet our users (…but we hope will be!), which we may use, for example, for marketing and advertising purposes like emailing and phone calls.

How and Why We Use Information

Purposes for Using Information

We use information about you as mentioned above and for the purposes listed below:

To process online purchases through our e-commerce platform;
To process online donations through a secure third-party platform;
To process email subscriptions for you to receive online content;
To fulfill requests for sample resources;
To respond to inquiries sent via our Contact Us page;
To monitor and analyze trends and better understand how users interact with our content
To measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our correspondence and campaigns, and better understand user retention and attrition – for example, we may analyze how many individuals access various online media or purchase items from our e-commerce platform after receiving a specialized newsletter;
To monitor and prevent any problems with our website and its content, protect its security, detect and prevent fraudulent transactions and other illegal activities, fight spam, and protect the rights and property of Open the Bible and others, which may result in us declining a transaction or the use of various areas of the website; and
To communicate with you – for example, through an email, about offers and promotions offered by Open the Bible and others we think may be of interest to you, solicit your feedback, or keep you up to date on events, products, and/or resources at Open the Bible.

Legal Bases for Collecting and Using Information

This section is for those in the European Union about our legal grounds for processing information about you under EU data protection laws, which is that our use of your information is based on the grounds that:

The use is necessary in order to fulfill our commitments to you under our Terms of Service or other agreements with you or is necessary to administer your account.
The use is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or
The use is necessary in order to protect your vital interests or those of another person; or
We have a legitimate interest in using your information – for example, to provide and update our website and its content, to improve our website and its content so that we can offer you an even better user experience, to safeguard our Services, to communicate with you, to measure, gauge, and improve the effectiveness of our advertising, and better understand user retention and attrition, to monitor and prevent any problems with our Services, and to personalize your experience; or
You have given us your consent –for example, before we place certain cookies on your device and access and analyze them later on.

Sharing Information

How We Share Information

We do not sell our users’ private personal information.

We share information about you in the limited circumstances spelled out below and with appropriate safeguards on your privacy:

Subsidiaries, Employees, and Independent Contractors: We may disclose information about you to our subsidiaries, our employees, and individuals who are our independent contractors that need to know the information in order to help us provide our Services or to process the information on our behalf. We require our subsidiaries, employees, and independent contractors to follow this Privacy Policy for personal information that we share with them.
Third-Party Vendors: We may share information about you with third-party vendors who need to know information about you in order to provide their services to us, or to provide their services to you or your site. This group includes vendors that help us provide our Services to you (like payment providers that process your credit and debit card information, fraud prevention services that allow us to analyze fraudulent payment transactions, postal and email delivery services that help us stay in touch with you, customer chat and email support services that help us communicate with you, registrars, registries, those that assist us with our marketing efforts (e.g. by providing tools for identifying a specific marketing target group or improving our marketing campaigns), those that help us understand and enhance our Services (like analytics providers), and companies that make products available on our websites. We require vendors to agree to privacy commitments in order to share information with them.
Legal Requests: We may disclose information about you in response to a subpoena, court order, or other governmental request.
To Protect Rights, Property, and Others: We may disclose information about you when we believe in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Open the Bible, third parties, or the public at large. For example, if we have a good faith belief that there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury, we may disclose information related to the emergency without delay.
Organization Transfers: In connection with any merger, sale of company assets, or acquisition of all or a portion of our organization by another company, or in the unlikely event that Open the Bible goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would likely be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. If any of these events were to happen, this Privacy Policy would continue to apply to your information and the party receiving your information may continue to use your information, but only consistent with this Privacy Policy.
With Your Consent: We may share and disclose information with your consent or at your direction. For example, we may share your information with third parties with which you authorize us to do so, such as the social media services that you connect to your site through our Share feature.
Aggregated or De-Identified Information: We may share information that has been aggregated or reasonably de-identified, so that the information could not reasonably be used to identify you. For instance, we may publish aggregate statistics about the use of our Services and we may share a hashed version of your email address to facilitate customized ad campaigns on other platforms.
Published Support Requests: And if you send us a request (for example, via a support email or one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish that request in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users.

Security

While no online service is 100% secure, we work very hard to protect information about you against unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction, and take reasonable measures to do so, such as monitoring our Services for potential vulnerabilities and attacks.

Choices

You have several choices available when it comes to information about you:

Limit the Information that You Provide: If you have an account with us, you can choose not to provide the optional account information, profile information, and transaction and billing information. Please keep in mind that if you do not provide this information, certain features of our services – for example, making a donation or purchasing through our e-commerce platform – may not be accessible
Limit Access to Information On Your Mobile Device: Your mobile device operating system should provide you with the ability to discontinue our ability to collect stored information or location information via our mobile website and/or mobile apps. If you do so, you may not be able to use certain features (like adding a location to a photograph, for example).
Opt-Out of Electronic Communications: You may opt out of receiving promotional messages from us. Just follow the instructions in those messages. If you opt out of promotional messages, we may still send you other messages, like those about your account and legal notices.
Set Your Browser to Reject Cookies: You can usually choose to set your browser to remove or reject browser cookies before using Open the Bible’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of Open the Bible’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.
Close Your Account: While we would be sorry to see you go, if you no longer want to use our services, you may request your Open the Bible account to be closed. Please keep in mind that we may continue to retain your information after closing your account, for example, for legal obligations such as law enforcement requests, or reasonably needed for our legitimate business interests.

Your Rights

If you are located in certain countries, including those that fall under the scope of the European General Data Protection Regulation (aka the “GDPR”), data protection laws give you rights with respect to your personal data, subject to any exemptions provided by the law, including the rights to:

Request access to your personal data;
Request correction or deletion of your personal data;
Object to our use and processing of your personal data;
Request that we limit our use and processing of your personal data; and
Request portability of your personal data.

You can contact us to exercise any of these requests by referring to the next section, How to Reach Us, or by accessing the Contact Us page.

EU individuals also have the right to make a complaint to a government supervisory authority.

How to Reach Us

If you have a question about this Privacy Policy, or you would like to contact us about any of the rights mentioned in the Your Rights section above, please contact us:

Use the form on the Contact Us page.
Mailing Address: Open the Bible, P.O. Box 3454, Barrington, IL 60011
Phone: 1-866-865-6253

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Open the Bible may change its Privacy Policy from time to time. Open the Bible encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If we make changes, we will notify you by revising the change log below, and, in some cases, we may provide additional notice (such as adding a statement to our homepage or sending you a notification through email or your dashboard). Your further use of the website and its features after a change to our Privacy Policy will be subject to the updated policy.

Change Log

May 25, 2018 — Major updates to reflect the requirements by GDPR.

Creative Commons Sharealike License Credits

Portions of this document were based on the Automattic Privacy Policy under a Creative Commons Sharealike license. You can obtain a copy of a Privacy Policy and other legal documents on Github. You’re more than welcome to copy it, adapt it, and repurpose it for your own use. Just make sure to revise the language so that your policy reflects your actual practices. Also, if you do use the policy, we’d appreciate a credit and link to Automattic somewhere on your site.

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