Privacy Policy

At its heart, Malankara Map is a public reference work — a directory of the parishes, chapels, cathedrals, and other institutions of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, presented through an interactive globe, a searchable map, and a historical timeline. This website is not affiliated with the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, or with any other church, institution, or platform; it is an independent project. Most of what the site shows you is not personal information at all — it is information about places and institutions. A handful of features do involve information about you, though, and we lay out each one honestly below.

What you share with us directly. Using the “Locate the Nearest Parish” tool, you might type a place name into the search field, or choose to share your device’s current location so nearby parishes can be found. Using “Request Qurbana in Your Town,” you are taken to an external form where you may leave your name, contact details, and the town or region you are writing about. Making a donation, you provide payment and billing details directly to our payment processor — we never receive or hold your full card number ourselves. And if you write to us by email, we naturally receive whatever you choose to include.

What is collected automatically. Like most websites, our servers and analytics tools log certain technical details on every visit — your IP address, browser type and version, device type, the pages you view, roughly how long you spend on each, where you came from and where you go next, and a general, city- or region-level sense of location inferred from your IP address. This is standard log-level data, collected by nearly every website, and used for the purposes described in Section 2.

What we learn from third parties. Where the site embeds a Google My Maps view or a Google geocoding lookup, Google may collect information under its own privacy policy, described further in Section 6. Where you make a donation, our payment processor collects and holds your financial details under its own policy as well.

We use the information described above for a limited, specific set of legitimate purposes, and nothing further:

• To run the core features of the site — finding your nearest parish, submitting a Qurbana request, processing a donation, or surfacing a random entry from the directory.
• To maintain, secure, and improve the site — tracking down errors, understanding which features get used, and guarding against abuse, spam, or automated scraping of the directory.
• To reply to whatever you write to us, including corrections to parish records, historical details you have flagged, or general questions.
• To meet our legal obligations, including those around donations and payment processing, tax reporting, and lawful requests from public authorities.

We do not use anything you share to build advertising profiles, and we never sell personal information to data brokers or advertisers.

For visitors in jurisdictions where a stated legal basis is required, including the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, we rely on the following, depending on the activity in question:

• Consent — for example, when you choose to share your device location with the “Locate the Nearest Parish” tool, or agree to non-essential cookies.
• Performance of a contract — for example, processing a donation you have chosen to make.
• Legitimate interests — for example, maintaining the security and integrity of the site, understanding aggregate usage, and preventing abuse, carried out in a way we believe does not override your own rights and freedoms.
• Legal obligation — for example, retaining donation records as required by applicable financial regulation.

We rely on a small handful of cookies and comparable local-storage tools. Strictly necessary cookies remember your language preference (English or Malayalam) and your light or dark theme between visits — without them, the site would simply revert to its defaults each time. We may also use privacy-conscious analytics to understand traffic in aggregate — how many people visit, which pages resonate, how the site tends to be used — without building a profile tied to any one visitor’s identity.

Where a jurisdiction requires it, we will present a cookie banner so you can accept or decline non-essential cookies before they are set. You may also manage cookies directly through your browser settings; declining them may simply mean your language preference resets on your next visit.

We do not sell, rent, or trade personal information, full stop. We share it only in the following limited circumstances:

• With service providers who perform functions on our behalf, such as hosting, analytics, form processing, and payment processing, under obligations to handle that information responsibly and only for the purpose for which it was shared.
• With Google, where you interact with an embedded Google My Maps view or use a location search that relies on Google's geocoding services, subject to Google's own privacy policy.
• Where required by law, such as in response to a valid subpoena, court order, or other lawful request from a public authority, or where necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of the site, its administrators, or the public.
• In connection with a merger, acquisition, or transfer of the site's assets, in which case we will make a reasonable effort to ensure the receiving party honours the commitments set out in this policy.

A handful of features on Malankara Map rely on services operated by others, and it is worth being transparent about each:

• Google My Maps & Google Maps geocoding — the embedded map and the “Locate the Nearest Parish” search feature rely on Google’s mapping infrastructure. Your interactions with the embedded map are subject to Google’s own privacy policy, which we encourage you to review.
• Google Forms — the “Request Qurbana in Your Town” tool links out to a Google Form hosted by us but running on Google’s infrastructure; information you submit there is handled under Google’s terms as well as our own.
• Payment processor — donations are processed by a third-party payment provider; we never see or store your full card number.
• Fonts and content delivery — we load typefaces and some scripts from third-party content delivery networks, which may log basic request data, such as your IP address, as a normal part of serving that content.

We chose each of these providers because they are widely used, generally reputable, and appropriate to the scale of a project like this one, not because we independently audit their internal practices. We encourage you to review their own privacy policies if you have concerns about a specific feature.

We retain information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this policy, and no longer. Server logs are generally retained for a limited rolling window for security and diagnostic purposes before being automatically deleted or aggregated beyond individual identifiability. Records of Qurbana requests and correspondence are retained for as long as needed to act on them, and for a reasonable period afterward for continuity, after which they are deleted or anonymised. Donation records are retained for as long as required by applicable financial and tax regulations.

We take reasonable, industry-standard measures to protect the information in our care, including transport encryption (HTTPS) across the site, restricted access to any systems that hold personal information, and reliance on reputable, security-conscious third-party providers for payment processing and form handling. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. If we become aware of a security incident affecting your personal information, we will notify affected individuals and relevant authorities as required by applicable law.

Depending on where you live, you may have some or all of the following rights over your personal information:

• The right to know what personal information we hold about you, and how it is used and shared.
• The right to request a copy of that information.
• The right to request correction of inaccurate information.
• The right to request deletion of your personal information, subject to certain legal exceptions.
• The right to withdraw consent at any time, where our processing is based on consent — for example, revoking location access in your browser or device settings.
• The right to object to, or request that we restrict, certain kinds of processing.
• The right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

To exercise any of these rights, please write to us using the details in Section 14. We will respond within the timeframe required by applicable law.

Malankara Map documents parishes across six continents, and our visitors are similarly spread across the world. As a result, information we collect may be transferred to, stored in, and processed in countries other than your own, including countries whose data protection laws may differ from those in your home jurisdiction. Where such transfers occur, we take reasonable steps to ensure your information continues to receive an appropriate level of protection, including through contractual safeguards with our service providers where applicable.

Malankara Map is a general-audience reference site and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13, or the relevant minimum age in your jurisdiction, without appropriate parental consent. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us so that we can take appropriate action, which may include deleting that information.

Some browsers offer a “Do Not Track” signal that you can enable to indicate a preference against tracking. Because there is not yet a common industry standard for how sites should respond to this signal, our site does not currently alter its behaviour in response to it, though we encourage you to use the cookie and privacy controls described in Section 4 in the meantime.

We may revise this policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, the features of the site, or applicable law. Where a change is material, we will make a reasonable effort to bring it to your attention, for example through a notice on the site, before it takes effect. The date at the top of this page will always reflect the most recent revision, and we encourage you to review it periodically.

Questions, concerns, or requests relating to this policy or to your personal information are always welcome — write to us at malankaramap@gmail.com and we will respond as promptly as we are able, or find us on Instagram at @malankaramap. For factual corrections to a specific parish record, please use the “Report a Correction” feature elsewhere on the site instead; those are handled separately from privacy requests.