Who we are
Bolton Central Islamic Society, a charity registered in England and Wales, number 1041569, known as Taiyabah Masjid. Our registered address is 31a Draycott Street, Bolton BL1 8HD.
We are the data controller for the information described here. If you have any question about this notice, or want us to delete something we hold about you, ring the office on 01204 535 997 or email info@taiyabahmasjid.com.
The short version
Most of the app asks nothing of you. Prayer times, the Qur’an, the du’ā collections, the qibla compass, the zakat calculator and the mosque information all work without an account and without sending anything about you anywhere.
Five things do involve your information: booking the hall, requesting a nikāḥ date, asking to hold a charity collection, sending a written question to the imams, and turning on notifications. Each is described below.
There is no advertising in the app and no tracking of any kind. We do not profile you, we do not sell anything about you, and nothing you do in the app is used to build a picture of you. Two small things are counted and worth naming: our notification provider records how often a notification is opened, so the masjid can tell whether a reminder reached anyone, and the app reports its own faults so they can be fixed. Neither is joined to your name.
What we collect, and why
Booking the hall
When you send a hall booking we receive your first name, surname, address and telephone number, along with the date you want, how many halls, and whether you want the kitchen. We need these to hold the date and for the office to call you to confirm it and arrange access.
Our lawful basis is performance of a contract — you are asking to hire a room, and we cannot arrange that without knowing who you are and how to reach you.
Requesting a nikāḥ date
When you send a nikāḥ request we receive the name, telephone number and email address of the person making the request, whether they are the bride, the groom or a family member, the dates and prayer times that would suit, an estimate of numbers, and anything you choose to write in the notes box. The office rings you to discuss it.
The form also asks for the full name, age and home address of five people: the bridegroom, the bride, the bride’s representative and two witnesses. The masjid records these for every nikāḥ it performs and cannot perform one without them. The bridegroom and the bride must be 18 or over — since February 2023 performing a marriage ceremony for anyone under 18 is a criminal offence in England and Wales, whether or not the marriage is registered, so the form will not accept a younger age.
Those details are kept with the request, are readable only by office staff who have signed in and completed two-step verification, and are used for nothing else. The app itself cannot read any of it back once sent.
Our lawful basis is consent, which you give by ticking the box on the form. You can withdraw it at any time by ringing the office, and we will delete the request and the five people’s details with it.
Asking to hold a charity collection
When an organisation asks to collect at the masjid we receive the organisation’s name, address, telephone number, email address and registered charity number, the name and role of the collector and whether they are paid, the name, telephone number and email address of a trustee who can vouch for the request, the name signed on the declaration, and the date asked for. We need these to check the request is genuine and to reach somebody accountable if a question arises.
The form also requires a copy of the organisation’s BMCC certificate, dated within the last three months. You may upload it as a photograph or a PDF. It is stored in a private area that only administrators who have completed two-step verification can open, through a link that expires after five minutes. The person who uploaded it cannot read it back, and it is never published or passed on.
Our lawful basis is legitimate interests — the masjid has to satisfy itself that money collected in its name goes where it is said to go, and the congregation would expect no less. You may object at any time by ringing the office.
Sending a written question to the imams
If you write to the imams from the Imams’ Advice screen, we receive your name, telephone number and email address, the short line you write describing what it is about, and the question itself. We need your name so the imam knows who he is answering, your email because that is where his answer is sent, and your number in case ringing you would be kinder than writing.
Who can read it. Only an imam. Access is held by a single role in the masjid’s portal, and that role is deliberately not included in the administrators’ role — so the office, the committee and the masjid’s administrators cannot open these questions, and the database refuses them if they try. Every time an imam opens one, a record is kept that somebody looked; that record names the reference and nothing else — not you, not the subject, not a word of what you wrote. The email that tells the imam a question has arrived does not contain the question, your name or your address.
What we cannot promise. We do not say that nobody anywhere could ever see it. The people who hold the keys to the masjid’s database could, as they could for anything else stored there, and no software can honestly promise otherwise. What we do say is that no other role, screen or account at the masjid reaches it.
You may be asked something, or tell us something, that is sensitive — about your health, your family, a bereavement or your faith. Where that happens our condition for processing it is Article 9(2)(a), your explicit consent, which you give by choosing to write and send it. Our lawful basis for the rest is consent as well. You may withdraw it at any time by ringing the office, and we will delete the question and any answer.
The imam’s answer is emailed to the address you gave, from the masjid’s own address. That mailbox is not watched, so you cannot reply to it — the email tells you how to write again or ring instead. We do not send you an email confirming your question arrived: your reference is shown on the screen instead, so that nothing about it lands in an inbox somebody else may read.
If a question has been waiting more than a week without an answer, the office is told how many are waiting, so that somebody can ask the imam to look. It is never told who from, what about, or anything you wrote.
Notifications
If you turn on prayer reminders, your device is registered with OneSignal, our notification provider. They hold an anonymous identifier for your device and the preferences you chose — whether you want jamā’ah reminders, how many minutes before, and whether you want janāzah, announcement and event notices. Your name is not sent, and nothing identifies you personally.
Our lawful basis is consent. Turning notifications off in the app, or in your phone’s settings, ends it.
Payments
Hall deposits, nikāḥ fees and donations are handled by Stripe on their own pages, which open outside the app. Your card details never pass through the app and we never see them. We receive confirmation that a payment was made and the reference it relates to. Stripe is the data controller for the payment itself, under their own privacy policy.
When the app goes wrong
If the app hits a fault, it sends a report so the fault can be found and fixed. The report holds the error message and its technical trace, which version and build of the app you have, whether it is an iPhone or an Android phone, the operating system version, the phone’s model name — “Pixel 7”, the model, not your phone — and which screen you were on when it happened. There is no name, no account and no device identifier in it. Nothing in a crash report points back to you.
A fault is reported once from a phone rather than every time it repeats, so an app that is crashing does not keep sending. Reports are stored in Supabase with everything else. Our lawful basis is legitimate interests — keeping an app the congregation opens five times a day in working order.
What stays on your phone
These never leave your device and we cannot see them:
- Your chosen language, text size and notification preferences.
- Your Qur’ān bookmark, favourites and the page you last read.
- Downloaded content — language packs and Qur’ān pages — so the app works offline.
Clearing the app’s data or uninstalling it removes all of them.
Location
The qibla compass can use your location to point more accurately from exactly where you are standing. It asks first, only when you open the compass and press start, and the position is used on your phone and immediately discarded. It is never stored and never sent to us or to anybody else. If you refuse, the compass still works, pointing from the masjid.
Who else is involved
We use a small number of suppliers to run the app. They act on our instructions and may not use your information for their own purposes.
The zakat calculator fetches gold and silver prices from public price services. Those requests carry nothing about you.
We do not sell or share your information with anyone else, and we will only hand it to a public authority where the law requires it.
How long we keep it
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask us to:
- tell you what we hold about you, and give you a copy;
- correct anything that is wrong;
- delete it, where we have no continuing reason to keep it;
- stop using it for a particular purpose;
- withdraw your consent, where consent is what we relied on.
Ring the office on 01204 535 997 or email info@taiyabahmasjid.com. We will answer within one month, and there is no charge.
If deleting is what you are after, how to ask us to delete your data sets out the steps, what goes, and the little that has to stay.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We would rather you spoke to us first, so we can put it right.
Children
The app is for anyone to use, and nothing in it is aimed at children specifically. The hall booking and nikāḥ forms are for adults, and we do not knowingly collect information from a child through the app. Madrasah admissions are handled separately, on paper and through the office, and are not part of this app.
Changes to this notice
If we change what the app collects we will update this page and change the date at the top. Material changes will also be announced in the app.
This notice is written in English. Translations of the summary are offered inside the app for convenience; where they differ, the English text is the one that applies.