Short, because there is little to tell

Privacy

On your device

• Cookies — four small functional cookies, kept for a year: which writers you switched on (cw_witnesses), your translation (cw_translation), the last chapter you read (cw_last) and the evidence setting (cw_evidence). They exist so the server can render the page the way you set it. No cookie identifies you.
• Browser storage — text size and theme, your highlights, bookmarks, notes and reading history, and the place you reached in each work you read. They never leave the browser unless you export them from Settings. If you save a book of the Bible, a work or a translation for offline reading, its text (and what your writers say about the book) is stored in the browser’s cache, with a note of what is saved and whether you want saving suggested; Settings lists it and removes it.

On the server

• Page counts. When a page loads, the browser sends its path (for example /read/john/3) and whether it is the installed app, so we can count which chapters and pages are read; with the first page of a visit it also sends the name of the site that linked to it (its domain, such as google.com, never the full address). To count visitors per day without identifying anyone, the server keeps a one-way hash of your address and browser signature mixed with a secret and the date; it cannot be reversed and cannot link one day to another. Each day’s visitors are also counted by kind of device, operating system and browser, read from the browser signature, and by country when the network in front of the site reports it: totals, not linked to anyone. Your address is not stored. Browsers that send Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control are not counted at all.
• Searches. Search terms are counted (how many times each was searched, and how many results it had) to improve the index. They are not linked to a visitor.
• Problem reports. If you report a problem, we keep what you wrote, the passage or verse it concerns, the page address and, if you give it, your email address, until the report is reviewed and for twelve months afterwards. A hash of your address is kept with it to limit abuse. Email addresses are used only to reply about the report.
• Errors. If the app breaks, the error message, the page and your browser’s name are logged so it can be fixed. Logs are kept for ninety days.
• Server logs. The web server keeps ordinary access logs for a short time for security and capacity. They are not used for profiling.

Nothing is sold, shared with advertisers or used to build profiles. No data is sent to third parties: fonts, images and scripts are served from this site. If the site is hosted by a provider, that provider processes traffic on our behalf under its own terms.

Your rights

Everything about your reading is on your device and under your control: clear it in Settings or in your browser. To have a problem report removed or to ask what we hold that concerns you, use the report form.

Terms of use

• The texts are public domain. The Bible texts and the writers’ works reproduced here are in the public domain; see Texts & credits for each one and for the exception of the King James Version in the United Kingdom. You may copy them freely. Portraits under Creative Commons licences must be credited as shown there.
• The links are machine-made. The connection between a passage and a verse is found by software that reads citations, matches quotations and follows the structure of commentaries. It is checked by sampling, and its accuracy is published on the About page, but any single link may be wrong: a passage credited to the wrong verse, or a stray editorial paragraph credited to the author of the volume. Read the passage in its context before quoting it, and report what looks wrong.
• Scanned editions contain errors. Passages marked from a scanned edition were read by OCR and may contain misread letters or broken lines. The archived source is linked so the printed text can be checked.
• No warranty. The service is provided as it is, without warranty of any kind, and may change or stop. It is not a substitute for the printed editions it draws on, and nothing here is professional or pastoral advice.
• Fair use of the service. Do not overload the site with automated requests; the database and the source texts are available for download from the libraries credited so that you need not.

Last updated 1 October 2026.