These Terms set out the rules for using Oikos Bible. We have tried to write them in plain language. Please read them carefully — together with our Privacy Policy, they are the agreement between you and us.
1. Agreement and who we are
These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and Oikos Bible ("we", "us"). We run the Oikos Bible app for iOS, Android and the web and the website oikosbible.com (together, the "Service").
If you use the app, you accept these Terms by ticking the box that asks for your agreement when you start using it; if you do not agree, please do not use the app. If you only visit the public pages of our website, you do not need to accept these Terms, but we ask you to respect the rules on using content set out in sections 11 and 12.
How we handle your personal data is explained in our separate Privacy Policy.
2. Who can use Oikos Bible
You must be at least 16 years old to create an account or to use the app. The Service is not directed at children under
16.
If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 16, we will delete the account and its data. If you think a child under
16 is using Oikos Bible, please let us know at info@oikosbible.com.
3. The Service
Oikos Bible helps you read and study the Bible, pray, and walk with other people as disciples of Jesus. Its features include Bible reading with highlights, bookmarks and notes; a prayer list with reminders; your Oikos list of the people you pray for and walk with; groups; journeys and trainings; reading plans and series; the verse of the day and a daily devotion; an AI assistant for Bible questions; and notifications.
The Service is free: there are no advertisements, no subscriptions or in-app purchases, and we do not sell your data.
Nothing in these Terms obliges you to pay us, and nothing in them is meant to reduce the rights the law gives you as a consumer.
4. Your account
You can create an account with an email address and a password, or sign in with Google, Apple or YouVersion.
You can also continue without an account. The app then creates an anonymous account for you, so that your highlights, prayers and progress can be saved. An anonymous account is tied to the device it was created on: if you uninstall the app, lose the device or sign out before adding an email address or another sign-in method, it may not be possible to recover it. You can add a sign-in method in your account settings at any time.
You can link several sign-in methods (for example Google and a password) to the same account, and you can link your YouVersion account to keep your highlights in sync. When you sign in through Google, Apple or YouVersion, their own terms also apply to that sign-in.
You agree to:
give accurate information and keep it up to date;
keep your password and your devices secure, and not share your login with anyone;
use one account per person, and not create an account for someone else without their permission or pretend to be someone else;
tell us promptly at info@oikosbible.com if you think someone has used your account without your permission.
You are responsible for what is done through your account, unless it happens through no fault of yours — for example because of a security failure on our side.
5. Your content and the licence you give us
Your content is everything you create or upload in the Service: notes, highlights, prayers, the journeys and trainings you write, comments, answers, reactions, group messages, images and videos. You keep all the rights you have in it.
To run the Service we need your permission to handle that content. You therefore give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to host, store, reproduce, technically adapt (for example resize an image or convert a video), display and distribute your content — only to operate and provide the Service, and only to the audience you choose: yourself, a group, people who have the link, or the public catalog. For content published in the public catalog, the licence also covers translating it into the languages the Service offers.
We do not claim ownership of your content, we do not sell it and we do not use it for advertising.
You decide who sees what. Private content — such as your notes, your prayer list and your Oikos list — is visible only to you. What you post in a group is visible to the members of that group. Journeys and trainings you write start as drafts that only you can see; marked "unlisted", they can be opened by anyone with the link; once published, they appear in the public catalog, on our website and in link previews. Our administrators can open drafts, and users with a publisher role see unlisted journeys and trainings in their review queue (see our
Privacy Policy).
The licence ends when you delete the content or your account, with two exceptions. First, backup copies: they exist only for disaster recovery, are kept for a limited period on their rotation cycle (for some backups up to two years), are access-restricted and are never used for anything else; if a backup ever has to be restored, deletions made since are applied again. Second, journeys or trainings you published, which may stay available to others without your name unless you ask us at
info@oikosbible.com to remove them — which you can do at any time.
You confirm that you have the rights needed to share your content — for example to images, videos, music or texts made by others — and that sharing it does not break these Terms or the law.
6. Content about other people
Some features let you record information about other people — for example your Oikos list (names, discipleship stage, notes, a photo) or the email addresses you invite to a group. You decide what to enter, and you are responsible for having a lawful reason to do so and for respecting those people's privacy.
In particular, please:
enter only what you need — a first name is usually enough;
not record sensitive details (for example about someone's health or sex life) beyond what you truly need to pray for and walk with them, and record someone's religious beliefs only where you have their permission or another lawful reason;
not add a photo of someone without their permission;
not pass on what you know about others outside the Service without their permission.
Your Oikos list is private: we store it only on your behalf, use it for nothing else and never show it to anyone else — our administrators cannot read its text either. Anyone whose information a user has entered can contact us at
info@oikosbible.com to exercise their rights.
7. Groups and community rules
Groups are places to read, pray and grow together. What you share in a group is visible to its members, together with your display name and picture. Treat what others share — especially their prayers — as confidential, and do not copy, screenshot or pass it on outside the group without their permission.
When you use the Service, you must not:
post or share anything illegal, or anything that infringes other people's rights, including copyright and privacy;
spread hatred against, or discriminate against, people because of their origin, ethnicity, nationality, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, disability or age;
harass, bully, threaten or intimidate anyone;
post sexual or pornographic content, or any content that sexualises minors;
glorify, promote or incite violence, self-harm or terrorism;
send spam, chain messages, advertising or other unsolicited promotion;
impersonate a person, church or organisation, or misrepresent your connection with them;
publish someone's private information without their consent (doxxing), or misuse other users' personal data;
share other people's private prayers or other group content outside the group;
upload viruses or any other malicious code;
scrape, harvest or bulk-download content or data from the Service, including Bible texts, by automated means;
try to access accounts or data that are not yours, or get around security measures, rate limits or access controls;
disrupt or overload the Service, or reverse engineer it except to the extent the law allows.
Conversations about faith — including disagreement — are welcome, as long as they are respectful.
Group leaders look after their groups: they can remove messages and remove or ban members. Leaders must use these powers fairly and in line with these Terms.
8. Moderation, reporting and enforcement
You can report any content — comments, answers, published journeys and trainings, groups — or any user to us at
info@oikosbible.com. Group messages can also be reported from within the app; that report goes to the group's leaders. We review the reports we receive and act on them as quickly as we reasonably can.
If content or behaviour breaks these Terms or the law, we may — depending on how serious it is — remove or hide the content, limit features, warn you, or suspend or close the account. We choose a proportionate response, taking into account how serious the breach is, whether it has been repeated, and its intent.
Where possible, we tell both the person who made the report and the user concerned what we decided and why. If you disagree with a decision, reply to our message or write to us at
info@oikosbible.com, and a person will review it.
We do not check content before it is posted and have no general obligation to monitor it, but we act when we become aware of illegal content, and we report it to the authorities where the law requires.
9. Faith content is not professional advice
Devotions, journeys, trainings, articles and the other content in Oikos Bible are offered for spiritual encouragement and learning. They are not medical, psychological, legal or financial advice and do not replace a qualified professional. Content written by other users reflects their own views, not ours.
If you are in crisis
If you or someone else is in danger, or thinking about suicide or self-harm, contact your local emergency services immediately — 112 in Albania and the European Union — or a person you trust nearby. Oikos Bible is not an emergency service and cannot respond to messages in real time.
10. The AI assistant
The AI assistant answers Bible questions automatically, using a language model provided by OpenAI. Its answers are generated by a computer: they may be wrong, incomplete or one-sided, and they are not the teaching of Oikos Bible or of any church.
Test what you read against Scripture and talk it over with trusted leaders in your church. Do not rely on the assistant for medical, legal, psychological or other professional matters, and do not use it to produce content that breaks these Terms.
Do not put personal data — your own or anyone else's — in your questions. What you type is sent to OpenAI to produce the answer, as our
Privacy Policy explains.
11. Bible texts and copyright
The Bible translations in the Service are either in the public domain or protected by copyright and licensed by their publishers, through YouVersion. The rights in each translation belong to its owners.
You may read, highlight, quote and share verses for personal, non-commercial use within the Service and through its share features. You may not copy, extract or download Bible texts in bulk, or republish them elsewhere, unless the translation is in the public domain or its publisher allows it.
12. Our intellectual property
The name Oikos Bible, our logo, the design of the app and the website, and the content we create ourselves (such as our journeys, trainings, devotions and articles) belong to Oikos Bible or to our licensors and are protected by law. These Terms do not give you the right to use our name or logo, except to refer to the Service accurately.
You may use the Service and share its content through the share features it provides, for personal and non-commercial purposes. Where parts of the Service's source code are published under an open-source licence, that licence governs the use of that code.
If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them to improve the Service, without any obligation to you.
13. Third-party services
The Service works with services run by others — for example YouVersion (Bible texts, sign-in and account linking), Google and Apple (sign-in and notifications), OpenAI (the AI assistant), third-party hosts of the images and videos shown in content (for example Unsplash, YouTube or Vimeo, or any image link an author used), and the App Store and Google Play (downloads). Their own terms and privacy policies apply when you use them.
We choose these services carefully, but we do not control them and are not responsible for them. The same applies to other websites we link to.
14. Privacy
Our Privacy Policy explains which personal data we process, why, for how long, who receives it and what your rights are.
Using a Bible, prayer and discipleship app can reveal your religious beliefs, which the law treats as a special category of personal data. We therefore process it only with your explicit consent, which you give separately when you sign up. You can withdraw it at any time by deleting your account or by writing to us at
info@oikosbible.com; withdrawing does not affect what was lawfully done before.
15. Availability and changes to the Service
We work to keep the Service running well, but as a free service we cannot promise that it will always be available, uninterrupted or free of errors. We may need to pause it for maintenance, for security, or for reasons outside our control.
We may change, add or remove features. If we remove an important feature or close the Service altogether, we will tell you in advance where reasonably possible, so that you can download your data first (in the app: Profile → Privacy → Download my data).
16. Liability
We provide the Service free of charge and "as is". Except where the law says otherwise, we give no guarantee that the Service suits a particular purpose, or that its content — including content written by other users and answers from the AI assistant — is complete, accurate or up to date.
To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, for loss caused by content from other users or by third-party services, or for events beyond our reasonable control.
Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for intent or gross negligence, for death or personal injury, for fraud, or for any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited by law. Nothing in these Terms affects the mandatory rights you have as a consumer.
You are responsible for the content you post and for how you use the Service, to the extent the law provides.
17. Suspension, termination and account deletion
You can stop using the Service at any time. You can delete your account in the app (Profile → Account → Delete account) or through
our account deletion page. Deletion removes your account and personal data from our live database immediately; groups you lead are deleted as well. Journeys and trainings you published stay available without your name, unless you ask us at
info@oikosbible.com to remove them as well — which you can do at any time. Backup copies exist only for disaster recovery and are kept for a limited period on their rotation cycle (for some backups up to two years); if a backup ever has to be restored, deletions made since are applied again.
Before deleting, you can download a copy of your data in the app (Profile → Privacy → Download my data).
We may suspend or close an account in the case of serious or repeated breaches of these Terms, where the law requires it, or to protect other users or the Service. Where reasonable, we warn you first and tell you why. You can contest our decision by writing to
info@oikosbible.com.
Provisions that by their nature continue after the agreement ends — such as the licence for published content, liability and governing law — remain in force.
18. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms, for example when we add features or when the law changes. The date at the top of this page shows the current version.
We will announce changes in the app or on this website. For material changes, the app will ask you to accept the new Terms before you continue; if you do not agree, you can delete your account and stop using the Service. Changes do not apply retroactively.
19. Governing law and disputes
These Terms are governed by the law of the Republic of Albania. Disputes are decided by the competent courts of Tirana.
If you are a consumer living in the European Union or the European Economic Area, you keep the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of your country of residence, and you may also bring proceedings before the courts of that country.
If you have a complaint, please write to us first at info@oikosbible.com
— most issues can be resolved quickly and informally.
20. Miscellaneous
Entire agreement — These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service.
Severability — If a provision of these Terms is found invalid or unenforceable, the rest remain in force.
No waiver — If we do not enforce a provision straight away, we do not give up the right to enforce it later.
Language versions — These Terms are available in Albanian, English, Italian and French. The version in your language applies to you. If anything in it is ambiguous, the interpretation most favourable to you as a consumer prevails.
21. Contact
For questions about these Terms, reports or complaints, write to us at info@oikosbible.com. This address is also our single point of contact under the EU Digital Services Act, for users as well as for authorities and the European Commission; you can write to us in Albanian, English, Italian or French.
