What Anash keeps, and where

Updated October 22, 2026

Anash runs a shul’s week: its davening times, its people, its posters, screens, emails and texts. This page says what it stores to do that, who can see it, and which outside services are involved.

Each shul’s information is its own

Every shul on Anash has a database of its own, apart from every other shul’s. What a shul puts in (its davening times, its people and how to reach them, yahrzeits, posters, the emails and texts it sends) is seen by the people that shul lets sign in.

The people who run Anash can see, for each shul, its name and address, the names and emails of the people who sign in to it, how many contacts and posters it has, and the list of emails it sent, so they can help when something goes wrong. When a shul needs help, they can also sign in to its dashboard; each time is written down, and the dashboard shows a band saying so. That is the access the Terms of Service describe, to the shul’s Anash account only.

When a shul signs up, Anash keeps the name, email and cell phone of the person who signed it up, to reach them about the shul’s account, and the date the shul agreed to the terms, which version, and the internet address it came from. Signing up on the website, the email address is confirmed first: Anash emails it a link, and nothing is set up until the link is used.

Passwords and signing in

A password is never stored as written. Anash keeps only a one-way scrambled form of it (scrypt, with a salt of its own), which can check a password but can’t be turned back into one. Nobody at Anash can read your password.

You can also sign in, or sign up, with Google. Anash asks Google only for your Google account’s email address, which Google has checked, and Google’s number for the account, which tells one Google account from another. For an address on Google Workspace, Google also says which domain it’s for; Anash looks at that only to know whether Google runs the address. Anash uses these only to find you on your shul’s list of people who sign in (or, signing up, as your email), and keeps only the Google account’s number and when you last signed in that way. A Google account whose address isn’t on a shul’s list can’t get in to that shul.

An address that isn’t Gmail and isn’t on Google Workspace can be on a Google account made by someone who had the address before. So the first time it’s used to sign in with Google, Anash emails a link to the address, and it finishes signing in only in the browser that asked; from then on only that Google account signs in as you. Choosing a new password from a link emailed to you unlinks it, and it’s confirmed by email again the next time.

Signing in sets a cookie that keeps you signed in on that shul’s address for 30 days. Keys a shul pastes in to connect its own services (an email sender, texting, Claude) are kept encrypted.

Google account information (Gmail)

When a shul connects Gmail, Google asks the person connecting it to allow two things: to see the Gmail’s email address, and to send email from it. That is all Anash asks for. It can’t read, see, search, delete or change anything in the Gmail: not its inbox, its sent mail, its contacts or its settings.

What Anash keeps: the Gmail’s address, to show which account is connected and to put it on the emails, and the permission Google gives, encrypted. Nothing from inside the Gmail is ever read or kept.
How it’s used: only to send the emails the shul writes in its own dashboard, to the contacts it chooses, when someone at the shul sends them or schedules them. Nothing else is ever sent.
Who sees it: it isn’t shared with anyone, sold, or used for ads. The people who run Anash see only which address a shul connected.
Taking it back: Disconnect in the dashboard (Settings › Connectors › Gmail) deletes it from Anash and takes the permission back at Google. Removing a shul from Anash does the same, at once. It can also be removed any time from the Google account, under Security › Third-party apps.

Anash’s use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Google user data is not used to develop, improve or train any AI or machine-learning model, and isn’t given to anyone who would.

How it’s protected

Encrypted on the way: every page of Anash and every shul’s dashboard is served only over HTTPS (TLS), and browsers are told to use nothing else (HSTS). Anash reaches Google and the other services it uses over HTTPS too.
Encrypted where it’s kept: the Gmail permission Google gives, and every key a shul pastes in to connect a service, are encrypted with AES-256-GCM before they’re stored. Each shul’s are locked with a key of its own, made from a master key kept apart from the data, so a copy of the data alone can’t open them.
Kept apart: each shul’s information is in a database of its own, and one shul’s people can’t reach another shul’s.
Only the right people: a shul’s dashboard opens only for the people the shul lets sign in. Passwords are kept only as scrypt hashes, and sign-in sessions and emailed links only as hashes too, so the stored data can’t be used to sign in. Repeated wrong passwords are slowed, then turned away.
Inside Anash: each person who runs Anash has only the access their role needs, and every time one of them signs in to a shul’s dashboard to help, it’s written down and the dashboard shows it. The Gmail permission itself is never shown to anyone, them included.
Least access: from Gmail, Anash asks only for permission to send, never to read.
Checked: Anash’s code goes through security reviews, and its tests run before every update goes live.

Cookies

The sign-in cookie above, on each shul’s own address.
One that remembers which shuls this browser signed in to (their addresses on Anash, up to three), for a year, so the sign-in page on anash.app can offer them.
While you sign in or sign up with Google: short-lived ones that tie Google’s answer to your browser and hold the address Google gave, then go away: ten minutes at most, thirty while a sign-up form is open, and an hour while a link emailed to confirm it’s you is waiting.

Nothing else: there are no ads on Anash, and no analytics or tracking on its pages.

How long it’s kept

A shul’s information: for as long as the shul is on Anash. The people it lets sign in can change or delete what’s in it.
When a shul is removed from Anash: at once, its address stops answering, nobody can sign in, and its Gmail access (if it connected Gmail) is taken back at Google. Its information is set aside for 30 days, in case removing it was a mistake, and then erased.
A sign-up whose email isn’t confirmed: forgotten after a day, with everything typed into it.
A dashboard’s log of the emails it sent (to whom, and whether each went): the last 500. And for each blast, who it went to and whether each one went, for as long as the blast is in the dashboard.
Anash’s own record of what happened (sign-ups, changes made by the people who run Anash, errors): 90 days.
Signing in: the sign-in cookie lasts 30 days; the one that remembers this browser’s shuls, a year. A Google account linked to you is kept as its number until a new password is chosen from an emailed link, or you’re taken off the shul’s list.
Emails to support and tickets sent from a dashboard are kept with Anash’s own records, so a question can be followed up.

Outside services, and what they see

Resend: Sends Anash’s own emails: the link to confirm a sign-up’s email, word that a shul is ready, invitations, password links and links to confirm signing in with Google, and notes to the people who sign in to a shul’s dashboard (a blast that couldn’t go, say). It sees who each email goes to and what it says. A shul’s blasts and letters to its people never go out from Anash’s own sender: they go from the shul’s own Gmail or its own Resend account, whichever it connects. A shul with its own Resend account sends its dashboard’s emails through it too.
Connext: Sends text messages, if a shul connects its own Connext account. It sees the numbers and the message.
US Census Bureau and OpenStreetMap: The shul’s street address is sent to the Census Bureau’s address finder (and to OpenStreetMap if the Census doesn’t find it), to work out where the shul is for its zmanim.
Google Maps: As a street address is typed on the sign-up page or in a shul’s settings, what’s typed so far is sent to Google’s Places service, through Anash’s server, for suggestions; the one picked is looked up there for the full address. Nothing else goes with it.
Gmail: If a shul connects a Gmail account, Anash sends that shul’s blasts from it, when someone at the shul presses Send (or at the time they set): one email, to the Gmail’s own address, with the shul’s contacts in Bcc. Gmail sees who it goes to and what it says, as with any email sent from it.
Google Weather: The shul’s location, for the weather on its wall screen.
Claude, from Anthropic: A question asked in Help (with Ask) is sent there, with the Anash guide, to be answered; nothing else about the shul goes with it. If Anash has no key of its own for that, the shul’s own key (Settings › Connectors) is used.