Privacy Policy

Mimbar (mimbar.ukuem.org) is a platform for publishing and listening to Islamic lessons from sheikhs and mosques in Zanzibar and Tanzania. It is sponsored by UKUEM and operated by Himma Technologies, Zanzibar, Tanzania. Questions about this policy can be sent to info@himatech.co.tz.

Listeners can browse and listen without an account. We do not ask listeners for personal information.

Publishers (sheikhs and mosques) who register give us:

• Name, email address, account type and mosque name, and a password (stored only as a secure hash).
• The lessons they upload: audio or video files, titles, categories, speaker names, descriptions and tags.
• Speaker photos, channel logos and background images used to make lesson thumbnails.
• Upload preferences, such as default privacy status, language and thumbnail style.

Payments and donations. If you subscribe to a plan or donate, we record the amount, currency, status and the payment provider's reference, and, where given, a donor name, email, message or phone number. Card and mobile-money details are entered with the payment provider, not with us.

Technical data. We use a sign-in cookie to keep publishers logged in, and your browser remembers your light or dark theme choice. We do not use advertising or third-party tracking cookies.

Publishers can connect their YouTube channel so that Mimbar can publish their lessons to it. Mimbar uses YouTube API Services. By connecting a channel you agree to the YouTube Terms of Service, and Google's handling of your data is described in the Google Privacy Policy.

When you connect, you grant access to manage your YouTube account and upload videos. We use this access only to:

• Read your channel's ID and name, to show which channel is connected.
• Upload the lessons you submit as videos to your own channel, with the title, description, tags and privacy status you choose.
• Set the thumbnail of those videos.
• Create playlists on your channel and add your lessons to them, to organise them by category.
• Read the processing status and the view, like and comment counts of videos uploaded through Mimbar, to show them on your dashboard and lesson pages.

We store your channel ID, channel name, an access token that lets us act on your behalf, and the IDs, links and statistics of videos uploaded through Mimbar. We do not read, change or delete any other videos, comments, subscriptions or data on your YouTube account.

Limited use. Mimbar's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. We do not sell YouTube or Google user data, do not use it for advertising, do not share it with anyone except as needed to provide the features above, and do not use it to train AI or machine-learning models.

Revoking access. You can remove Mimbar's access to your YouTube account at any time from your Google Account permissions page. After that we can no longer upload to or read from your channel. Videos already on YouTube stay there until you delete them on YouTube.

• To run your account, publish your lessons on Mimbar and YouTube, and generate their thumbnails.
• To show public lessons and publisher profiles on the site, so listeners can find them.
• To review new publisher accounts before they can publish.
• To process subscriptions and donations.
• To send account emails, such as approval notices and password messages.

We share only the data each service needs to do its job, and we do not sell personal data.

• Google / YouTube: to upload and manage your lessons on your channel.
• remove.bg and Hugging Face: speaker photos and thumbnail prompts are sent to them to remove photo backgrounds and generate thumbnail backgrounds.
• Stripe and Pesapal: to process card and mobile-money payments.
• Neon: hosts our database.
• Google (Gmail): delivers our account emails.

We may also disclose information if required by law.

Uploaded media is stored on our own server, and account data in our database. Connections are encrypted with HTTPS, and passwords are stored only as hashes. We keep your data while your account is active. When an account is deleted, we delete its profile, lessons, YouTube access token and stored YouTube data from our systems. Payment records may be kept longer where the law requires it.

• Update your profile and upload preferences from your account settings.
• Disconnect YouTube at any time, as described above.
• Ask for a copy of your data, a correction, or for your account and data to be deleted, by emailing info@himatech.co.tz from your account's email address. We respond within 30 days.

Publisher accounts are for adults and organisations. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

If we change this policy, we will update the date above. Significant changes will be announced on the site or by email to publishers.