An anonymous prayer request

An anonymous prayer request, and what anonymous really means

You can ask for prayer here without an account, without an email, and with your name kept from the believers who read it. This page says exactly what stays hidden, what does not, and where the limits are, because a promise of privacy is only worth what it is true.

What stays private

• Your name. Tick "keep my name from the believers" and they read only that someone asked. Leave the name box empty and there is no name to keep.
• Your identity. With no account and no email there is nothing that connects the request to you. The page is reached only by your private link.
• Your words, from the public. They are never in a web address, a notification, a search result or a public page.
• Your link. It is stored only as a one way hash, so it cannot be looked up, and a stolen copy of the database does not contain it.

What anonymous cannot hide

Anything you write in your own words can be read by the believers who are offered your chair. If you write your full name, your employer, a street, a phone number or a name that identifies someone else, those words are in front of up to twelve strangers and the stewards. The form refuses web links and long numbers for this reason, and it is better to leave identifying details out. Prayer does not need them.

The stewards who keep the house safe can read a request that is held or reported. That is how spam, abuse and danger are caught, and it is the only way a person other than the believers can see your words.

To limit abuse, a salted daily hash of the network address you used is kept next to the request, only so that one person cannot open dozens of chairs. The address itself is not kept. If you use a private network, a shared network or a public computer, it is as anonymous to us as it is to anyone.

If your words speak of danger, we will not send them to believers until you say you are safe, and if you do say so, a steward is told that a request needs a gentle look, with no words in the alert. Your safety matters more than our promise of silence.

Why some people choose to be anonymous

There are real reasons. A person may be asking about an addiction, a marriage, an abortion, a diagnosis, a fear for a child, a doubt about their own faith, or a sin that they cannot say to anyone who knows them. A person may be a pastor, a leader or a teacher who is allowed to need prayer and rarely feels able to say so. A person may live somewhere where being known as a Christian is dangerous. None of these needs to be explained here.

Anonymity here is also a kindness to the believers who pray. They are praying for a person, not evaluating one.

How to take your request back

Open your private page and choose to take your request back. Your words, your name and any email are removed from the page and from what believers can see. What stays is only the fact that a request once existed, so the counts that keep the house honest are not changed by it.

What happens after you ask

1. A chair opens. The family offers it to up to six believers who chose, in their settings, to pray for a stranger this week. The first three who say "I will pray" take it. If it is not taken within 45 minutes it is offered to six more, and never beyond that.
2. You get a private link. It is the only key to your page. It is stored only as a one way hash, so we cannot read it back to you, and nobody else has it. Keep it, or save the page.
3. Your page tells you the truth. It says waiting, or it says how many are praying (first names only if each believer allowed theirs), and it shows any short line they left. If nobody has taken your chair in 20 minutes, a person who looks after this is told, and your page says so.
4. We come back to ask how you are. On day 3 and on day 7 your page holds one gentle question. If you gave an account or an email and letters are switched on, we tell you it is waiting. It never asks more than twice, and then it is silent.
5. After you have been prayed for, a door. Only then, and never required: a free account that keeps your request, a church near you, someone who will say hello. If something good happened you may tell the family; a steward reads it before anyone else does.

Questions people ask

Can I really use it without giving my name?

Yes. The name box is optional, and you can also tick the box that keeps any name you did give from the believers. You are always given a private link, and that link is how you come back.

What do the believers see?

Your words, the language you wrote in, and either your first name or just that someone asked. They never see an email, a link, an address or anything about the device you used.

Can anyone trace me?

We do not keep your network address, only a salted one way hash of it for rate limiting. We cannot tell you, or anyone else, who you are. A court order cannot produce what we do not hold, but your own words are yours to be careful with.

Do I lose the private link if I clear my browser?

The link is a web address. If you saved it, you can open it again anywhere. If you did not, and you opened it once while signed in to your free account, the account finds your latest request again. Without either, we cannot recover it, by design, and you can ask again.

What if nobody takes my chair?

Your page says that it is waiting, and does not pretend otherwise. After 20 minutes a person who looks after the Open Chair is told, and your page says so only when that really happened. After about two weeks an untaken chair closes, and your page says so and offers to ask again. If you need a person now, the watch at living-bread.org/a-person finds one.

Will God answer?

We cannot promise outcomes and we will not speak as God. What we can do is put your request in front of Christians who have agreed to pray for you, tell you honestly who has, and ask you later how you are.