For several years, the BibleGateway website has been my go to source for looking up verses, studying in preparation for preaching and putting links to verses I mention on this blog. You will notice there is no link in the previous paragraph. That is because, a few days ago, the website “went dark” at least for UK (and I think EU) customers. As promised, I’ve received a refund of what remains of the subscription fee I’d paid so they haven’t taken the money and run but I’m still down what had been an incredibly useful resource.

I’m not quite sure why this has happened. When I tried to look into it, some sources suggested it was down to EU data protection laws (the UK is still under the GDPR regulations) but I don’t think those have changed recently. Possibly someone realised that the service was keeping EU/UK data on US servers and that could be a problem. I also subscribe to various other US-based services but those might be large enough to maintain region specific user data servers.

Meanwhile, I need a different reference site – I think Bible Hub might step into the gap but I won’t go for a paid subscription just yet.