Privacy Policy

Introduction

AllMyBooks ("we", "our", or "us") respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy explains how we collect, use, and safeguard your information when you use our service.

Information We Collect

We collect the following types of information:

• Account Information: Email address, name, and profile picture when you create an account or sign in with a social provider.
• Library Data: Books you add to your library, including ISBNs, titles, authors, and any notes or photos you upload.
• Shared Catalogue: The details of a book (title, authors, ISBN and the like) are kept in our shared catalogue so that everyone’s scans and searches find it, and they stay there permanently: removing a book from your library ends only your library’s relationship with it. A photo you upload that an administrator approves for public display becomes part of that catalogue too, and it stays public when you remove the book, when you remove the photo from your own photos, and when you delete your account. If a public photo must come down, ask us through our contact form. Which books you own, your notes and your library membership are never part of the shared catalogue.
• Usage Data: Pages visited, counted without linking them to your account. We also keep a record, linked to your account, of:
  • certain actions your account takes: that a book was added and by which method (camera, barcode scanner, typed, search and so on), that a shelf was scanned and how many spines were read and matched, that an import ran and which app the file came from with its row counts, that an export was downloaded and in which format, that a list was printed, and that a book’s details editor was opened, saved or closed, with how many topics were added or removed and how many were picked from suggestions (counts only, never the topics themselves);
  • which Library tools and saved views were opened, and whether from the tools menu, a pinned button or the saved-views bar, but never a view’s name, its filters or anything the page showed;
  • which days your account was active;
  • where your account first came from: whether your first visit arrived from a search engine, a social network, a link on another site or a tagged campaign or email link, the name of the site that sent you, the campaign tags in that link, and which kind of page you first landed on. Your browser keeps this note on your device (not in a cookie) until you create an account, then sends it once. It is not collected when your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track.

  These records contain no book titles, authors, ISBNs, search terms, file names or anything you typed. They are used only by us to decide what to build, are never shared or sold, and are readable only by site administrators. The records of actions, tools, views and active days are kept for 13 months and then reduced to daily totals that identify no account; the note of where your account came from stays with your account. All of them are deleted when you delete your account. Because this is first-party service analytics and not sale or sharing, a Global Privacy Control signal does not switch off the records of actions, tools, views and active days; it does switch off page-visit counting and the note of where you came from.

• Device Information: Browser type, device type, and IP address for security and analytics purposes.

How We Use Your Information

We use your information to:

• Provide and maintain our service
• Store and manage your book library
• Improve and personalize your experience
• Communicate with you about your account or our service
• Ensure the security of our service

Data Storage and Security

Your data is stored securely on servers with industry-standard encryption. We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your personal data against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction.

The Mobile App

The AllMyBooks mobile app talks to the same service and account as the website. A few practices are specific to the app:

• No advertising or tracking: The app contains no advertising or tracking software and no third-party analytics, and does not read device identifiers or your location. Our own server keeps the same action record for the app as for the website (see Usage Data above): which feature was used, never what is in your library.
• Camera and photos: The camera is used only when you choose to scan a book barcode, photograph a book, or scan a shelf, and photo-library access only when you attach an existing photo. Photos you attach are uploaded to our image storage as part of your library.
• Shelf photographs: Scanning a shelf reads the spines on your own device and deletes the photograph. It is not uploaded unless your library’s owner has turned on keeping shelf photographs, which is off by default. A kept photograph is stored separately from every other image in the product, has no public web address, and is readable only by your library’s owners and by whoever took it. Sending a kept photograph to a vision service to be re-read is a further, separate setting that is also off by default and cannot be enabled without the first. Both can be turned off, and kept photographs can be deleted, under Library setup.
• On-device storage: To work offline, the app keeps a copy of your library and any queued scans on your device. Your sign-in token is also stored on the device; it is protected by the operating system's app sandbox but is not additionally encrypted at rest.
• Account deletion: You can permanently delete your account and data directly in the app under Settings, or request deletion through our contact form. Book details and approved public photos in the shared catalogue (see Shared Catalogue above) are not part of your account and are kept. In a library you share with others, the books, shelves, photos and wish-list entries belong to that library and stay with its other members, with your name removed from them. A book you had borrowed stays on the lender’s records as lent to your display name, never your email address, so they still know where it is, and a book club you own passes to its longest-standing member.

Third-Party Services

We use third-party services for authentication (social login providers) and may fetch book information from external APIs like OpenLibrary. These services have their own privacy policies, and we encourage you to review them.

Your Rights

You have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you
• Request correction of inaccurate data
• Request deletion of your account and data
• Export your library data
• Withdraw consent for data processing

Cookies

We use essential cookies to maintain your session and remember your preferences. We do not use tracking cookies for advertising purposes.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify you of any significant changes by posting the new policy on this page and updating the "Last updated" date.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our data practices, please contact us through our contact form.