Privacy Policy

Who you are dealing with

The app, the server behind it and this website are run by Books Court, contactable at hello@bookscourt.com. Anything on this page — a question, a request for a copy of your data, a demand to be deleted — goes to that address.

Using the app without an account

You do not have to sign in. Without an account your shelves and journal are kept only on your iPhone, in the app’s own storage, and nothing you write in them reaches our server. Book search still goes through our server, and the app still sends crash reports and usage statistics — both described below.

Your account

Signing in uses Sign in with Apple, the only way to sign in. It creates an account on our server so your library survives a lost or replaced phone, and so you can use the parts of the app that involve other readers. Apple handles your password and Face ID; we never see either. From Apple we receive:

• A stable identifier Apple creates for you and this app. Your account is keyed to it, not to your email address.
• Your email address, if you choose to share it. Pick “Hide My Email” and we receive an Apple relay address instead, never your real one.
• Your name, the first time you sign in, if you choose to share it. It becomes your display name, which you can change at any time.

What you put in the app

While you are signed in, everything you record is synced to our server, so it is the same on every device you sign in on:

• Your shelves and rooms: their names, descriptions, order and decoration, and whether each shelf is private or public.
• Your books: title, author, genre, format, page count and the spine you designed.
• Your journal: reading status, start and finish dates, rereads, progress, favourites, ratings, tropes, spice level, summary, review and saved quotes.
• Your profile: display name, a handle (one is made up for you until you choose your own), bio, and an avatar colour or picture.
• Cover images and an avatar picture, if you add them from your photos or files. Only the picture you choose is uploaded.
• Your settings, reading goal, streaks, in-app balance and the decorations you own.

What other readers can see

Books Court is private by default. Every new shelf starts private, and a private shelf is seen by nobody but you. Some things are visible to other people, though, and you should know exactly which:

• Your profile. Any signed-in reader can find you by your handle and see your display name, handle, bio, avatar and follower counts — even if you have never made a shelf public.
• Public shelves. Make a shelf public and anyone using the app can browse it, including people who are not signed in. They see each book’s title, author, cover, genre, format, reading status, dates, ratings, tropes, spice level and summary.
• Activity on public shelves. Starting, finishing or adding a book on a public shelf, or making a shelf public, appears in the feed of the readers who follow you. Nothing on a private shelf ever appears there.
• Comments and likes. They are seen by anyone who can see the post they are on, and the reader you follow, like or reply to may get a notification with your name in it.

Your reviews, saved quotes, rereads, reading progress and favourites are never shown to anyone, not even on a public shelf. Make a shelf private again and its books disappear from other readers’ view and from the feed.

Blocking and reporting

You can block another reader, and the block is kept on our server so it holds on every device. You can also report a profile or a comment. A report sends us the reason you picked, anything you add, and a copy of what you reported, so it can be reviewed even if the original is changed or deleted. Content reported by several readers is hidden automatically.

Finding books

When you search for a book — by typing, or by scanning its barcode — the search text and your device’s language and region go to our server, which looks the book up in Open Library and, failing that, Google Books. Those services receive the search text and nothing about you. Searches are cached on our server with no record of who made them.

Covers from those catalogues are downloaded by your iPhone directly from Open Library and Google Books, so those two services see your IP address, as any website you visit does.

Camera, photos, imports and notifications

The app asks for access to these only when you use the feature that needs it.

• Camera: used only to read a book’s barcode. The recognition happens on your iPhone, and only the number it reads leaves it, as a search. No image is kept or sent.
• Photos: when you choose a cover or an avatar, iOS hands the app that one picture. The app has no access to the rest of your photo library.
• Goodreads import: the CSV file is read on your iPhone. The books in it are added to your library like any others, and synced if you are signed in.
• Reading reminders: scheduled on your iPhone, and never sent through our server.
• Push notifications, such as a new follower: these need your permission. If you give it, your device’s push token is stored on our server so Apple can deliver them. Signing out or deleting your account removes it.

Purchases

In-app purchases go through Apple, and we never see your card or any Apple payment details. Apple gives us a signed record of each purchase — a transaction number, the product, the dates, and whether it was refunded — which is tied to your account so your purchases can be restored on a new device.

Crash reports and usage statistics

The app uses Google Firebase for two things:

• Crashlytics. When the app crashes, a report goes to Google with what the app was doing, the device model, iOS version, app version and a random installation identifier, so the bug can be found and fixed.
• Analytics. Firebase’s standard automatic statistics: app opens, session length, first launch, in-app purchases, device model, iOS and app version, language, and an approximate country or region worked out from your IP address. They are tied to a random identifier for the installation, not to your name, email or account.

Neither uses your iPhone’s advertising identifier, neither is used for advertising, and neither is combined with data from other companies to follow you around. That is why the app never asks for permission to track you: it does not track you.

Server logs

Our server writes a line for each request it handles: the time, which feature was called, whether it worked, how long it took, and the internal identifier of the account that called it. It does not log the content you send, your email address or your name. The web server in front of it keeps standard access logs, which include IP addresses, to keep the service secure and stop abuse. Both are deleted after 60 days.

This website

bookscourt.com collects much less than the app:

• Your email address, if you join the waitlist — one field, nothing else. It is used to tell you when the beta opens, when the app launches, and occasionally what is being built. The unsubscribe link at the foot of every email takes you off the list in one click, with immediate effect.
• Anonymous traffic statistics: which pages are opened, which links are clicked, the rough region a visit came from and what kind of device it used. These are counted in aggregate and are never joined up with an email address.
• Cookies: none. The site sets no cookies and writes nothing to your browser’s storage. The shelf and spine-builder demos run entirely in your browser and send nothing anywhere.

Who else handles your data

These are the only companies that receive personal data from Books Court, and each receives only what it needs for the job listed:

• Apple — Sign in with Apple, App Store purchases and the delivery of push notifications.
• Google Firebase — crash reports and usage statistics from the app.
• Hetzner — runs the servers in the European Union that store your account, library, images and backups.
• Open Library (run by the Internet Archive) and Google Books — book search and cover images. They receive search text and, for covers, your IP address; never your account.
• Resend — stores the waitlist and delivers its email.
• Umami Cloud — the website’s traffic statistics. It is cookieless: nothing is written to your browser, and visitors are not fingerprinted or followed across other sites.
• Cloudflare — serves this website and carries a waitlist sign-up in transit.

Nothing is sold, rented, or handed to advertisers or data brokers. Data would go beyond this list only if the law required it, or to whoever took over Books Court if it were ever sold — and you would be told before that happened.

Why it is used, and on what basis

Data protection law asks for a legal reason behind each use. These are ours:

• To run the app you signed up for — your account, sync, public shelves, follows, comments and purchases. The basis is our agreement with you.
• To keep it working and safe — crash reports, usage statistics, server logs, blocks and reports. The basis is our legitimate interest in an app that works and is not abused, and you can object to it at any time.
• To send waitlist email and push notifications — only with your consent, which you can withdraw whenever you like.
• To keep purchase records — because tax and consumer law require it.

Where it goes

Your account, library, images and backups are stored with Hetzner in the European Union. Apple, Google, Resend, Umami and Cloudflare are based in the United States, so some of your data is processed outside the UK and the EEA. Those transfers rely on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the company is certified under it, and otherwise on the standard contractual clauses in its data-processing terms.

How long it is kept

Nothing is kept for longer than it is needed:

• Your account, library and journal: until you delete your account.
• Shelves and books you delete: they are removed from the app and from everyone else’s view at once. The server erases them for good 14 days later.
• Sign-in sessions: a session that goes unused expires after 90 days.
• Server and access logs: 60 days.
• Backups: taken daily and overwritten after 14 days, so a deleted account is gone from them within 14 days.
• Crash reports: 90 days at Google. Usage statistics: up to 14 months at Google.
• Purchase records: kept after your account is deleted, with the link to your account removed, for as long as tax law requires.
• Reports: kept after either account is deleted, with the link to both accounts removed, so that moderation decisions can be checked later.
• Your waitlist address: until you unsubscribe or ask for it to be removed.

Deleting your account

In the app, open Profile, then More, then Manage Account, and delete it there. Deletion is immediate and permanent: your profile, shelves, journal, images, follows, comments, likes, push tokens and sign-in sessions are erased from our server, and the library is removed from that iPhone. What is kept afterwards is listed above.

You can also stop using Sign in with Apple for Books Court from your Apple Account settings. That signs you out but does not delete the account; use the option in the app, or write to hello@bookscourt.com, for that. Without an account everything lives on your iPhone, and deleting the app deletes it.

What you can ask for

Wherever you live, write to hello@bookscourt.com and you can have any of the following. No particular form of words is needed, and a reply should reach you within thirty days.

• A copy of everything held about you, in a format you can take elsewhere.
• A correction of anything that is wrong — though most of it you can edit in the app yourself.
• Deletion of any of your data, or of your whole account.
• A restriction on how something is used, or an objection to it — including the usage statistics.
• Your consent withdrawn, without giving a reason.
• A complaint lodged with your national data-protection authority, if the answer you get is unsatisfactory.

If you live in California: Books Court does not sell your personal information or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, and nobody is treated differently for using a privacy right.

Security

Everything between the app and our server travels over encrypted connections. Your sign-in is kept in your iPhone’s Keychain, and the server stores only a one-way hash of it. Uploaded images sit in private storage and are shown to other readers only through links that expire after an hour. No system is perfectly secure, so if a breach ever affected your data you would be told, as would the regulator wherever the law requires it.

Age

Books Court is not meant for children, and you must be at least 16 to create an account or join the waitlist. If we learn that someone younger has an account, it is deleted. A parent who thinks this has happened can write to hello@bookscourt.com.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. If a change affects data you have already given us, you are told before it takes effect — in the app, or by email if you are on the waitlist.