Bookworm Privacy Policy

Last updated: May 27, 2026

Bookworm is a social reading app. We collect the information needed to create your account, help you track books, connect with friends, and personalize recommendations. We do not sell your personal information.

Who We Are

This Privacy Policy explains how Bookworm, operated by Knechtions, collects, uses, and protects information when you use the Bookworm mobile app and related services.

Information We Collect

Depending on how you use Bookworm, we may collect:

• Account information: your email address, Firebase user ID, display name, username, and optional profile photo URL.
• Reading activity: books you queue, read, finish, do not finish, save, skip, rate, or review.
• Social activity: friend requests, followers/following relationships, feed posts, comments, and wiggles.
• Recommendation signals: genres, ratings, saves, finishes, skips, comments, wiggles, and similar app interactions used to personalize book recommendations.
• Search activity: book search queries and recommendation requests used to return results and improve app functionality.
• Contact matching information: if you grant contacts permission, Bookworm reads contact email addresses from your device to help find friends who already use Bookworm.
• Technical information: basic logs, authentication tokens, device/app diagnostics, and security/rate-limit events needed to operate, protect, and debug the service.

Phone Numbers

The current Bookworm app does not ask for or collect phone numbers for account setup or contact matching. Contact matching is based on email addresses from contacts only, and only after you grant permission.

Contacts

Contact access is optional. If you allow contact access, Bookworm checks contact email addresses against existing Bookworm accounts so you can find friends. We use this information to return friend matches and do not sell your contacts.

How We Use Information

We use information to:

• create and secure your account;
• maintain your library, reviews, ratings, and reading stats;
• show social feed activity and friend relationships;
• personalize book recommendations and explore results;
• return book search results from book data providers;
• prevent spam, abuse, and unauthorized access;
• debug, maintain, and improve Bookworm.

Public and Social Information

Your display name, username, profile photo, public profile, friend/follower counts, public shelf views, feed activity, comments, wiggles, ratings, and reviews may be visible to other signed-in Bookworm users depending on the feature and privacy controls available in the app.

Third-Party Services

Bookworm uses third-party services to operate the app, including:

• Firebase and Google Cloud: authentication, database, backend functions, storage of app data, security, and infrastructure.
• Google Books or other book data providers: book search, metadata, covers, and popularity/relevance signals.
• Gemini or other AI services: recommendation generation based on your reading and preference signals.
• Amazon: purchase links may route to Amazon using an affiliate tag. Purchases happen on Amazon and are subject to Amazon's own policies.
• Payment or donation providers: support/donation links may open an external provider such as PayPal or Venmo, subject to that provider's policies.

Data Sharing

We do not sell your personal information. We may share information with service providers that help us operate Bookworm, when required by law, to protect users or the service, or as part of a business transfer such as a merger or acquisition.

Data Retention and Deletion

We keep account and app data for as long as needed to provide Bookworm. You can delete your account in the app from the Account screen. Account deletion is designed to remove or anonymize your profile, library, recommendation events, reviews, comments, feed activity, and friend graph. Some limited records may remain temporarily in backups, logs, or security systems where required for operations, fraud prevention, legal compliance, or dispute resolution.

Your Choices

• You can choose whether to grant contacts permission.
• You can update your display name, username, and profile photo URL in the app.
• You can choose whether some completed-book activity is published to the feed where supported.
• You can delete your account from the Account screen.

Security

We use Firebase Authentication, Firestore security rules, backend authorization checks, rate limits, and other safeguards to protect Bookworm. No system is perfect, but we work to keep access limited to the people and systems that need it.

Children

Bookworm is not intended for children under 13. If you believe a child has provided personal information to Bookworm, please contact us so we can take appropriate action.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as Bookworm changes. When we do, we will update the date at the top of this page.

Contact

Questions about this Privacy Policy can be sent to privacy@bookwormproject.com.