Privacy Policy

This policy explains what information Booksum collects, how we use it, and the choices you have. By creating an account or using Booksum you agree to the practices described here.

Account & profile

• Sign-in: we support Google OAuth and email/password. We store your email address, the unique account ID, and any profile fields you fill in (username, display name, bio, avatar).
• Profile auto-creation: on first sign-in we create a profile row with a generated username so you can comment, vote, and rate right away.

What you create on Booksum

• Comments & replies on book pages — public, stored under your user ID.
• 5-star ratings — your individual rating is private; only the aggregate is shown publicly.
• Book nominations & votes for the Reader's Choice — your vote is private, your nominations are public.
• AI chat history per book — stored so you can resume a conversation. Messages are sent to the Lovable AI Gateway for inference.
• Notifications — in-app, email, and (optionally) browser push when someone replies to you or voting opens/closes.

Cookies, local storage & analytics

We use first-party local storage for your auth session and theme preference. We do not set advertising cookies. Aggregated, non-identifying usage analytics may be collected to understand which features work and which don't.

Third-party services

• Backend (database, auth, file storage, email queue) — Lovable Cloud, built on Supabase.
• Book metadata & covers — Google Books and Open Library.
• Community discussions — public posts from Reddit and Hacker News are fetched on demand and shown alongside our own comments.
• AI summaries & chat — Lovable AI Gateway.
• Email delivery — Lovable Emails (when you've opted in to email notifications).
• Web push — your browser's push service (Mozilla, Google, Apple) when you enable push notifications.

We do not sell your personal data.

Your rights & controls

• Edit your profile, avatar, and bio from Settings.
• Toggle email and push notifications per category from Settings → Notifications.
• Download a JSON export of everything tied to your account from Settings → Your data.
• Delete individual comments, ratings, votes, or your entire account at any time.

Children

Booksum is not directed at children under 13. If you believe a child has created an account, email us and we'll remove it.

Changes

We'll update the "Last updated" date above whenever this policy changes. Material changes will be flagged in-app before they take effect.

Contact

Questions, requests, or takedowns? Email josharclong@gmail.com.