Privacy
This policy explains what information BooksWhale collects, why it is used, and how it supports accounts, membership, claims, reading access, contributions, and platform operations.
Effective date: June 11, 2026
When you create an account, BooksWhale may collect your email address, name, password hash, and basic account activity. BooksWhale never stores your plain-text password.
If you submit requests, feedback, corrections, manuscripts, translation suggestions, or other contributions, BooksWhale stores the information needed to review, manage, reward, and publish those submissions.
If you use Google sign-in, BooksWhale receives basic verified profile information such as email, name, and Google account identifier. BooksWhale does not request Gmail, Drive, contacts, calendars, or similar Google data for reader sign-in.
Payments and billing are handled by Stripe. BooksWhale receives payment status and identifiers needed to activate or manage membership, but does not store full credit card numbers.
BooksWhale uses cookies for account sessions, administrator sessions, Google OAuth state protection, and Bookshelf storage.
BooksWhale may collect limited technical and usage information such as page visits, search behavior, claim activity, downloads, errors, and operational logs to improve reliability and catalog quality.
BooksWhale may share limited data with service providers needed to operate the platform, such as hosting, database, storage, payment processing, analytics, email delivery, and security services. BooksWhale does not sell reader personal information.
You may contact BooksWhale for account assistance, correction of inaccurate account information, or deletion where legally and operationally possible. Some records may be retained for rights, audit, anti-abuse, or operational reasons.