Privacy
bookanear collects what it needs to match books, and nothing else.
What we keep
Your email address, so you can sign in. A username you choose. The books you list, and the books you want. The town you pick, chosen from a public list of US places. Not your address, and not a coordinate.
What other people see
Your username, your town, and the books you're offering. That's all. Your email address is never shown to anyone.
Your reading list is private
It is not readable by other members — not through the site, not through the API. Matching runs inside the database and returns only the books that actually matched, never the list itself.
Where you are
Distance is measured between towns, not from where you are. You pick a town — there are sixty-five thousand of them, villages included — and every distance the site shows is that town to another one, given as a range rather than a number. If you use “near me”, your browser's coordinate is rounded, sent once to work out which town you are in, and not written down. If you gave us a coordinate before we worked this way, nothing reads it and you can delete it from your account page.
Shelf photographs
A photo you scan is read once and discarded. It is never stored. Photos you deliberately attach to a listing are stored, and deleted with the listing.
Who else is involved
Supabase stores the database. Open Library and Google Books answer book lookups — they receive a title or an ISBN, never anything about you. OpenAI reads shelf photographs and listing notes for moderation. Resend delivers email. Vercel serves the site.
Deleting your account
Email us and it goes, along with your listings, your reading list and your messages.