Privacy Policy for Shelf Care: Book Club with Friends

Effective Date: February 18, 2026

Welcome to Shelf Care: Book Club with Friends ("Shelf Care," "we," "us," or "our"). We are committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and safeguard your information when you use our mobile application.

1. Information We Collect

To provide you with a functional and social book club experience, we collect the following types of information:

• Account Data: When you create an account, we collect your email address, password, username, and profile picture.
• User-Generated Content: We store the content you create within the app, including your personal book lists, book reviews, club memberships, and messages sent within group chats.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use your information solely to provide and improve the Shelf Care experience:

• To authenticate your account and keep it secure.
• To display your profile and reading preferences to your book club members.
• To facilitate real-time chat and discussions within your clubs.

3. Third-Party Services

To operate the app securely and efficiently, we use trusted third-party service providers. These providers only process your data based on our instructions:

• Google/Firebase: We use Firebase for secure user authentication, database hosting (to store your book lists and chats), and web hosting.
• Railway: We use Railway to host our backend services, which securely process actions like your account deletion requests.

4. Data Retention and Account Deletion

You have the right to request the deletion of your account and personal data at any time. We provide two ways to do this:

• In-App: Navigate to Profile > Update Profile > Delete Account.
• Web Link: Visit https://delete.bookclub.massita.com/delete.html to request deletion from any web browser.

The Deletion Process (30-Day Grace Period):

When you request account deletion, your account is immediately deactivated, and you will be logged out. Your profile will no longer be visible to other users. We hold your data in a "soft delete" state for 30 days in case the deletion was accidental or unauthorized. You can restore your account by logging back in using the mobile app during this 30-day window.

Permanent Deletion and Anonymization:

After the 30-day grace period, your account undergoes a permanent hard delete:

• Deleted Data: Your personally identifiable information (PII)—including your email address, password, username, profile picture, and private reading lists—is permanently wiped from our databases.
• Anonymized Data (Group Chats): To preserve the flow of conversation for other members in your book clubs, your group chat messages and public book reviews are not deleted. Instead, they are permanently anonymized. Your name, email, and profile picture will be removed and replaced with a generic "Deleted User" label.

Note on manual sharing: If you manually typed personal information (such as your phone number or email address) directly into the text of a chat message, that specific text will remain visible as part of the anonymized message. Please refrain from sharing sensitive personal information in group chats.

5. Security

We use industry-standard encryption to protect your data in transit and at rest. While we implement robust security measures, no method of transmission over the internet or electronic storage is 100% secure.

6. Contact Us

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or how your data is handled, please contact us at:

shelfcare@massita.com