Privacy Policy

Shelf is a lending library for your circle of friends: you catalog books and games, lend them to people you trust, and track who has what. This page explains what information Shelf collects, why, and what control you have over it.

Information we collect

Account information. Your name, email address, and password (stored as a salted hash, never in plain text) when you sign up, or your name, email, and profile photo from Google if you sign up with Google instead.

Your library. The books and games you add — titles, authors or designers, cover images, condition notes, and any details you enter by hand or that we fetch on your behalf from Open Library (books) or BoardGameGeek (board games) when you search or scan a barcode/cover.

Your social graph and activity. Friend connections and requests, group membership, lending requests and history, wishlist entries, and lender feedback — the records needed to show who has what, who's waiting on what, and who's a reliable lender.

Billing information. If you upgrade to a paid tier, payment is handled entirely by Stripe — Shelf never sees or stores your card details. We keep only your Stripe customer and subscription IDs, so we know which tier your account is on.

Notifications. If you enable push notifications, your browser's push subscription endpoint. If you don't disable email notifications, your address is used to send them (see "Email" below).

Support and feedback. If you use the "Send Feedback" tool, the message you write (and an optional screenshot) — this goes to our error-tracking provider, Sentry, not into Shelf's own database.

Device and session information. Standard technical data needed to keep you signed in and to detect abuse: session tokens (stored in a cookie), approximate device/browser info, and timestamps for your active sessions, which you can review and revoke individually from Settings.

Photos you scan. If you use the experimental "Scan a shelf" tool, the photo you pick is sent to Cloudflare's Workers AI service to read the titles on it, and the titles come back to you. Shelf does not store the photo. Avoid including people or anything private in the frame.

When you were last active. We keep the time you last used Shelf, updated at most every few minutes. Your friends (and only your friends) see a rough label such as "Active today" or "Active this week" on your profile and in their friends list, never the exact time. You can switch this off at any time under Settings → Privacy. Admins who support the service can see the exact time.

How you use Shelf. To learn which features work and where people get stuck, we record pseudonymous usage events, for example that an item was added by barcode scan, that a lending request was accepted, or whether Shelf was opened as an installed app. Each event is tied to a one-way, keyed hash of your account ID (not your name, email, or any of your content), is kept in our own Cloudflare account, and is deleted automatically after about three months. It is never sold or shared and is not used for advertising.

How we use it

To run the app: show your shelf to friends, match wishlists when an item comes back in or gets added, calculate lender scores, enforce tier limits, and send the transactional emails and push notifications you'd expect (lending requests, due-date reminders, friend requests). We don't use your data for advertising, and we don't run third-party analytics or ad-tracking scripts on Shelf.

Who we share it with

We don't sell your data. We share it only with the service providers that make Shelf work, each only for that purpose:

• Turso and Cloudflare — host the database and run the app.
• Resend — sends transactional email (verification, password reset, notifications).
• Stripe — processes payments for paid tiers.
• Sentry — error tracking and the in-app feedback tool.
• Google — only if you choose "Sign in with Google."
• Open Library and BoardGameGeek — public book/game metadata lookups when you search or scan; we send your search terms or scanned identifiers, not your personal information.

And with the people you choose to connect with: your friends and group members see the parts of your library and activity the app is designed to show them. Shelf itself is never a party to a loan — lending happens directly between you and your friends, and we just keep the record straight.

Your controls

From Settings, you can export your data (including your lending history), change or remove your email notification preferences, disable push notifications, revoke individual sign-in sessions, and permanently delete your account — which removes your library items, friend connections, lending history, and every other record tied to it. Account deletion can't be undone.

Data retention

We keep your information for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we delete the associated data promptly, except where we're required to keep records (for example, billing records we're legally obligated to retain).

Children's privacy

Shelf isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we'll remove it.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as Shelf changes. If a change is material, we'll let you know before it takes effect — by email or an in-app notice.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data? Reach us atdev@thomasheller.net.