Privacy

• Your account: your name, email address, profile icon and settings. Your password is stored only as a one-way hash, so nobody can read it.
• Your shelf: the books you add and their details, your want-to-read list, reader notes and hearts, and when you marked books read.
• Between you and friends: who your friends are, friend and borrow requests, loans and due dates, places in line, and anyone you share a shelf with.
• People you lend to by name: just the name you type for someone who isn't on Stacks, like a neighbor or a student, and what they've borrowed. Stacks never contacts them.
• Messages you send: feedback, with the page you sent it from.
• Stacks Plus: Stripe's reference numbers for you and your subscription, its status, and when it renews or ends. Your card details go straight to Stripe; Stacks never sees them.
• Cookies: one to keep you signed in, and two that remember you've dismissed a banner. Nothing for tracking.

• Your friends see your shelf, which of your books are on loan, and the notes you leave on books they can see.
• Anyone you share a shelf with sees and manages the shelf with you, and the names you lend to; your notes and friends stay your own.
• People you lend to by name see nothing, since they have no account, and nobody else sees their names.
• Anyone with your public link sees your name and the books on your shelf. You can turn the link off in Settings.
• Stacks' admin can see account details to help with problems and keep the service running, and doesn't look further than that needs.

These services handle some of your information for Stacks, and only for that:

• Fly.io runs the server, in the United States.
• Cloudflare R2 stores backups of the database, kept for 30 days.
• Resend sends the emails.
• Stripe takes payments for Stacks Plus.
• Open Library supplies book details and covers. Your searches are sent to it from the Stacks server, not your browser, and covers come from Stacks' own copy.

Stacks emails you to confirm your address, when a friend asks to borrow a book, when a book you lent by name is late, and with a weekly roundup. Each email has a link at the bottom to stop that kind, and you can change them in Settings. Account emails, like password resets, always come through. If you lend a book to someone by their email address, Stacks emails them about that loan, with a link to see it and join if they like.

You can download your shelf as a spreadsheet from Settings, and change your details there any time. To delete your account and everything in it, use Delete account at the bottom of Settings; it also cancels any subscription. Deleted data is gone from the live site straight away and from backups within 30 days. That includes the names you lend to, unless someone you share a shelf with still uses them. Feedback you've sent is kept without your name attached. Demo accounts delete themselves after a day.

To delete one name you lend to, and its loans, remove it from your list on the check-out desk.

Wherever you live, you can ask what Stacks keeps about you, have it corrected, or have it deleted.

Stacks accounts aren't for anyone under 13. If you lend to children by name, as a teacher might, only the names you type are kept, they're never contacted, and you can remove them any time. First names or initials work fine.

If this policy changes in a way that matters, you'll hear about it by email or on the site first. The terms of using Stacks are here. Questions? Send a note.