Privacy Policy

In short

• Sprawl doesn't sell your data, show ads, or use advertising or analytics cookies.
• Your profile is public unless you turn off Public Profile in Settings.
• Posts, reviews and charts from public profiles can be seen by anyone, including on book pages, Sprawl's homepage, the Charts page and each review's and chart's own page.
• You can delete your account yourself, right away: in Settings (on the website or in the app) or at sprawlprojects.com/delete-account. For a copy of your data, email sprawlprojects.help@gmail.com.

What Sprawl collects

• Your account: username, email address and password (stored only as a one-way hash, never readable). If you sign in with Google: your name, email address, profile photo and Google account ID.
• Your profile and settings: what you add, like a display name, photo, bio, ZIP code and social links, and your settings.
• Your library and reading: the books you add and what you record about them (status, ratings, reviews, notes, dates), your shelves, reading plans, goals and reading logs, and anything you import.
• What you do with other readers: posts, comments, likes, follows, friends, blocks, messages, book clubs, loans, cover suggestions and notifications.
• Photos you upload: profile, post, stack and club photos, and a book photo from a scan when no catalog cover is found.
• Reports you send: what you reported, why and the note you add, if any, plus the urgency label and short note an AI model adds for the admins.
• If you use the Android app: a push token for your phone, so Sprawl can send it your notifications, and which kinds of notifications you turned off.
• Behind the scenes: when you last visited, how many AI photo scans you've used today, the books Pick my next read last chose for you (with its reasons) and how many times you used it each day (days older than a week are cleared the next time you use it, and all of it goes when you delete your account), whose shared profile you joined from, short-lived codes for password resets, email changes and account deletion links, and short-lived sign-in attempt counters.

How it's used

To run Sprawl: show you your library, connect you with other readers, send the emails you ask for (like a password reset), and keep accounts safe. Sprawl also counts things across all readers, like sign-ups, without identifying anyone. Your information is never sold or used for ads.

Who can see what

• If your profile is public, anyone with the link can see your name, username, photo, bio, social links, library (titles, covers, status and ratings), shelves that aren't private, favorites, and reading stats (unless you hide them in Settings). Link previews on other sites show your name, photo and a short summary.
• Your posts and reviews about books can be seen by anyone, signed in or not, with your name, username and photo, including on those books' pages and on Sprawl's homepage. The homepage may also suggest your library to other readers, with how many books and reviews you have and a few recent covers. Photos in posts, comments and who liked a post aren't shown there.
• Each review you post to Discover from a public profile has a page of its own, showing the book, your rating, your words, your name and username, and anyone can open it. Share on your review gives you its link and a picture card of it. If your profile is private, your reviews have no page or link: you can still save the picture and post it yourself.
• Your charts (the grids of covers and alignment charts you make) follow your profile. From a public profile, each chart with a book has a page of its own, showing its title, the books in it, your name and username, and anyone with the link can open it and make a copy for themselves; charts with 4 books or more may also appear on Sprawl's Charts page. Readers signed in there see which of its books they've read, never which you have. If your profile is private, your charts have no page or link. Every chart image carries sprawlprojects.com/charts, and your @username only when that chart's image shows it: unless you choose otherwise for a chart, it's shown while your profile is public and left off while it's private.
• Search engines may list Sprawl's homepage, the Charts page and book pages, including the reviews on them, each public review's own page, and public charts' pages with 9 books or more. Sprawl asks search engines not to list profiles.
• Signed-in readers can also see your friends, the book clubs you're in that they can find, your three most recent loans, and who liked a post.
• If your profile is private, only your friends see your library, posts, reviews and the rest, and your posts and reviews never appear on Sprawl's homepage. Others see your username. Your books and ratings still count, without your name, in totals like a book's average rating and how many readers have read it.
• Book clubs that are public, listed in search and show their members may appear on Sprawl's homepage: their name, description, image, member count, current book and the date of their next meeting. The meeting link never appears there.
• Blocking hides your posts and reviews from a reader only while they're signed in. What anyone can see on book pages and the homepage, they can see too when signed out.
• Messages are seen only by the people in the conversation (in a club chat, by the club's members), except that when someone in the conversation reports a message, Sprawl's admins see that message, even if it's deleted later. They're stored on Sprawl's servers and aren't end-to-end encrypted.
• Always private: your email address, password and settings, private shelves, your Personal Library layout, your notes unless you post them, and the reports you send.

Services Sprawl uses

Each gets only what it needs for its job. They may process data in the United States.

• Vercel hosts the website and sees each request, including your IP address.
• Neon hosts the database. Cloudinary stores photos and book covers. Resend sends emails.
• Google handles "Sign in with Google" if you use it, on the website or in the app.
• Expo delivers the Android app's updates, and its push notifications through Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging: they get your phone's push token and each notification's words (like "Alice sent you a message"), never a message's text.
• Anthropic (Claude) gets three things, never with your account, name or username attached. For an Image or Multi scan, the photo, and only the photo (Google Cloud Vision reads it if Anthropic isn't available). When you press Pick my next read, and only then, the title, author and page count of up to 80 of your Plan to read books picked at random (plus your Wishlist books when Plan to read has fewer than 3), and the title, author, rating and year finished of up to 40 of your Read books; never your notes, reviews, descriptions, shelves, ids or other readers' books. For each new report, what was reported (up to 2,000 characters, a reported private message included), the reason and the reporter's note, as written, names in them included; never the reporter's or the reported reader's name or username, or who reported it.
• Upstash counts sign-in attempts by IP address and username; password reset emails, new accounts, account deletion links, the app's Google sign-ins, book searches and chart images made without an account, and chart images drawn per IP address; reports and chart image downloads per account; and Pick my next read tries given back after a failed answer per account, to slow down password guessing and abuse. The counts expire within about two hours, the Pick my next read ones within about two days.
• Book catalogs (Open Library, Google Books, the French National Library, Wikipedia and Wikidata) get titles, authors and ISBNs, never who you are. If you import from a Goodreads profile link, Sprawl reads that profile's public shelves.

Barcode scanning happens on your device: only the ISBN it reads is sent to Sprawl. On the website it runs in your browser; in the Android app it uses Google ML Kit, which works on the phone but sends Google anonymous usage metrics (not your photos). Some covers load straight from the sites that host them, which can see your IP address. Sprawl may share information if the law requires it, or to protect readers or Sprawl from harm.

Cookies

Only what Sprawl needs: sign-in cookies that keep you signed in (up to 30 days), a cookie that remembers whose shared profile, review or chart you opened before signing up (30 days), a cookie that remembers you dismissed a notice in Sprawl so it doesn't come back (60 days), and your browser's storage for preferences like your theme. The Android app keeps you signed in with tokens stored on your phone. A chart you make on the Charts page without an account is kept only in your browser's storage until you save it to an account (signing up or signing in there saves it) or start over. Sprawl gets it only to draw its image when you download or share it, and doesn't keep it; its book searches go to Open Library with only the words you typed.

Reports and suspension

You can report posts, reviews, stacks, comments, messages, charts, book clubs and readers. Sprawl's admins are emailed about new reports and see the report, what it's about (the reported post, comment, message, chart, club or profile itself) and your username; the person you reported isn't told who reported them. New reports are sorted by an AI model as urgent, normal or low so urgent ones are seen first; a person decides what happens. Admins may remove what was reported or suspend the account behind it. A suspended account can't sign in, and its sessions on every device end.

How long it's kept

As long as you have an account. What you delete (a book, post, comment, shelf or plan) is removed from the database right away, with three exceptions: deleted messages are hidden but their text is kept, uploaded photos stay in image storage until the next time Sprawl clears out unused images (which it does from time to time), and the database host keeps backups for a short time.

When you delete your account, everything you made is removed right away: your profile, library, reads, reviews, notes, shelves, plans, charts, posts, comments, likes and messages, including your messages in other readers' chats, and any book club you're the only member of. Photos you uploaded are removed from image storage the next time Sprawl clears out unused images, which it does from time to time, and backups age out within a short time.

Your choices

In Settings you can edit your profile, email and password, make your profile private, hide your reading stats, and choose which notifications reach your phone in the app. You can delete what you've added, and block, report, unfollow or unfriend other readers. You can delete your account in Settings, on the website or in the app, or at sprawlprojects.com/delete-account with a link sent to your email. It's done right away. To get a copy of your data, or with any question about it, email sprawlprojects.help@gmail.com from the address on your account.

Keeping it safe

Sprawl uses encrypted connections (HTTPS), stores passwords only as hashes, and limits repeated sign-in attempts. No website is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, you'll be told as the law requires.

Children

Sprawl is for people 13 and older. It doesn't knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you think a child has an account, email sprawlprojects.help@gmail.com and it will be deleted.

Changes

When this policy changes, the date at the top changes too. If a change affects who can see your information, you'll be told in Sprawl before it takes effect.

Contact

Questions or requests about your data: sprawlprojects.help@gmail.com