Lairbound Privacy Policy
- We collect only what the app needs to catalog your books and, if you choose, share them with friends.
- We don't sell your data, show ads, or use advertising trackers. The only analytics are the diagnostics Google's on-device text recognition (ML Kit) sends to Google, described in section 4.
- Only your friends see your library unless you choose otherwise.
- You can make your library private at any time, and delete your account and data yourself from the app.
1. Who we are
Lairbound ("the app," "we," "us") is a home library app for iPhone, Android, and the web, built and run by Thrash Digital LLC, a Louisiana company owned by Michael Thrash, in Alexandria, Louisiana, USA. Questions about this policy go to [email protected].
2. Information we collect
Account information
When you create an account we collect your email address, a password (stored only in encrypted, hashed form by our backend provider; we can never see it), and the display name you choose.
Your library
The books you add and everything you record about them: titles, authors, ISBN or UPC codes, publisher details, cover image links, series, tags, shelf names and order, status (owned, to-be-read, wishlist, loaned, read), reading progress and dates, ratings, content meters (spice, gore, kid friendly), reviews, notes, saved quotes with page numbers, edition details (signed, sprayed edges, special edition), and the name you enter when you record who borrowed a book.
How you arrange your bookcases: the bookcases, boxes, and tables you set up and their names, how many shelves and how wide each one is, where each book sits, which books are laid flat, the decorations you add (including any note you write on a chalkboard decoration), and the color you pick. Your bookcase arrangement, chalkboard notes included, can be seen by the people who can see your profile (your friends, or everyone if your profile is set to Everyone). We also store which books you've marked to donate.
Book searches
When you look up an ISBN, the app first asks our server. Our server checks our own book catalog, a copy of Open Library's public book data that we keep on our own computer, and if the book isn't there, it may ask ISBNdb (a book database we pay for). Our catalog and ISBNdb only receive the ISBN or the search words (such as a book's title and author), from our server, never your account information. If our server has no result or can't be reached, the app asks Open Library directly from your device.
The book facts these lookups return (title, authors, publisher, year, page count, format, size, weight, subjects, language and a cover link) are saved to the book in your library, on your device and in your cloud backup, so you can see them offline. "Fill in Book Details" in the app asks only our own catalog, never ISBNdb or Open Library.
To save time and cost, our server keeps the book details it gets back from ISBNdb for up to 7 days, so a book that has just been looked up doesn't need to be looked up again, and deletes them automatically every night after that. These short-lived copies are not tied to your account. To prevent abuse and control costs, we count how many searches each account makes per day, and keep those counts for about a week. Open Library lookups and covers go directly from your device.
Ways to read. When you open "Ways to read" on a book, our server asks Open Library whether that book can be read free (public domain) or borrowed through Open Library's own lending, using only the ISBN or the title and author, never your account information. The answer is kept in our server's memory for a few hours and is not saved. The links it shows (Open Library, Standard Ebooks, Project Gutenberg and WorldCat) open those websites, which then work under their own terms and privacy policies.
Social information
Your username, your friends and friend requests, the people you block, and activity the app records when you add, finish, rate, or review a book.
If you use households: the household's name, who is in it and who owns it, and the invites sent and answered.
If you turn on a gift list link: the link's code, whether it's on, and which of your wishlist books someone has marked "I'm getting this" (no name or account is stored for that, and you aren't shown it). Anyone you give the link to can see your display name and your wishlist books (title, author, cover, ISBN) without signing in. You can turn the link off or replace it at any time.
If you post in the feed: your posts (text, the book and quote you attach, a photo if you add one, and whether you marked it as having spoilers), your comments and reactions, and when you made them. Posts, comments and reactions are shown only to the author's friends and household, never publicly; blocked people can't see them. You can delete your own posts and comments at any time, and people can delete comments on their own posts. Reports of a post or comment keep a copy of the reported text so we can review it, and if the reported post has a photo, we keep that photo until the report has been reviewed, even if the post is deleted in the meantime. Post photos are resized before upload and location details are removed; they are stored privately and shown only to the people who can see the post, through links that expire after an hour. Deleting a post deletes its photo (unless the post has been reported and the report hasn't been reviewed yet), and deleting your account deletes all of them.
Your ebooks. If you add your own ebook file (EPUB) to a book, the file is stored privately in our cloud storage, in a folder tied to your account, and only you can open it: not your friends, household members, book clubs or anyone else. We store the file name, its size and where you stopped reading so you can pick up where you left off. We don't read, scan, share or sell your ebook files. Removing an ebook from a book, deleting the book, or deleting your account deletes the file (anything missed is removed by an automatic cleanup within a day).
If you join a book club: the club's name and description, who is in it and who invited whom, the book the club is reading (title, author and cover) with how it is counted (chapters or pages), the reading schedule, each member's spot in the book, and comments, each pinned to the commenter's spot when they wrote it. Only club members see any of this, and the apps hide comments pinned past your own spot until you get there. Only friends can be invited. If you leave a club, your spot and membership are removed; when the last member leaves, the club and its comments are deleted. Reports of a club comment keep a copy of the reported text so we can review it.
"Your Year in the Lair" and dragon badges are worked out from your library on your phone or in your browser each time you open them; we don't store them. If you choose to share a recap, your friends' feed gets a short summary: the year, how many books you finished and added, total pages, your top-rated book of the year, your most-read author and genre, and your busiest month. Sharing a badge shares only which badge it is. Shared recaps and badges are shown to the same people as the rest of your activity, and you can share nothing at all.
If you add a value, condition or value note to a book for the collection report, we store them with that book in your account so your phone and the website match. They are private: friends, household members, gift-list visitors and book clubs never see them. The collection report itself is made on your phone or in your browser; we don't keep a copy. Values are whatever you type; Lairbound doesn't appraise books.
"Make it yours" settings (your theme, any colors you pick including the star color, the background choice, and the Lair / Library / Cozy wording) are saved with your account so the app and the website match. Only you see them.
If you borrow or lend books through Lairbound: who asked whom for which book, the optional note, and whether it was lent, declined, cancelled or returned, with the dates. Only the two of you can see a request. Lending a book marks it as loaned in the owner's library with the borrower's display name.
If you report someone, we keep the report: who you reported, the reason you picked, any details you typed, and the book involved, if any. We use reports only to review problems and keep Lairbound safe.
Camera and photos
The app uses your camera to scan barcodes, read the ISBN printed inside a book, and take cover photos. Barcode scanning and text reading happen on your device, and those camera images are not uploaded. Cover photos you choose to take for a book are uploaded to our cloud storage so they appear on your other devices and on the website. Each photo is stored in a folder tied to your account under a random file name; anyone who has that exact link could view it, so please photograph just the book. When you scan a whole shelf, the shelf photo is read on your device and is not uploaded. When you use One spine to photograph a single book's spine, the photo is read on your device and the picture of that spine is uploaded, the same way as cover photos, so your bookcase can show your real spines. You can remove a spine picture from the book's page at any time.
To draw each book's spine on your bookcase in that book's own colors, our server opens each book's cover picture (yours or the book service's) once, reads its two main colors, and saves only those two colors with the book. Nothing else from the picture is kept, and the colors are read again only if the cover changes.
Technical logs
Like most online services, our servers keep short-term technical logs: your IP address, device or browser type, the time of each request, and sign-in events (which include your email address). Our server also records when you search for people (not what you typed), to stop anyone from running searches in bulk; those records are deleted after about a week. We use these logs only for security, abuse prevention, and fixing problems.
What we don't collect
We don't collect your contacts, location, advertising identifiers, or browsing history. The app contains no advertising SDKs; its only analytics come from Google ML Kit, described in section 4.
3. How we use it
- To run your account and sign you in.
- To back up your library to the cloud and show it on your other devices and on the web.
- To show your library and activity to people you've let see it (see section 5).
- To look up book details from public book databases when you scan or refresh a book, and to find new and upcoming books by the authors you own most.
- To send you account emails you ask for, such as a password-reset code.
- To fix bugs and respond when you contact us.
- To keep Lairbound secure and prevent abuse, such as limiting how many lookups or people searches one account can run.
4. Services that handle your data
We use a small number of service providers. They process data only to provide their service to us.
| Service | What it does | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Accounts, cloud storage, and our book-search server | Your account information, library, notes, friends, blocks, reports, activity, bookcase arrangement, cover and spine pictures you take, your daily search count, the text of book searches, and the technical logs described in section 2 |
| Open Library | Book details and covers, when our own catalog has none, and cover images; whether a book can be read free or borrowed ("Ways to read") | The ISBN or search terms being looked up, sent from your device (for "Ways to read", from our server), not your account information |
| ISBNdb | Extra book details and covers, when the other sources have none | The ISBN or search words (such as a title and author), sent from our server, not your account information |
| Resend | Sends account emails | Your email address and the message, such as a password-reset code |
| Cloudflare | Hosts the lairbound.com website, and securely connects our server to our book catalog | Basic technical details such as your IP address and browser when you visit the website; for book lookups, only the ISBN, sent from our server |
| Expo (EAS) | Delivers app updates | Basic technical details such as app version, device platform, a random update token, and IP address when the app checks for updates |
| Google ML Kit | Reads printed ISBNs and book spines, on your phone | The text recognition runs on your phone and Google doesn't receive your camera images, books, or account information. ML Kit does send Google diagnostic and usage-analytics data, such as device model, operating system and app version, performance metrics, and a per-installation identifier. See Google's ML Kit data disclosure |
| Apple TestFlight / App Store, Google Play | Distributes the app | Whatever those platforms collect under their own policies, such as crash reports you agree to share |
We only use providers that are bound, by their agreements with us or their own published policies, to protect the data they receive with the same or equal protection as this policy describes, and to use it only to provide their service.
If you tap a Goodreads link, Goodreads' own website opens under Goodreads' privacy policy.
5. Sharing with other Lairbound users
You choose who can see your library and activity in Account → Who can see my library: Friends only (the default for new accounts), Everyone, or Just me. Friends are people whose friend request you accepted, or who accepted yours.
Your display name and username can be seen by your friends, by people you've sent or received a friend request from, and by any signed-in Lairbound user if your library is set to Everyone. Someone can find you by typing at least the first few letters of your username, or the exact email address you signed up with; there's no public list of users. Your invite link (lairbound.com/add/your-username) shows your display name to anyone who has the link.
People who can see your library see your books with their covers, authors, series, tags, status (owned, to-be-read, wishlist, loaned, read), reading progress, ratings, reviews, edition details, and which bookcase and shelf each book sits on. Your private notes and saved quotes, who you've loaned a book to, and which books you've marked to donate are only ever visible to you.
Reader averages. When you rate a book or set one of its content meters (spice, gore, kid friendly), that number is added, without your name or any link to you, to the averages other signed-in Lairbound readers see for the same book (matched by ISBN, or by title and first author). An average only appears once at least 3 people have rated the book, so nobody can work out your own rating from it. This includes ratings from libraries set to Just me. You can leave your ratings out at any time with "Count my ratings in reader averages" in Account settings, on the phone or the website; averages update right away.
Households. If you join a household, everyone in it can see all of your books (including your wishlist), your ratings and reviews, and your reading activity, even if your library is set to Just me. Your notes, saved quotes and who has a book on loan stay private to you. Household members can't change or delete anything of yours. Only the household's owner can invite or remove people; invites expire after 7 days, and the app tells you this before you accept. You can leave at any time, and your books leave the household view right away. Blocking someone in your household takes you out of it.
You can report or block anyone. Blocking hides your libraries and activity from each other, ends any friendship, and stops new friend requests between you.
We never sell your personal information and never share it for advertising.
6. Where your data is stored and how it's protected
Your library is stored on your device and backed up to our cloud provider, Supabase, in the United States (East US), so you can restore it on a new phone by signing in and view or arrange it on the website. Connections are encrypted (HTTPS), and database access rules are enforced on the server so that each account can change only its own data. We also keep private backups of our database so we can recover from a failure; they are stored securely, never shared, and deleted within about 7 days. If a security breach ever affects your personal information, we will notify you as required by law. No system is perfectly secure, so please keep your own backup of anything important. You can do this with Export or Backup in the app.
7. How long we keep it
We keep your information while your account exists. When you delete your account in the app, your profile, library, notes, friends, blocks, activity, bookcase arrangement, and uploaded cover and spine pictures are deleted from our cloud right away. Your daily search counts and household membership are deleted too. Reports you filed about other people are kept without your name attached, so we can still act on them. Reports made about you are kept too, with your account no longer attached, so deleting an account does not erase a safety report. If you ask us by email instead, we do it within 30 days. Data stored only on your device is removed when you delete the app. Copies in our private database backups are deleted automatically within about 7 days. Technical logs held by our service providers expire on their own schedules, typically within a few weeks.
8. Your choices and rights
- Access and export: use Export in the app to download your library at any time.
- Correct: edit any book or profile detail in the app; status, loans, reading progress, ratings, shelves, and your name can also be changed on the website.
- Choose who sees it: Friends only, Everyone, or Just me, in Account.
- Delete: in the app, go to Account → Delete Account. This immediately and permanently deletes your account, library, notes, friends, blocks, activity, bookcase arrangement, and uploaded cover and spine pictures from our cloud, and clears the library from that phone. You can also do this on the website under Account. To delete only some of your data, see these steps. You can also email [email protected] from the address on your account and we'll do it for you.
Depending on where you live (for example California or the EU/UK), you may have additional rights to access, correct, delete, or restrict use of your information. Email us to use them; we won't treat you differently for doing so.
Do Not Track: we don't track you across other websites or apps, so we don't change what we do when a browser sends a Do Not Track signal.
California: we collect identifiers (email, username, account ID), the content you create (your library, notes, reviews, photos, ebook files you add), and internet activity (the technical logs above). We don't sell or share personal information as those words are defined by California law.
EU and UK: Thrash Digital LLC is the controller of your information. We process it to provide the service you signed up for (your account, sync, and sharing with people you choose), and in our legitimate interest in keeping Lairbound secure, preventing abuse, and answering support requests. Your information is stored in the United States under our providers' data-processing agreements and standard contractual clauses. You can complain to your local data-protection authority if you think we've handled your information wrongly.
9. Children
Lairbound isn't directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child under 13 has created an account, email us and we'll delete it.
10. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top. For significant changes, we'll also let you know in the app and by email to the address on your account, before or when the change takes effect.
11. Other companies' names
Lairbound is an independent app and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any other book-cataloging app or service. Goodreads, Libib, StoryGraph, BookBuddy, CLZ, Open Library and ISBNdb are trademarks of their respective owners; Lairbound mentions some of them only to describe compatible imports and book sources. Links to their websites open under their own terms and privacy policies, which we don't control.
12. Contact
Thrash Digital LLC (Michael Thrash, owner)
4501 Jackson St Extension, Ste C #217, Alexandria, Louisiana 71303, USA
[email protected]