My shelf

Privacy Policy

We built Freebookia to collect as little about you as possible. This page explains what we do collect, why, and the choices you have.

Last updated: 1 November 2026

Who is responsible

Freebookia (freebookia.com) is run by a small independent team. For anything about this policy or your personal data, contact us at [email protected].

If you just visit and read

You can browse, read online and download every book without creating an account or giving us any personal details.

  • Your shelf and reading position are saved in your own browser (in its local storage), not on our servers. They stay on your device and you can clear them at any time through your browser settings.
  • Reading preferences, such as text size and page colour, are saved in your browser in the same way.
  • Book ratings. If you rate a book, we store a random identifier in a cookie so you can change your rating later. It does not identify you personally, and only the rating and that random identifier are stored.
  • Downloads. We count how many times each book is downloaded, as an overall number per book, to help show popular books. We do not record who downloaded what.

If you create an account

An account is optional. It lets you keep your shelf and reading progress across devices. We store:

  • your email address and a securely encrypted version of your password (we never see the password itself);
  • the books on your shelf, your reading progress, and, if you choose to share your shelf, the shelf name you give it;
  • a small cookie that keeps you signed in, and one that simply tells the page you have an account.

We use your email address only to run your account, for example to reset a forgotten password. We do not send newsletters or marketing, and we never sell or share your email address.

You can delete your account at any time from My shelf. This permanently removes your email address, shelf and reading progress.

Searching

When you search for books by describing what you would like to read, your search words are sent to our search service, run with Anthropic (the maker of the Claude AI models), to find matching books in our catalogue. We send only the words you typed. We do not send your name, email address or IP address. Recent searches may be stored briefly so repeat searches are faster.

Security and protection from abuse

  • Cloudflare. Our site is delivered through Cloudflare, which protects it from attacks and makes it faster. Cloudflare processes technical data such as your IP address and may set strictly necessary security cookies. It may also show a short check to confirm you are human, for example when you create an account. See Cloudflare’s privacy policy.
  • Spam and rate limits. To stop abuse of ratings, sign-ups and search, we keep a scrambled (one-way hashed) version of your IP address for a few minutes. It cannot be turned back into your IP address and is deleted automatically.
  • Server logs. Like almost every website, our server keeps standard technical logs (including IP addresses, pages requested and browser type) to keep the site secure and working. These are kept for a limited time and are not used to identify visitors.

Advertising

To cover our running costs, Freebookia may show advertisements served by Google AdSense. Google and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to show ads, to measure them, and, if you agree, to personalise them based on your visits to this and other websites.

What we do not do

  • We do not use Google Analytics or any other visitor-tracking analytics.
  • We do not load fonts or scripts from Google Fonts or similar third parties; our fonts are hosted on our own server.
  • We do not sell, rent or trade your personal information.

Legal basis (for visitors in the EU and UK)

We process account data to provide the service you asked for (contract); security, anti-abuse and server data because we have a legitimate interest in keeping the site safe; and advertising cookies only with your consent where the law requires it.

How long we keep data

  • Account data: until you delete your account.
  • Rate-limiting data: a few minutes.
  • Server logs and backups: for a limited period, after which they are automatically deleted (backups are kept for about two weeks).

Your rights

Depending on where you live (including under the EU and UK GDPR and California’s CCPA/CPRA), you may have the right to access, correct, delete or receive a copy of your personal data, to object to or restrict how we use it, and to withdraw consent. We do not sell personal information. To use any of these rights, email [email protected]. You also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority.

Children

Many of our books are classics for young readers, and anyone can read them without an account. Accounts are not intended for children under 16. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle personal data, we will update this page and the date at the top.