Privacy

The short version, in plain words — because that's the whole policy.

What we do keep

• Shelf photos and book lists — these are the catalog itself, shared publicly so neighbors can find books. Take photos of shelves, not people.
• Anonymous tallies — counts like "how many QR scans today" or "how many neighbors found a book." Numbers only; nothing that identifies a person, no IP addresses in our data.
• On your own device — a couple of small local preferences (like remembering you already tapped "I found a book here" today). They never leave your phone.
• If you write to us — a name and email you give in a contact or registration form is used only to reply or to send you your box's QR code. Never shown publicly, never sold, never shared.

What happens to photos

When you upload shelf photos, an AI service (Anthropic's Claude) reads the book titles off the spines so the catalog updates itself. Photos are used for that and for the public catalog — nothing else. Each new photo set replaces the previous one.

Location

If you allow it, your location is used once, on your device, to center the map or confirm you're at a box. It isn't stored, logged, or sent anywhere beyond that check — no movement history, ever.

Third parties your browser talks to

Like most websites, some pieces load from public services: map tiles from OpenStreetMap, fonts from Google Fonts, and the Leaflet map library from a CDN. Our hosting provider also keeps standard, short-lived server logs. None of these are used by us to track you.

BookStoop is an independent neighborhood project in Ballard, Seattle — not affiliated with Little Free Library®. Questions? Use the contact form on the main page.