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.
• An anonymous device code — when you update a shelf, or tap "Got it" on a book, your phone sends a random code it keeps for itself (no cookie, no name). We store only a short scrambled version, just to count how many different neighbors helped a little library. It can't tell us who you are.
• If you join the Caretakers' Circle — your email (and first name, if you give one) is used only to confirm your sign-up, send one update a month about your little library, now and then share news about BookStoop campaigns or ideas for little libraries, and contact you if it's Caretaker of the Month. Every email has a link to leave: leaving stops the emails and deletes your name and email right away. Sign-ups that are never confirmed are deleted after 48 hours. The public Circle board shows which little libraries have a member, never names or emails. 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 centers the map on your device. When you update a shelf or tap "Got it," your coordinates are sent once to our server to check that you're at the little library (within about 500 feet). They are never stored or logged, and we keep no location history.

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.