Your information should have a clear purpose.

Reader accounts and your books

If you create a free Bramblelight account, Bramblelight stores the email address associated with the account and authentication information needed to let you sign in. Account authentication and database services are provided through Supabase.

When you save or organize a book, Bramblelight may store the title, when it was saved, its custom TBR position, reading status, optional rating or recommendation response, and limited context about where on Bramblelight you discovered it. This information is used to provide your personal reading shelves and improve book discovery.

Your individual TBR, Reading, Finished, and DNF shelves are private by default and are not displayed publicly to other readers. Bramblelight may display anonymous community totals derived from reader activity, such as how many readers have a book on their TBR or the percentage of readers who explicitly recommended a book after finishing it. These public totals do not identify which readers saved or recommended a title.

Reader profiles and friends

Reader profiles start private. You can choose a username, display name, optional photo, bio and favorite genres, and explicitly enable a public reader profile. A public reader profile can be viewed without signing in. Profile settings separately control birthday visibility, whether to show a public friends list, and whether to show public book-club memberships. Your account email, private shelves and private notes are not exposed by making a profile public. Public profiles and share cards you deliberately create are separate from your private library.

Uploaded profile photos are stored privately. Public profiles, accepted friends and fellow accepted book-club members can view them. Photos are resized and re-encoded before upload to remove embedded location metadata. You can replace or remove your photo. Previously issued image links expire within five minutes after a visibility or membership change.

Friend requests require acceptance by the recipient. Friends and people with pending requests can see each other’s name and username; a private profile’s bio and genres remain hidden. Turning off your public profile removes it from discovery without removing existing friendships. You can accept, decline or cancel requests and remove friends. Request limits help reduce repeated unwanted requests.

You can invite accepted friends to book clubs you own or share selected books with them. Friendship does not automatically grant access to a book club or your personal shelves. Removing a friend cancels outstanding book club invitations between you, but existing book club memberships and previously shared lists remain until separately removed or revoked.

Private book clubs and sharing

Book clubs start private. Owners can list the club name, description, city and state for discovery by signed-in readers and approve requests to join. Accepted members can see meeting details, the book club TBR, current and completed reads, member display names, roles, shared lists and poll totals. Owners manage invitations and moderator roles. Owners and moderators manage book club book choices and polls; members can vote and optionally share their own progress.

Sharing a book or selected list includes its book details, your display name and reader identifier, but does not include your personal notes, ratings or reading statuses. A shared list is a selection at the time of sharing and does not automatically follow later changes to your private shelves. You can revoke your shares. Recipients can dismiss direct shares. Revoking a share does not remove books a recipient has independently saved.

Book Club progress is shared only when you choose to post it and can be hidden again. Leaving or removal ends access to book club content and removes your shared progress and open-poll votes. Previously shared book club lists and closed-poll totals may remain until the sender revokes the share or the owner deletes the book club. Other members can retain information they have already viewed. Your email address is not shown to other members.

Community and local discovery

Your profile location is optional. You can select a US city and state or ZIP area from a location directory. We store the selected area and use its approximate center for nearby searches within 50 or 100 miles. On the website, choosing “Use current area” can request your device location, and a previously granted browser permission may be reused to suggest your current area. The mobile app requests foreground location permission when you choose its current-area option. Device coordinates are sent to Bramblelight’s server to find a nearby city-level area; this lookup returns an area suggestion rather than saving the device coordinates to your profile. You can decline location access and choose a city or ZIP manually instead. Your profile location appears to signed-in readers only when you enable local discovery and have a public reader profile. The city and state selected for a community post are visible with that post independently of profile-discovery preferences. Your profile ZIP code and area coordinates are not displayed to other readers. Turning either option off removes you from local reader discovery.

Feed posts are visible to readers who follow you and can access your profile: followers of a public profile, or accepted friends who also follow a private profile. Friendship alone does not grant access to these feed posts. You can also post to an accepted-members-only book club board or the Community board. Community-board posts, their city and state, message type, replies and reactions are visible to all signed-in readers, including people who are not your friends. Posts, comments and likes include your display name and reader identifier. Book Club owners and moderators can remove book club posts and comments. You can delete your own posts and comments, hide a post from your feed or report it. Reports are stored for site administrators to review; they do not automatically remove content.

Unfollowing a reader removes follower-only feed access. Removing a friendship also removes access to that reader’s private-profile feed; leaving a book club removes access to its posts. Earlier contributions may remain visible to the remaining audience. Book Club meeting locations are visible only to accepted members. Public club descriptions should contain only details the owner wants to share with all signed-in readers.

Age requirement and children

Bramblelight accounts are intended for readers age 13 and older. Before Bramblelight asks a new reader for an email address or password, the signup flow requests a date of birth using a neutral age screen. The date is evaluated in the reader's browser only to determine account eligibility, then immediately discarded. The birthdate itself is not sent to Supabase, stored in the Bramblelight account, or reused for advertising or personalization.

For eligible signups, Bramblelight records only that the age screen was passed, the screening method and version, and the time the account was created so the signup process can be audited. If the age screen does not permit account creation, Bramblelight does not send the entered birthdate, email address, or password to its account provider. The browser may remember only the failed eligibility result for the remainder of that browser session to prevent an immediate retry; it does not retain the entered birthdate.

If Bramblelight later learns that an account belongs to a child under 13, the account and associated personal information will be reviewed for deletion or other action required by law. A parent or guardian who believes a child under 13 has created an account should contact Bramblelight through the support channels published on the site.

Newsletter and reader-email preferences

Reader emails are optional. The account signup dialog starts with its reading-updates and book-deals checkbox unchecked. Selecting that checkbox opts in to Weekly Bramblelight, Bramblelight Monthly, and Book Deal emails; leaving it unchecked does not opt you in. You can later change each category separately in Account Settings.

Bramblelight stores the account email address, selected email categories, subscription status, and the time the account’s email preferences were recorded so those choices can be honored. Signed-in readers can change these settings at any time from Account Settings.

Readers may also join the email list without creating an account. Email-only signup presents the same categories as editable selections before the form is submitted.

Affiliate click analytics

When a reader has allowed optional analytics and follows a sponsored retailer link, Bramblelight records a limited first-party click event so we can understand which recommendations, categories, merchants, and affiliate networks are useful to readers. The event may include the page path, product or category label, merchant, affiliate network, destination hostname, and timestamp. If optional analytics are declined, this affiliate click event is not recorded.

Bramblelight does not intentionally store a reader name, email address, account identifier, or full destination URL in this affiliate click record. The purpose is aggregate merchandising and performance analysis rather than building an individual reader profile from affiliate clicks.

Optional rewarded ads in the Android app

When the mobile rewarded-ad feature launches, readers may choose to watch an advertisement supplied through Google AdMob. Viewing rewarded ads will remain optional and will not be required to read, search, use Reading Rooms, or earn regular reading XP. The feature is disabled until its native player, account configuration, privacy choices and completion verification have been tested.

Before requesting an ad, the Android app will consult Google's User Messaging Platform for the applicable privacy and consent choices. Google may process device information, approximate or inferred location, advertising identifiers where permitted, ad interaction details, and other technical data under its advertising policies. Bramblelight does not disclose your book-reading history to advertisers as part of this feature. You can decline optional ad participation without losing access to the app.

To prevent duplicate or fabricated XP awards, Bramblelight privately records the signed-in reader's account identifier, a one-time ad-attempt identifier, verification transaction identifier supplied by Google, completion day, and resulting XP award. These records are used for reward integrity and abuse prevention rather than public community activity. XP is awarded only for completion confirmed by the advertising provider and within the daily limit.

Google's advertising privacy practices and controls are described in Google's Privacy Policy.

Cookies, storage, and optional tracking

Bramblelight uses browser storage that is necessary for sign-in, security, and remembering privacy choices. Optional analytics and marketing technologies remain disabled unless you choose to allow them in the cookie notice.

You can accept all optional tracking, reject non-essential tracking, or manage your choice. Your preference is stored in your browser so Bramblelight can honor it on later visits. Bramblelight also honors a supported Global Privacy Control signal by keeping optional tracking off. You can reopen the choices at any time using the control below or the Cookies link in the site footer.

Pinterest conversion tracking

Bramblelight uses the Pinterest Tag to understand how Pinterest traffic interacts with key pages and whether a reader joins the Bramblelight Reading List. Pinterest tracking is optional on this site and is activated only after a visitor allows it through the tracking notice.

When allowed, Bramblelight may send page-view, category-view, newsletter-signup, and affiliate-link-click events to Pinterest for attribution, reporting, and audience building. Pinterest may use first-party cookies or browser storage for attribution and retargeting. If Pinterest Enhanced Match or Automatic Enhanced Match is enabled in the Pinterest business account, information a reader voluntarily enters into eligible form fields may be hashed in the browser and used for conversion matching.

Declining tracking tells the Pinterest Tag not to send events and to remove Pinterest first-party tracking storage. You can review your choice again at any time.

Hosting and technical data

The site is hosted through third-party infrastructure that may process standard technical information such as IP addresses, request logs, browser information, and security events as part of operating and protecting the website.

Advertising and additional analytics

Bramblelight may add additional analytics or advertising services as the site grows. When those services require additional disclosure or consent controls, this policy and the site’s tracking choices will be updated accordingly.

Access, correction, deletion, and retention

Readers can update many profile and preference fields directly in Bramblelight. Signed-in readers can download a CSV of their account data immediately from Account Settings, without a staff request. The export contains only records belonging to the signed-in account and is generated locally in their browser. You may submit requests for access, correction, or account and personal-data deletion through the Help & data requests page while signed in. Requests are reviewed and identity is verified before irreversible actions; submitting a request does not immediately erase your account. Some records may be retained when reasonably necessary for security, fraud prevention, legal compliance, dispute resolution, or to preserve records of transactions and consent.

Public posts, reviews, messages, and community contributions may be visible to other readers according to the audience selected for that feature. Deleting an account does not necessarily remove information that other people independently copied, quoted, or retained before deletion.

Questions

For privacy questions, access requests, corrections, or deletion reviews, visit our support and privacy request page. Support cases are associated with your authenticated account and show their status. Case details are retained only while needed for handling and applicable security or legal obligations; the final retention schedule needs operator approval.