The Short Version
We collect only what we need. We don't sell your data. We don't sell your reading habits. We don't even sell books — we just help you catalog them. If that's enough for you, you may return to your shelves. If you'd like the full bibliographic description, read on.
Who We Are
Shelvd is operated by Simplinity, a sole proprietorship of Bruno van Branden, based in Belgium. Yes, the country famous for chocolate, beer, and an improbable number of antiquarian bookshops per square kilometer.
Data Controller: Bruno van Branden / Simplinity
Location: Belgium, European Union
Privacy inquiries: privacy@shelvd.app
We are a one-person operation. There is no privacy department. There is no Chief Data Officer. There is Bruno, who will read your email personally, probably while drinking coffee and wondering whether that Elzevir he saw last week is still available.
What We Collect
Like any responsible cataloger, we believe in recording only what is relevant. Here is our collation:
Information You Give Us Voluntarily
Account details
Email address and password (hashed — we couldn't read it even if we wanted to, which we don't).
Profile information
Your name, if you choose to provide one. We won't judge if you go by "BibliophileAnonymous42."
Your book data
Titles, authors, publishers, conditions, bindings, provenance, valuations, and all the other glorious metadata you entrust to us. This is your collection. We just provide the shelves.
Feedback & correspondence
Anything you write to us via the feedback form or email.
Information Collected Automatically
Usage data
Pages visited, features used, time spent. We use this to improve the product, not to build a psychological profile. We're catalogers, not the Stasi.
Device information
Browser type, screen resolution, operating system. Enough to fix bugs, not enough to identify you in a lineup.
Cookies
See Section 5. They're not very exciting.
Information We Do Not Collect
Your browsing history outside Shelvd
Your location (we don't need to know you're browsing rare books at 2 AM — we've all been there)
Biometric data
Financial information (payments are handled by third-party processors who are much better at this than we are)
What We Do With Your Data
We use your data for the following purposes, and absolutely nothing else:
Running your account. Without your email, we can't let you log in. This seems obvious, but lawyers appreciate when you state the obvious.
Storing your collection. That's... the whole point of the application.
Improving Shelvd. Aggregate, anonymized usage patterns help us understand which features people actually use and which ones were apparently a terrible idea.
Communicating with you. Service emails (password resets, critical updates). We will never email you to ask if you've “considered upgrading” or to inform you about “exciting offers.” Life is too short, and so is our marketing budget.
Legal obligations. If Belgian law requires us to disclose something, we will. We'd rather not, but we're law-abiding citizens.
What We Will Never Do
Sell your data. To anyone. Ever. Not even if they offer us a first edition Ulysses.
Use your book collection to target you with ads. (“We noticed you cataloged three books on medieval history — here's an ad for a castle!”)
Share your data with third parties for their marketing purposes.
Train AI models on your collection data.
Judge your taste in books. Publicly.
Third-Party Services
We use a small number of third-party services to keep the lights on. Each has been chosen for competence, not for their data-harvesting capabilities:
| Service | Purpose | Data Shared |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database & authentication | Account data, book data |
| Vercel | Hosting | IP address, usage logs |
| ECB | Currency exchange rates | None (public API) |
| Library APIs | Book lookups | Search queries only |
None of these services receive your full collection data unless strictly necessary for the service to function. The library APIs receive only your search queries — they don't know who you are, only that someone, somewhere, is looking for a 1954 first edition of The Fellowship of the Ring.
Cookies
Shelvd uses cookies. Not the kind your grandmother makes — the small, functional, joyless kind that make websites work.
Essential cookies only. We use cookies for:
Keeping you logged in (authentication)
Remembering dismissed announcements
Basic session management
We do not use:
Tracking cookies
Advertising cookies
Analytics cookies that follow you around the internet like a persistent book dealer at a fair
You can disable cookies in your browser settings, but then you won't be able to log in, which rather defeats the purpose.
Data Security
Your collection data is stored in Supabase's infrastructure within the European Union. It is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest. Row-level security ensures you can only access your own data.
Is our security perfect? No security is perfect. But we take it seriously. Your collection of 16th-century Venetian imprints is safer with us than it would be in most Excel spreadsheets shared via email with the subject line “book list final FINAL v3.xlsx.”
We will notify you promptly if a data breach occurs. We sincerely hope we never have to write that email.
Your Rights (GDPR)
You are based in the EU, and so are we. Under the General Data Protection Regulation, you have the following rights. We honor all of them without bureaucratic nonsense:
Access
You can export your entire collection to Excel, CSV, or JSON at any time. No need to ask permission. No 30-day waiting period. No forms in triplicate.
Rectification
You can edit any of your data at any time. That's called “using the app.”
Erasure
You can delete your account and all associated data. We will comply within 30 days, though it will take us approximately 4 seconds. The remaining 29 days and 23 hours are for mourning.
Portability
See “Access” above. Your data is yours. We've been saying this since the landing page.
Objection
You can object to our processing of your data. Given that the processing consists of “storing books you asked us to store,” we're not sure what you'd object to, but we respect your right to do so.
Restriction
You can request that we restrict processing of your data while you sort out whatever needs sorting out.
Complaint
You may lodge a complaint with the Belgian Data Protection Authority (Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit / Autorité de protection des données). We'd prefer you talk to us first, but we understand.
To exercise any of these rights, email privacy@shelvd.app. You'll hear from Bruno. Not a bot.
Data Retention
Active accounts
We keep your data for as long as you have an account. This seems reasonable.
Deleted accounts
All data is permanently deleted within 30 days of account deletion. No backups are retained beyond this period.
Server logs
Automatically purged after 90 days.
We do not keep data “just in case.” We are catalogers, not hoarders. Well — we hoard books, not data.
Children
Shelvd is not directed at anyone under 16 years of age. If you are under 16 and have somehow developed a passion for cataloging incunabula, we admire your precocity but must ask you to return with a parent or guardian.
Changes to This Policy
If we change this privacy policy, we will:
Update the “last updated” date at the top
Notify active users via email for material changes
Not bury the changes in footnotes like a Victorian publisher hiding an erratum
The current version will always be available at this URL.
Contact
Questions? Concerns? Found a typo? Discovered a previously unrecorded variant of this privacy policy?
Email: privacy@shelvd.app
Human: Bruno van Branden
Location: Belgium, EU
Response time: Usually within 48 hours. Faster if you mention books.
This privacy policy was written by a human, not generated by a privacy policy generator. You can tell because it contains jokes and no Latin. Any resemblance to enjoyable reading material is entirely intentional.