Privacy Policy

Information We Collect

Account information. When you create an account, you sign in with Apple. We receive your email address (or Apple's private relay email if you choose to hide your email) and a unique identifier for your account. We do not receive your Apple password.

Reading history. The books you add to your library, including titles, authors, your read / want-to-read / did-not-finish status, your ratings, and any notes you leave about books you didn't finish.

Your literary fingerprint. A profile we generate from your reading history that describes the kind of reader you are: voice, themes, pacing, and other patterns we detect. This is the core of how Ethos works.

Recommendation activity. The book recommendations we generate for you, and which ones you dismiss.

Subscription status. Whether you have an active Premium subscription, managed through Apple's App Store and RevenueCat.

Waitlist email. If you joined our waitlist before the app launched, we collected only your email address through Buttondown, our email service provider.

We do not collect your location, contacts, photos, or any data from your device beyond what's listed above.

How We Use Your Information

We use your reading history to build your literary fingerprint and generate book recommendations. We use your account information to manage your account and subscription. We use your email to send you product updates and, if you're on the waitlist, to let you know when the app is ready. We do not use your data for advertising, and we do not sell your data to anyone.

How AI Is Used to Process Your Data

Building your literary fingerprint and generating recommendations requires sending your reading history (book titles, authors, ratings, and notes) to Anthropic's Claude models, the AI we use to do this. Anthropic processes this data to generate your fingerprint and recommendations and does not use it to train their models. No other AI provider receives your reading data.

Your fingerprint, archetype, and recommendations are AI-generated. They are produced automatically, without a person reviewing your individual results before you see them. This is a form of automated profiling: the AI looks at patterns in your reading history to infer things like your preferred pacing, tone, and themes, and uses that to pick books and a literary archetype for you.

This processing is for personalization and entertainment only. It does not make or inform any decision that affects your legal rights, finances, employment, insurance, or access to any service, it only decides what book recommendations to show you. Because AI processing is how Ethos fundamentally works, there isn't a separate way to opt out of it while keeping the rest of the app working; if you'd rather not have your reading history processed this way, you can delete your account at any time (see "Data Retention and Deletion" below).

Who We Share Data With

We share data with the service providers who help us run Ethos, and only as needed for them to do that job:

• Supabase hosts our database and handles authentication. Your account and reading data are stored here.
• Anthropic processes your reading history to generate your literary fingerprint and recommendations, as described above.
• Apple processes Sign in with Apple and any App Store purchases. We never see your Apple ID password or payment details.
• RevenueCat manages subscription status so we know whether your account is on Premium. They receive your subscription status, not your payment information.
• Buttondown stores waitlist email addresses, if you joined before the app launched.
• Google Books (and Open Library as a fallback) receives book titles and authors to retrieve cover images and metadata. Only title and author data is sent, never your account information or reading history.

We do not share your data with advertisers or data brokers. We do not sell your data.

Data Retention and Deletion

We keep your data for as long as your account is active. You can delete your account and all associated data (reading history, fingerprint, recommendations) at any time from Settings, or by emailing hello@readethos.app. Deletion is permanent, recommendations and fingerprints already generated cannot be recovered once deleted.

Children's Privacy

Ethos is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.

Your Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, or delete your personal data, or to object to how we process it. You can exercise these rights through the app's Settings or by contacting us at hello@readethos.app.

Security

We use industry-standard security practices, including encrypted connections and database-level access controls, to protect your data. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable steps to protect your information.

Changes to This Policy

If we make material changes to this policy, we'll notify you in the app or by email before the changes take effect.

Contact

Questions about this policy: hello@readethos.app