As well as an unswerving commitment to transparency, we are determined to protect the privacy, security and confidentiality of your data.
We therefore do not store, process or analyse any of your Google user data. Your data stays in your Google account and on your device only, our systems and people never see it, and we never touch it. This data is yours, and that is the way it should always be!
Data Protection, US COPPA and the EU GDPR
We have designed our systems with privacy at their core. All your user data is handled and stored in your own Google Sheet, and processed via your own Google Apps Script.
By architected the system in this way, your data remains entirely under your control - which helps you ensure compliancy with relevant legislation and means you normally shouldn’t need to undertake a detailed DPIA (Data Protection Impact Assessment). This saves you time, energy and makes our system much easier for you to adopt.
Analytics
The only data that we receive from this site is usage information. This data is handled by via Googe Analytics, which is a widely-used third party service that collects standard internet log information, and behaviour patterns. The reason we do this is to measure the usage of this app (e.g. what is frequently used), and also how and we would never seek to try to track any individual users. All data is held in a highly secure state by google, and only accessible by us using industry-standard 2-factor authentication.
While this data is important, and useful to us, your preferences are even more so. If you would prefer to block these sorts of analytics tools while you are browsing the web, you can enable do not track in your browser. This setting will be read by us and we will not attempt to load the analytics code if it is set. Compliance with this setting is dependent on the website/tool and is not universally honoured across the web. Alternatively, to forcefully block these analytics scripts from loading, you can install a privacy enhancing tool, such as the excellent Ghostery chrome extension.
Browser Storage
To provide functionality to you, we need to store a small amount of information in your browser. This stored information takes three forms:
Cookies
Cookies are small pieces of text stored, sent and received by your browser from a website that you are visiting. Google Analytics from a global content delivery network (CDN) for speed and reliability. These CDNs may also use first-party cookies to help deliver their services (e.g. Cloudflare).
Cache Storage
In order to deliver the best possible service, even in challenging connectivity technology on compatible platforms. This technology means we can proactively cache various parts of the site and code in your browser, allowing it to be fetched, even when moving between different pages, without having to communicate over the Internet. These pages are stored securely in the browser cache, and are periodically updated when updates are released.
Local Storage
Finally, we use browser storage functions (such as IndexedDB and Local Storage) to store:
- Access Tokens, work only on our site, and are invalidated/cleared when you sign out of the services (e.g. out of our app or the Google platform as a whole).
- Cached Library Data: To ensure the app operates as smoothly and quickly as possible, we cache data data from your libraries (such as book information and cover images). This cache is removed when you sign out of the app, and you can also flush it from your settings page.