Privacy

Last updated 8 November 2026

The short version: Book Bearings has no accounts and sets no cookies of its own, and nothing follows you around the web. What you save stays in your browser. We count visits without identifying you. The outside services the site uses, such as the Internet Archive's reader, have their own privacy and storage practices (see below).

What stays on your device

Your shelf (the books you save and whether you want to read, are reading or have finished them) and the books you mark "Not for me" are stored in your browser's local storage. They are never sent to us, and we can't see them. They aren't synced between devices or browsers, and clearing your browser's site data deletes them. You can also remove books from your shelf at any time.

Your answers to the questions are kept in the page address (after the "?"), so that Back and shared links work. Like every address, it reaches Cloudflare, which hosts the site; the site has no server or database of its own and stores no answers.

Counting visits

We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to see how the site is used: how many visits it gets, which sites people come from, their country, browser and type of device, and how fast the pages load. It stores nothing in your browser (no cookies or similar), doesn't identify you by your IP address or browser, and doesn't follow you to other sites. We only see totals, never individual visitors. See Cloudflare Web Analytics, and for exactly what it collects, the Cloudflare Web Analytics documentation.

Bookshop.org links

"Buy on Bookshop.org" links carry our affiliate code, so Bookshop.org can pay us a small commission when you buy there. Nothing goes to Bookshop.org unless you follow one. Once you do, you're on Bookshop.org's own site: it uses its own cookies to credit the sale to us, under its privacy notice. Bookshop.org doesn't share your name, contact details or order with us (see what it shares with affiliates).

What we don't do

• No accounts or sign-in.
• No cookies of our own. (The Internet Archive's reader, once you open it, follows the Archive's own practices.)
• No advertising, and nothing that tracks you across sites or builds a profile of you.
• We don't collect, sell or share personal information, apart from what you choose to send us by email (see below).

Services your browser connects to

Like any website, the services below receive the technical information every web request carries, such as your IP address and browser type.

• Our hosting provider delivers the site, protects it against abuse and counts visits (see above). We host with Cloudflare; see Cloudflare's privacy policy.
• Open Library (run by the Internet Archive) serves the book covers, author photos and the extra details on a book's page, so it can see which covers and books were requested. See the Internet Archive's terms of use.
• The Internet Archive's reader opens inside the page when you choose "Read free" on a free book, and only then. From that point the reader is the Internet Archive's own page, under its terms and privacy practices.

Links to other websites, such as Open Library and Bookshop.org, are covered by those websites' own policies.

If you email us

"Report a problem" and "Contact" open an email in your own mail app; nothing is sent unless you send it. If you do, we see your email address and what you write, and use them only to reply and to fix what you report. We don't add you to any mailing list or share your message.

Changes

If this changes, for example if we ever add a feature that needs an account, we'll update this page and its date first.

Contact

Questions about your privacy: [email protected].