Privacy

This site has no accounts, no forms, no advertising and no tracking. It does not set a tracking cookie and does not need a consent banner. What it does process is listed below, in full, because a short list is easier to check than a reassuring sentence.

The same details are on the Impressum page.

The site is served by Vercel Inc., 440 N Barranca Ave #4133, Covina, CA 91723, USA. When your browser requests a page, Vercel’s servers receive your IP address, the address of the page, the time, and what your browser says about itself. That is how any web server works; without it nothing could be sent back to you. Vercel keeps these request logs for one hour on the plan this site runs on. The server-side functions run in Frankfurt, but Vercel is a US company and data may be processed in the United States; Vercel is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, which the European Commission recognises as adequate protection. Legal basis: legitimate interest in running and securing the site (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Vercel’s own notice: vercel.com/legal/privacy-notice.

The site uses Vercel Web Analytics to count page views. It sets no cookie and stores nothing in your browser. For each page view it records the page, the referring page, your country and region, your device type and browser, and the time. To tell one visit from the next it computes a hash from the request that is discarded after 24 hours; it cannot be used to recognise you again or across other sites. The search term you typed is replaced by the word “redacted” before the page view is sent, so what you searched for stays in your browser. Legal basis: legitimate interest in knowing whether the site is used (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Details: vercel.com/docs/analytics/privacy-policy.

The covers you see are not stored here. Your browser loads them directly from Open Library (Internet Archive, San Francisco, USA; images are served from archive.org) and, for a few, from Google Books (Google LLC, USA). Those servers therefore see your IP address and the image you asked for, as they would if you opened the catalogue yourself. The images are the point of the site, so there is no way to show them without this. Legal basis: legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Google is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework; the Internet Archive publishes its own privacy terms.

Searches and book lookups, by contrast, are made by this site’s server on your behalf. Open Library and Google Books receive the title you searched for or the book you opened, never your IP address.

Three small things, all of them only on your device and none of them sent anywhere: your last searches (so the box can offer them again), the covers shown in the loading animation of the page you are on (cleared when the tab closes), and the market you chose for the shop links, which is also set as a cookie named “market” so the server can build the right links. Each exists only to provide something you asked for, which is why no consent is required (§ 25(2) TDDDG). Clearing your browser’s site data removes all three.

Clicking a shop link takes you through this site to the shop, and the click is written to the server log: which shop, which market, which ISBN, and when. Nothing about you is recorded — no IP address, no cookie, no browser details, no referrer — and the log is kept for the same hour as the hosting log. From the moment you arrive at the shop, its own privacy notice applies. The links carry no affiliate or tracking parameter.

Picking a cover in the game writes one line to a database: the two covers that were shown, which of them you picked, and the day — not the minute. Nothing about you is written with it: no IP address, no cookie, no browser details, no identifier of any kind, so two picks of yours cannot be recognised as yours or as belonging together. Reporting a cover as “not a cover” writes the cover and the reason, again with nothing about you, and the game stores nothing in your browser. These lines are what the ranking is counted from; they are kept while the game runs, because deleting them would delete the ranking. They live in a Redis database that this site rents from Redis through Vercel’s marketplace; it holds the lines on this site’s behalf. Legal basis: legitimate interest in a ranking that reflects what readers picked (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Friends of the site can suggest books for its collections on a page protected by a password. Entering the password sets one cookie, “bb_suggest”, for 30 days: it holds an expiry date and a signature and nothing about you, and exists only to keep you signed in (§ 25(2) TDDDG). A suggestion stores what you chose and typed — the collection, the book, the cover, your note, the day, and a name only if you give one — in the same Redis database as the cover game, and nothing else: no IP address, no browser details. Suggestions are kept until they have been looked at; ask via the contact page to have one removed. Legal basis: your consent in sending it (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR).

Under the GDPR you may ask what personal data is held about you and have it corrected, deleted or restricted, object to its processing, and receive it in a portable form (Art. 15–21). Given the list above there is almost nothing to hold: the site cannot tell one visitor from another. Write to the address at the top for anything at all. You may also complain to a data protection authority, for instance the one for the responsible person’s state of residence in Germany, or your own.

Nothing here is required of you: you can use the site without giving any data beyond what a browser sends by itself. No automated decisions are made about you.