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Privacy

Privacy notice

What happens with your data when you use Book Carousel, in plain words.

In short: no account, no email needed, no cookies, nothing stored on your device, no ads and no tracking across websites. Your answers are only used to calculate your list. If you rate a book, the rating is saved without your name, email or IP address. Nothing is loaded from Google or other third parties. The only data we can link to a person is a message you send us.

1. Who is responsible

Anna Tverdovska, Germany
Email: anna.tverdovska@web.de · Contact form

There is no legal obligation to appoint a data protection officer.

2. Hosting and server logs

The website and our small server functions run on Vercel Inc., USA. When you open a page, your browser automatically sends technical data that is needed to deliver it: IP address, date and time, requested page, referrer, browser and operating system.

Purpose: delivering the website and keeping it secure. Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR (legitimate interest in a working, secure website). Storage: on our free Vercel plan, we can only view the logs for the last hour. How long Vercel keeps technical data beyond that for security and operation is decided by Vercel; according to its privacy policy, only as long as necessary. We don’t use the logs to identify anyone and don’t combine them with other data.

3. Your answers

All questions are optional. Your answers, any book title you type in and any reading list you paste in are sent to our own recommendation engine, which runs as a server function on Vercel (see 2). They are only used to calculate your list and are not stored, unless you rate a book (see 4). A pasted reading list is never stored: it only makes sure we don’t suggest books you’ve already read, and nudges your picks a little.

Some questions touch on your mood. Your answers are never linked to your name, email or IP address. Please don’t type personal details into the book fields.

Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR (our legitimate interest in providing the recommendations you asked for). The recommendations are suggestions only; there is no automated decision with legal or similarly significant effect (Art. 22 GDPR).

4. Ratings (👍 / 👎)

If you rate a book, we save: the book title and genre, your rating, the answers you gave, the genres you chose (if any), internal profile values of the engine, and the time. We do not save the books you typed or pasted in, your name, email, IP address or a device ID. The data is stored in a private dataset on Hugging Face (Hugging Face, Inc., 20 Jay Street, Suite 620, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA), on servers in the USA.

Purpose: improving the recommendations. Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR. Storage: our model keeps learning from the ratings. We therefore keep them as long as they help improve the recommendations, and delete them once we no longer need them for that (for example if Book Carousel is discontinued).

Finding your ratings: because a rating is saved without your name, email or IP address, we can’t look up your ratings on request (Art. 11 GDPR). If you give us details that let us find them (for example the day and the book titles), we delete the matching entries.

5. Visitor statistics

We use Vercel Web Analytics to see how many people visit which pages. For each page view, Vercel records the page, the time, the website you came from, your approximate location (country, region, city), browser, operating system and device type. It uses no cookies and stores nothing on your device.

To tell visits apart, Vercel calculates a code from the request and discards it after 24 hours; your IP address is not stored with the statistics. We only see totals and nothing that points to you, so there is nothing we could find or delete about you there. Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR (understanding how the site is used). You can object at any time (see 11).

Usage counts: to see which way in works better, we also count three steps: when you start (with a book or with the questions), when a list appears, and when you rate a book. For each step we save one line with only the day, the step and the way you started, in the same private dataset on Hugging Face as the ratings (see 4). Nothing else: no answers, no book titles, no IP address and no ID that links lines together. Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR (understanding how the site is used).

6. No third-party content

Book Carousel loads nothing from other providers: no fonts, maps, videos, social media buttons, ad or tracking tools.

7. Sharing a list

When you share your list, the text or picture is created on your device. It contains only the titles, authors and genres of your books and a link to Book Carousel, but none of your answers. WhatsApp or other apps only open when you tap them; their own privacy policies then apply.

8. Contact form and email

If you write to us, we process your email address, your message, the topic and (if you give it) your name, to answer you. The form is sent through our server function (Vercel) to our mailbox at WEB.DE (1&1 Mail & Media GmbH, Germany).

Legal basis: Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR (answering your request), or Art. 6 (1) (b) GDPR if your request concerns a contract. Storage: your message arrives in our mailbox; the server function only passes it on and doesn’t keep it. We delete your message and our reply once your request is settled, at the latest after 6 months, unless the law requires us to keep them longer. Want them deleted sooner? Just tell us. We find your messages by your email address.

9. Cookies and device storage

Book Carousel sets no cookies and writes nothing to your device (no localStorage or similar). That is why there is no cookie banner. If this ever changes, we will ask for your consent first (§ 25 TDDDG).

10. Transfers outside the EU

ServiceWhatBasis
Vercel (USA)Hosting, server logs, statistics, server functions, recommendation engineEU-US Data Privacy Framework (Vercel is certified) and Vercel’s data processing agreement
Hugging Face (USA)Ratings (see 4)Hugging Face provides a data processing agreement with EU standard contractual clauses. Through our server function, Hugging Face only receives the ratings, without name, email or IP address.

11. Your rights

You have the right to access (Art. 15 GDPR), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction of processing (Art. 18) and data portability (Art. 20). A short email or the contact form is enough; we reply within one month.

What we can find for you

DataCan we find it?
Contact messagesYes, by your email address. Deleted on request.
Your answersNot stored, so nothing to find.
RatingsSaved without name, email or IP address, so only with details from you (see 4).
Visitor statisticsTotals only, nothing about you (see 5).
Server logsVisible to us for 1 hour, after that only held by Vercel (see 2).

Right to object (Art. 21 GDPR): where we process data on the basis of Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR, you can object at any time on grounds relating to your particular situation.

12. Supervisory authority

You can complain to any data protection authority. The authority responsible for us is the Landesbeauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit Nordrhein-Westfalen (LDI NRW), Postfach 20 04 44, 40102 Düsseldorf, www.ldi.nrw.de.

13. Age

Book Carousel is meant for people aged 16 and over.

14. Changes

We update this notice whenever the way we process data changes. Last updated: 29 October 2026.