Privacy policy.

1. Information we collect

• Google sign-in: your Google account identifier, email address, basic profile information such as your name and profile image, and authentication information needed to keep you signed in. We do not receive your Google password or request access to your Gmail, contacts, calendar, or Drive files.
• Your matchmaking profile: your chosen name, optional Instagram username, birthday, city or nearby city, one to three favorite books, an optional book you are currently reading, and the connection types you select: romance, friends, business partners, or any combination of these.
• Your preferences: where you would like to connect; for romance, your gender, the genders you would like to meet, your preferred age range, and an optional description of your ideal match; for friends or business partners, the introduction answers you choose to provide. Business profiles may also include an optional LinkedIn profile or company page URL. Romance preferences can reveal sensitive information about you.
• Account activity: profile and book update times, participation, email notification and contact-sharing preferences, when you first reveal an introduction, records of introductions made through the service, and any compatibility or book-recommendation ratings you submit. Your match reviews are private feedback to Zebra Book Club and are not shown to the other member.
• Friend matchmaking suggestions: the two Instagram handles you submit, your account identifier, and the submission time. These romance suggestions are private to the service operator; submitting a suggestion does not reveal whether either person has an account or create an introduction.
• Merch referrals: your selected raffle prize, the Instagram handle you credit when creating a profile, the referring and referred account identifiers when a credit can be resolved, and the referral time and status. We use these records to track raffle entries and review duplicate or invalid credits. Referrers are not given access to the profiles or contact details of people they invite.
• Communications: information you send when contacting us.
• Technical information: our hosting and service providers may process IP addresses, browser or device information, request times, and error or security logs to deliver and protect the service.

You choose a city from a catalog. The matchmaking platform does not request your precise device location or street address. Book and city suggestions are searched in your browser using catalogs hosted on our website. Typing a search does not send its text to our server or a book provider; the books and city you submit are saved with your profile.

Instagram is optional. You can sign up, receive matches, and remove your Instagram handle without losing eligibility. Without Instagram, contact is by email. Email contact is on by default, including when this setting is introduced for existing members. Your Google account email is shared only with your released matches when you have not provided Instagram and email contact is enabled. You can turn it off during signup, when editing your profile, or in Settings at the bottom of your dashboard. Email sharing is separate from notifications about new matches. We do not ask for your Instagram password or connect to your Instagram account.

2. How we use it

We use this information to authenticate you, check the adult age requirement, save and display your profile, support introductions based on your preferences and books, calculate community totals, respond to requests, and protect the service from misuse.

Weekly introductions and match emails are not running yet. If you opt in to match emails, that preference will apply when the feature becomes available. You can turn it off in your dashboard. We may separately contact you about your account, a support request, or a service or security issue.

We do not sell your personal information or use your matchmaking profile for targeted advertising.

3. What other people can see

Your matches: when an introduction is released, the other person can see your chosen name, Instagram username and profile link if provided, age, city, region and country, favorite books, your current read if provided, and relevant friendship or business introduction answers. Instagram is shared with your matches for any connection type so they can reach you; it is not included in the community map or book totals. Your optional LinkedIn link is shared only with business matches. Your Google account email is shared only with released matches when email contact is enabled and you have not provided Instagram. Otherwise your email stays private. Turning off email contact hides it from future views, but cannot remove copies already made by a match. The introduction does not include your exact birthday or private romance preferences, including your ideal-match answer. Your reveal status is saved for your own account and is not shown to your match. Information you choose to put into a shared introduction answer will be visible with that answer.

The member dashboard: signed-in members can see the total number of completed profiles, counts by city at city-center locations, counts by country, and the most selected books overall and in each country. These totals contain no names, account identifiers, or links to individual profiles. They include paused profiles and may be reused from your browser cache for up to one hour when loading the dashboard.

The public community map: the home-page backdrop shows reader locations grouped by city. Its public data includes the completed-profile total, city-center coordinates, and counts per city, including paused profiles. It contains no names, account identifiers, contact details, book selections, or individual profile links. We publish a shared snapshot with the website approximately hourly, so profile changes and deletions are not reflected immediately. Publishing or service outages can delay updates; the site stops displaying snapshots older than three hours.

Service operation: authorized people operating Zebra Book Club and our service providers may access information as needed to run the service, provide support, investigate abuse, or comply with legal obligations. We may disclose information when legally required or reasonably necessary to protect rights and safety.

Your profile is not a public member directory. We cannot control copies that a match makes of information already shared with them.

4. Services we use

• Supabase provides authentication, the profile and matchmaking database, and server functions. Supabase privacy policy.
• Google provides sign-in. Google privacy policy.
• GitHub Pages hosts the public website and may log requests to it. GitHub privacy statement.
• Open Library, a project of the Internet Archive, supplies reference book metadata and some cover images. The current platform hosts its suggestion catalog and covers on our website, so browsing suggestions or displaying a cover does not contact Open Library. Older versions of the platform sent book searches or identifiers through our server to Open Library without your account identifier, email, or profile. Those search caches are separate from profiles and are not an account-linked search history. Internet Archive terms and privacy policy.

City data comes from GeoNames, licensed under CC BY 4.0. The world outline comes from Natural Earth (public domain). We have filtered the city catalog for search and projected the map for display. These files are hosted with our service; displaying them does not send your profile to GeoNames or Natural Earth. Links to social networks, podcast platforms, and other external websites are governed by those services’ policies when you visit them.

5. Storage and retention

Your browser stores a sign-in session and related authentication data so you can stay logged in. It also remembers your selected connection category and temporarily caches community aggregates and whether Google sign-in is available. The dashboard aggregate cache is associated with your signed-in account and cleared on sign-out; it contains no individual profiles, contacts, match details, or review ratings. Clearing browser storage removes these local values; it does not delete your account. We do not add our own advertising or analytics trackers to this site.

We keep your account and profile while you use the service. Deleting your account removes your authentication account, matchmaking profile, preferences, and match memberships from the live database. Backups, security logs, and records needed for legal obligations or resolving disputes may remain for their applicable retention periods. Copies already received by another person are not removed by deleting your account.

If you follow a personal invitation, we temporarily store the inviter’s Instagram handle in your browser so it can be filled in after Google sign-in. An unfinished invitation expires after 30 days and is cleared when your profile is saved or you sign out. A prize selection may also be saved while you finish signing up. Personal invitation links include the inviter’s Instagram handle and are visible to anyone the link is shared with. Account deletion removes associated referral credits from the live database.

We use access controls to restrict profile access, but no online service can guarantee absolute security. Our providers may process information in the United States and other countries where they operate.

6. Your choices and rights

• Edit your profile from your dashboard. Favorite books can be changed once every 24 hours; other profile details remain editable.
• Pause matchmaking to stop eligibility for new introductions. Pausing does not delete your profile, remove it from community totals, or withdraw introductions already released.
• Control match emails with the email preference in your dashboard.
• Delete your account using the dashboard’s “Delete my account” option. This does not delete your Google account. You can also revoke Zebra Book Club’s access in your Google account settings; revoking access alone does not delete your matchmaking profile.
• Contact us to request a copy of your information, correction or deletion, or help with privacy choices. Depending on where you live, you may also have rights to object to or restrict processing, withdraw consent, or complain to a data protection authority. We may need to verify your identity before fulfilling a request.

7. Age requirement

Matchmaking is for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly allow minors to create matchmaking profiles. If you believe a minor has provided information, contact us so we can investigate and remove the account as appropriate.

8. Updates and contact

We will update this policy when our practices change and revise the date above. For material changes, we will provide a notice on the site or through your account, and seek consent where required.