Privacy policy

Last updated: 13 October 2026

Who runs this

De boekenvrienden is a private project of mine, Harm Luijkx. There is no company behind it. I am responsible for your data.

Questions, or want something changed or deleted? Email [email protected]. You will get an answer within a month, usually much sooner.

The app

Your account

You log in with your email address and a code we email to you. We keep your email address and the language of the app. Other readers never see your email address. A login code is valid for 10 minutes and is removed from the database after a day. For each device you log in on, we keep a login key with the name of the device (for example "iPhone") and when it was last used.

Your email address, first name, date of birth, gender and town are needed to use the app: without them we cannot log you in or make suggestions. A photo and your reading list are optional.

Your profile

• First name. Other readers see it.
• Date of birth. To check that you are 18 or older, to show your age and for the age filter. Others see your age in years, never your date of birth.
• Gender (woman, man or other). Only for the "who would you like to be in touch with" filter and for who a club is open to. Others do not see it.
• Town. You choose a place from the list yourself. We do not ask for an address and do not use GPS. Others see your town and the distance between your towns, rounded to 5 km.
• Books and genres: what you are reading now, your top 5, your reading list and your genres. Others see these on your profile.
• Photo, if you add one. We remove its metadata, including any location, and make it smaller. Nobody else sees a new photo until we have approved it. Photos are kept in private storage and can only be seen through a link that expires after 10 minutes.
• Who you would like to be in touch with: age groups, gender and distance. Only you see this. It works both ways: anyone you leave out cannot see you anywhere in the app.

Suggestions

Every week you are suggested a few reading friends. The app chooses them automatically, based on shared genres and books and the distance between your towns. You both have to fit within each other's filters. We keep who was suggested to you, why, and whether you sent a message. Your profile can only be seen by people who were suggested you or who have a conversation with you. A suggestion is only a suggestion: the app does not make decisions about you that have legal effects.

Conversations and meet-ups

Your messages are stored encrypted in the database. We do not read them, unless someone reports a message (see below). For a meet-up we keep the place, the day and time, who is coming and whether it went ahead.

Book clubs

If you start a book club, other readers can see its name, place, genres, number of members and open spots, age range, the books you read with their average rating, and your first name as the organiser. Only members see the member list and each member's rating. Members who are not in the app are added by you with a first name only. For a meeting at someone's home, the app does not store an address. A request to join is a conversation with the organiser and is stored like other messages.

Notifications on your phone

If you turn on notifications, we keep a code for your device or browser so we can send them. A notification never contains the text of a message, at most a first name, such as "New message from Sanne". You can turn notifications off again at any time in the settings of your phone or browser.

If you don't get notifications and haven't read a message after 10 minutes, we send you an email with the first name of the person who wrote to you. At most one a day, between 8 am and 10 pm. That email never contains the text of a message either. You can turn this off in Settings.

Safety

You can block or report someone. When a message is reported, we keep an encrypted copy of that message and the 10 messages before it, so we can judge what happened. If we ban someone, we keep a scrambled version (hash) of their email address, so they cannot come back with the same address.

What the administrator sees

In the admin panel, Harm sees readers' first names, email addresses, towns and account status, plus new photos to approve. He only sees messages that have been reported. The admin panel is protected with a password and a code from an authenticator app.

Why we are allowed to do this

We process your data to make the app work as you use it: profile, suggestions, chat and meet-ups (performance of a contract). Reporting, blocking, banning and checking photos are done to keep the app safe (legitimate interest). We only send push notifications if you turn them on.

How long we keep data

• As long as your account exists we keep your profile, suggestions, conversations and meet-ups. Pausing your profile does not change this.
• If you do not use the app for two years, we email you. If you do not open the app or log in within 30 days, we delete your account, just as if you had done it yourself.
• If you delete your account (in the app, under Settings), we immediately erase your profile, books, photo, preferences, suggestions and devices. The text of your messages is erased; the other person sees "Account deleted". Only a copy in a report is kept (see the next point).
• Reports about you are kept until they are dealt with, and after that for 6 months after your account is deleted, in case of abuse.
• If we close an account because of abuse, we delete it 3 months later. The hash of the email address is kept for as long as the app exists.
• IP addresses: to stop anyone from requesting or guessing login codes endlessly, we count attempts per IP address and email address. These counters are scrambled (hashed) and disappear after an hour. Our hosting provider also keeps ordinary server logs with IP addresses, for one day.
• Technical data: failed background tasks are kept for at most 7 days. Database backups are overwritten after at most 7 days.

Who helps us

We use other companies for some parts. We have agreements with them about your data (data processing agreements). Where a company is outside the EU, data is transferred under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.

• Laravel Cloud (on Amazon Web Services in Frankfurt): the app's server and database.
• Cloudflare R2, through Laravel Cloud, in the EU: storage of profile photos.
• Resend, EU region: sends the email with your login code and the email when you miss a message.
• Expo (US) and Apple: deliver push notifications to your iPhone.
• Google, Apple, Mozilla or Microsoft (depending on your browser): deliver notifications in the web app.
• Cloudflare (US): hosts this site and the web app, and sees your IP address as a result.
• Google Books and Open Library: when you search for a book, we only send your search term. Your phone loads the covers directly from them, so they see your phone's IP address.
• Google Fonts provides the fonts of this site and sees your IP address as a result.
• Gmail (Google): our inbox, for emails you send us.
• Apple TestFlight: if you test a preview version of the app, Apple shares crash data with us under its own terms.

Security

All connections are encrypted (https). Messages and reports are stored encrypted in the database. The app keeps your login key in the secure keychain of your iPhone, or in your browser's storage if you use the web app. A login key that has not been used for 90 days stops working.

Minimum age

The app is for people aged 18 and over. If someone seems younger, you can report it. If that turns out to be true, we close the account.

Your rights

You may see your data, have it corrected or deleted, or receive it in a common file format. You may also object to what we do with your data. You can do a lot yourself in the app: edit your profile and delete your account. For anything else, email [email protected].

If you are not happy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Dutch Data Protection Authority, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens.

Changes

If anything in this policy changes, we update the date at the top. For major changes we will let you know in the app.