Annotate · Last updated July 25, 2026
This Privacy Policy explains what personal data Annotate collects, why we collect it, who we share it with, and the rights you have concerning your information. Please note that this document is a transparent notice, not a contract; your use of Annotate is governed by our Terms of Service.
Annotate is built and run by two people:Developer and Product Designer. There is no corporate entity behind Annotate at this time. Because we both have access to the systems that hold your data and we both take part in deciding what Annotate collects and why, we are joint Data Controllers for the purposes of the EU/UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and joint Data Fiduciaries under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.
Between the two of us, Developer maintains the app and its infrastructure and handles every privacy request, rights request, and grievance. That makes the address below your single point of contact, and you never have to work out which of us to approach. You may exercise any right described in Section 9 against either of us, and each of us remains answerable for honouring it.
You can reach out to us directly regarding anything in this policy at crew@annotateapp.club. This address also serves as our official grievance contact under the DPDP Act. Users in the EEA and the UK can raise any matter covered by this policy with us directly at that address, and we will respond within the timeframes outlined in Section 9.
Under the GDPR and similar privacy frameworks, we are required to disclose the legal basis for processing your data.
| Purpose of Processing | Reasoning | Legal Basis (GDPR Art. 6) |
|---|---|---|
| Create and manage your account, authenticate logins, display your library, and sync reading progress. | This is required to provide the service you registered for. | Performance of a contract, Art. 6(1)(b) |
| Publish your reviews, annotations, comments, and profile; generate the social feed. | This is the core functionality of a social reading application. | Performance of a contract, Art. 6(1)(b) |
| Send email verification and password reset codes. | To verify account ownership and facilitate secure access recovery. | Performance of a contract, Art. 6(1)(b) |
| Send push notifications regarding follows, likes, comments, and mentions. | You explicitly requested to be notified of account activity. | Consent, Art. 6(1)(a). You may withdraw this at any time in device settings. |
| Process reports, enforce blocks, remove violating content, suspend accounts, and prevent spam. | To maintain a safe, functional environment for all users. | Legitimate interests, Art. 6(1)(f) |
| Maintain server logs, apply rate limits, and investigate security incidents or faults. | To ensure the service remains secure, stable, and available. | Legitimate interests, Art. 6(1)(f) |
| Respond to valid legal requests and comply with applicable laws. | To fulfill our legal obligations. | Legal obligation, Art. 6(1)(c) |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have carefully weighed those interests against your fundamental rights and concluded that our data processing is strictly limited to what a user of a small social application would reasonably expect. You retain the right to object to this processing at any time (see Section 9).
We do not engage in profiling or automated decision-making that produces legal or significant effects. All moderation decisions are reviewed by a human.
This is the most critical section of our policy. Annotate does not currently offer private accounts. When you post content, the following information is visible to every other user of Annotate:
Your email address, password, push tokens, blocked accounts, and moderation reports are never visible to other users. Blocking is a one-directional, silent action; the blocked user is not notified.
Profile pictures and banner images are hosted on a public media domain. Anyone with a direct link can view these images without logging in. Please ensure you do not upload sensitive images you wish to keep private.
Book metadata corrections submitted via our librarian tools are integrated into Annotate's shared global catalogue. Because other users rely on this shared data, your accepted corrections will remain in the system even if you delete your account, though they will be permanently unlinked from your profile.
We do not sell your personal data. We have never sold it, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. Data is shared exclusively with the trusted service providers required to operate Annotate. Each provider acts as our processor under a strict Data Processing Agreement.
| Service Provider | Function | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Render | Application hosting and server log management. | United States |
| Supabase | Primary database (accounts, content, and social graph). | United States (N. Virginia) |
| Cloudflare R2 | Media storage and content delivery for images. | United States |
| Resend | Transactional emails (verification and password resets). Receives email addresses. | United States |
| Expo | Push notification routing. Receives tokens and notification text. | United States |
| Apple (APNs) & Google (FCM) | Final delivery of push notifications to your specific device. | Global |
| Google Books API | Book search functionality. Our server relays search text; your IP is masked from Google. | Global |
| Discord | Internal moderation alerts. Receives report context, usernames, and excerpts for rapid review. | United States |
We may disclose data if legally compelled to do so, or when strictly necessary to protect the rights, property, or safety of our users (e.g., responding to credible threats of imminent harm).
In the event Annotate is ever acquired or transferred, you will be notified prior to your data becoming subject to a different privacy policy, granting you the opportunity to delete your account beforehand.
Annotate is operated from India and hosted primarily in the United States. This means:
For users in the EEA or UK: Both India and the US are outside your home jurisdictions, and India does not currently hold an EU adequacy decision. To safeguard your data, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK Addendum where applicable), which are embedded in our vendor agreements and govern my internal administrative access from India. You may request a copy of these clauses by contacting us.
| Data Type | Retention Period |
|---|---|
| Account, profile, library, and content | Retained until you delete your account or request deletion. |
| Verification/Reset Codes | Expire after 15 minutes; fully purged upon account deletion. |
| Push Tokens | Retained until notifications are disabled, you sign out, or delete your account. |
| Server Logs | Automatically purged after 30 days. |
| Moderation & Enforcement Records | Retained up to 12 months post-resolution to identify repeat offenses. |
| Encrypted Database Backups | Deleted data may persist in encrypted rolling backups for up to 30 days before being permanently overwritten. |
You hold the right to delete your account at any time via Settings → Delete Account. You will be prompted for your password to confirm authorization. There is no grace period. Deletion executes immediately.
Upon deletion, we permanently erase:
For transparency, two specific data types remain: First, your comments
that have active replies are converted to empty
[deleted] placeholders with a null author, ensuring
conversation threads remain readable for others. The text is entirely
erased and untraceable to you. Second, book metadata corrections remain in
the public catalogue, as detailed in Section 4. Everything else is
immediately wiped from our live production databases and will clear from
our encrypted backups within 30 days.
Depending on your jurisdiction, you are entitled to some or all of the following rights regarding your personal data:
To exercise any right that cannot be actioned directly in the app, please email crew@annotateapp.club. We will respond within 30 days. For security purposes, we may require you to verify ownership of the account email address before fulfilling your request.
If you believe we have mishandled your data, please contact us first so we can rectify the issue. However, you maintain the right to lodge a complaint directly with a supervisory authority:
We implement commercially reasonable security measures appropriate for our scale. All transit traffic between the app and our servers is secured using TLS encryption. Passwords are mathematically hashed and salted; they cannot be recovered by anyone, including us. Database and media storage credentials are securely managed via server-side environment variables. Administrative access to production databases is strictly limited to the developer named in Section 1. Verification codes are single-use, rate-limited, and expire swiftly.
While we strive to protect your data, no digital system is entirely infallible. In the unlikely event of a data breach that poses a risk to your rights, we will notify the appropriate supervisory authorities within 72 hours (where legally required) and alert affected users directly without undue delay.
You must be at least 13 years old to use Annotate, or at least 16 years old if you reside in the EEA or the UK. We enforce the 16-year threshold in Europe as we do not operate a parental consent mechanism.
We do not knowingly collect personal data from minors below these thresholds. If you suspect an underage user has created an account, please contact crew@annotateapp.club, and we will promptly terminate the account and purge its data.
We may revise this policy as Annotate evolves. Material updates will be reflected by the "Last Updated" timestamp above. If a change significantly alters how your data is handled (e.g., implementing analytics), we will notify you directly within the app before the changes take effect and request your consent where required by law.
For privacy inquiries, rights requests, or complaints or general support
and feedback:
crew@annotateapp.club.
This address reaches both of the people named in Section 1.