Privacy Policy

Last updated: May 9, 2026

Bunkobons Press ("we," "us," or "our") operates the WellRead mobile application and the bunkobons.com website (together, the "Service"). This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use our Service.

1. Information We Collect

Information You Provide

• Account information: When you create an account, we collect your email address and name.
• Payment information: When you subscribe or make purchases, payment details are collected and processed by Stripe. We do not store your full credit card number.
• Waitlist and contact forms: If you join our waitlist or contact us, we collect your email address and any information you choose to provide.

Information Collected Automatically

• Reading activity: We track your reading progress, bookmarks, and preferences to sync your position across devices and formats (paper, digital, audio).
• AI Companion conversations: When you use the AI Companion feature, your questions and the context from your current reading position are processed to generate helpful responses.
• Device information: We collect device type, operating system version, and app version to ensure compatibility and troubleshoot issues.
• Usage data: We may collect analytics about how you use the Service, such as features accessed and time spent reading.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

• Provide, maintain, and improve the Service
• Sync your reading progress across devices and formats
• Process your subscriptions and purchases
• Power the AI Companion feature with context-aware responses
• Send you updates about your account, orders, or the Service
• Respond to your questions and support requests
• Analyze usage patterns to improve the reading experience
• Detect and prevent fraud or abuse

3. How We Share Your Information

We do not sell your personal information to third parties. We share information only in the following circumstances:

Service Providers

We work with trusted third-party services to operate the Service:

• Supabase: Database hosting, user authentication, and file storage
• Google (Gemini API): Powers the AI Companion feature. Your questions and reading context are sent to generate responses. Google's privacy policy applies to this processing.
• Stripe: Processes payments securely
• Netlify: Hosts our website and processes waitlist forms
• Apple iMessage: Delivers messages for the WellRead iMessage Relay (Beta). Apple's privacy policy applies to messages in transit.
• AI providers: Used to format replies and extract titles from bookshelf photos in the iMessage Relay. See Section 11 for what is and isn't sent.

Legal Requirements

We may disclose your information if required by law, court order, or government request, or if we believe disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, your safety, or the safety of others.

Business Transfers

If Bunkobons Press is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you of any such change.

4. AI Companion and Data Processing

The AI Companion feature uses Google's Gemini API to answer your questions about the books you're reading. When you ask a question:

• Your question and relevant context from your current reading position are sent to Google's servers
• Responses are generated based on this context to avoid spoilers
• We do not use your AI conversations to train our own models
• Google's use of this data is governed by their privacy policy
• We have reviewed Google's data handling practices and confirm that Google provides protections for your data that are consistent with or equivalent to the protections described in this Privacy Policy.
• The AI Companion feature is optional and requires your explicit consent before any data is sent to Google's servers. You can enable or disable this feature at any time in your app settings.

We may change AI providers in the future. Any such change will be reflected in an update to this policy.

5. Data Retention

We retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the Service. If you delete your account, we will delete your personal information within 30 days, except where we are required to retain it for legal or legitimate business purposes.

For the WellRead iMessage Relay (Beta), retention follows a separate 90-day window described in Section 11.

6. Your Rights and Choices

Access and Deletion

You can request a copy of your data or ask us to delete your account and associated data at any time by contacting us at privacy@bunkobons.com. We will respond to your request within 30 days.

Email Communications

You can unsubscribe from marketing emails by clicking the unsubscribe link in any email. You will still receive transactional emails about your account and orders.

Account Settings

You can update your account information and preferences within the WellRead app settings.

7. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your information, including encryption in transit (TLS), and we rely on our hosting providers' standard at-rest protections for data stored in our cloud database. Some local components of the WellRead iMessage Relay (Beta) run on a Mac we operate and are protected by the operating system's standard protections rather than separate at-rest encryption; see Section 11. No method of transmission over the Internet is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

8. International Users

The Service is operated from the United States. If you are accessing the Service from outside the United States, please be aware that your information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States and other countries where our service providers operate.

For users in the European Economic Area (EEA), United Kingdom, or Switzerland: We process your data based on legitimate interests (providing and improving the Service), contract performance (your subscription), and your consent (where applicable). You have rights under GDPR including access, rectification, erasure, and data portability.

9. Children's Privacy

The Service is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have collected information from a child under 13, we will delete it promptly. If you believe we have collected information from a child under 13, please contact us.

10. California Residents

If you are a California resident, you may have certain rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), including the right to:

• Know what personal information we collect, use, and disclose about you
• Request deletion of your personal information
• Opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information
• Not be discriminated against for exercising your privacy rights

We do not sell or share your personal information as those terms are defined under the CCPA. To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at privacy@bunkobons.com. We will respond to verifiable requests within 45 days.

11. WellRead iMessage Relay (Beta)

WellRead operates an experimental iMessage relay that lets you receive book recommendations as text messages. The feature is opt-in — nothing happens until you choose to text us — and may be paused or discontinued at any time without notice as we test it with a small pilot.

What we collect

• Your iMessage handle — the phone number or Apple ID email you message us from.
• Message content you send us — text and any photos (for example, a bookshelf photo for cold-start recommendations). We process this content to recommend books and respond. We do not retain raw message text or photo bytes after processing.
• Pairing data — the binding between your iMessage handle and your WellRead profile, if you choose to pair one.
• Conversation state — which books we've shown you and pacing counters, so we don't repeat or send too frequently.

How we use it

• To recommend books and respond to your messages
• To avoid sending you the same book twice
• To pace messages (rate limits and time-of-day windows)

Who else sees your data

• Apple iMessage — messages are delivered through Apple's iMessage service and are subject to Apple's privacy policy in transit.
• AI providers — we use a third-party large-language-model provider to format some replies and to extract book titles from bookshelf photos. We send only the structured data needed for the task (such as book metadata, or the photo itself for vision processing); we do not send your iMessage handle. We may change providers in the future and will reflect that in this policy.

Retention and deletion

• We retain iMessage handles, conversation state, and pairing data for up to 90 days after your last interaction.
• Text stop at any time to halt all sends immediately. Your associated data is then deleted at our next scheduled cleanup, which runs within the 90-day window.
• To request immediate deletion, email privacy@bunkobons.com.
• Photos you send are processed once and dropped from memory; we do not copy them to our systems.

Where data is stored

The handle-to-profile binding lives in our cloud database (Supabase), where the hosting provider provides at-rest encryption. Conversation state and pacing counters live locally on the Mac that runs the relay; those local files are protected by the operating system but are not separately encrypted at rest.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any material changes by posting the new policy on this page and updating the "Last updated" date. Your continued use of the Service after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

13. Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us:

• Email: privacy@bunkobons.com
• Website: bunkobons.com