Privacy Policy

This policy explains what information DESA collects, why, who it’s shared with, and the choices you have. We’ve tried to write it plainly. If anything is unclear, email support@desa.fyi.

Who we are

DESA by Book Club (“DESA”) is a reading service for public-domain books, available at desa.fyi and in the DESA iPhone app. It is operated by Book-Club Ventures, LLC (“Book Club,” “we,” “us”), which is responsible for your information under this policy.

The short version

• You can read without an account. Until you sign in, your reading data stays on your device.
• We collect what we need to run DESA: your account, your reading, your club activity and your subscription.
• We don’t sell your information, show ads, or use advertising or analytics trackers.
• Mentor questions go to Anthropic (the maker of Claude) to write the answer. Anthropic doesn’t use them to train its models.
• You can delete your account, and the data that goes with it, in Settings at any time.

What we collect and why

• Account information. Your email address and, if you choose one, a display name. If you sign in with Google or Apple, we receive the name and email address they share with us (with Apple this may be a private relay address). If you use a password, it’s stored by our authentication provider in hashed form; we never see it. We use this to sign you in, keep your account secure and send account emails such as sign-in links and password resets.
• Reading data. Your reading progress, where you left off in each book, bookmarks, highlights, and quiz results. When you’re signed in we sync these to your account so they follow you across devices. As a guest they’re stored only on your device.
• Mentor conversations. The questions you ask the Mentor and its answers. Your Mentor history is saved on your device (in your browser on the web, in the app on iPhone); we don’t keep a copy of it on our servers. See The Mentor and AI for what is sent to answer a question.
• Book Club activity. The clubs you create or join, your role in them, the posts you write, any posts you report, and the readers you block. We use this to run the clubs and keep them safe.
• Subscription information. If you become a Contributor, Stripe handles the payment and we store your Stripe customer ID, your plan, its status and its renewal dates, so we know what you can access. We never receive or store your full card number.
• Technical information. Like most websites, our hosting provider records basic request information (such as IP address, browser type and the page requested) to deliver the service, keep it secure and diagnose problems. We also use your IP address to limit how quickly requests can be made, to prevent abuse.

We don’t collect sensitive categories of information such as health data, precise location, contacts or photos.

The Mentor and AI

The Mentor is an AI reading companion for Contributors. When you ask it something, we send your question, the recent messages in that conversation, and passages from the book to Anthropic’s Claude, which writes the answer. We don’t send your name, email address or account ID with it. To find the right passages, your question (on its own) is also sent to Voyage AI, which turns it into a search vector.

We use these providers through their commercial APIs. Under Anthropic’s commercial terms, Anthropic doesn’t use what we send to train its models, and keeps it only for a limited time, for example to detect misuse. Don’t include personal information in a Mentor question that you wouldn’t want to share with these providers. Mentor answers are generated by AI and can be wrong; check them against the text.

Book Clubs

Clubs are private to their members. Everyone in a club can see its member list (by display name) and every post in it. Posts aren’t public and aren’t shown outside the club. If you report a post, we keep the report and a copy of the post so our team can review it; the person you reported isn’t told who reported them. Blocking is private too: the person you block isn’t notified.

Who we share information with

We share information only with the service providers that help us run DESA, and only for the purposes below. Each processes it on our behalf under its terms for business customers:

• Supabase — our database and sign-in provider. Stores your account, synced reading data, club activity and subscription status.
• Vercel — hosts the website and the servers behind the app, and keeps the request logs described above.
• Stripe — processes Contribution payments on the web and keeps payment records.
• Apple — Sign in with Apple and distribution of the iPhone app. If we offer purchases through the App Store, Apple will process them under its own terms.
• Google — Sign in with Google, if you choose it.
• Resend — delivers our account emails, such as sign-in links and password resets.
• Anthropic — writes Mentor answers, as described in The Mentor and AI.
• Voyage AI — finds the book passages relevant to a Mentor question.

We don’t sell your personal information or share it for targeted advertising. We may disclose information if the law requires it, to protect the safety of our readers or the public, or as part of a merger or sale of our business, in which case this policy would continue to apply to it.

Cookies and local storage

We use a small number of strictly necessary cookies to keep you signed in. We use your browser’s local storage (and the app’s on-device storage) to remember your reading progress, preferences such as text size and theme, your Mentor history, and whether you’ve seen notices like this one. We don’t use advertising or analytics cookies. You can clear this data at any time from Settings or your browser.

How long we keep information

We keep your information for as long as you have an account. When you delete your account, we delete it, with these exceptions:

• Stripe keeps its own records of past payments, as financial law requires.
• If you reported a post, or a post of yours was reported, the report and its copy of the post are kept so the review can be finished, but they’re no longer linked to your account.
• Request logs and routine database backups are kept for a limited time before they’re overwritten.

Deleting your account and your rights

You can delete your account at any time in Settings, on the web or in the iPhone app. This permanently deletes your account, your synced reading data and highlights, your display name, your club memberships and posts, and your block list. An active Contribution is cancelled immediately, with no refund for the rest of the current period. Clubs you host are passed to another member. Your Mentor history lives on your device: deleting your account on the web clears it from that browser, and removing the app deletes it from your iPhone.

You can also ask us to give you a copy of your information (including in a portable format), correct it, or delete it, by emailing support@desa.fyi. We’ll respond within 30 days and may need to confirm the request comes from you.

• If you’re in the EU, UK or a similar jurisdiction, you have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict or object to our use of your information, and to data portability. We rely on performing our agreement with you to provide DESA, and on our legitimate interests to keep it secure and safe. You can complain to your local data protection authority.
• If you’re a California resident, you have the right to know what personal information we collect and how we use it, and to delete or correct it. We don’t sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under California law, and we won’t treat you differently for exercising your rights.

Security

Information is encrypted in transit, and row-level security rules in our database limit each record to the people allowed to see it: your reading data to you, a club’s posts to its members. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and will tell you if a breach affects it, as the law requires.

Children

DESA isn’t directed at children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their information. If you believe a child under 13 has given us information, email support@desa.fyi and we’ll delete it.

Where information is processed

We’re based in the United States, and our service providers process information in the United States and other countries. By using DESA you understand that your information may be processed outside the country where you live.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we’ll update the date at the top. If a change materially affects how we use your information, we’ll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.

Contact

Questions or requests about your privacy: support@desa.fyi. Book-Club Ventures, LLC operates DESA. You can also read our Terms of Service and find help on our Support page.