Your privacy matters to us. This policy explains exactly what information Barrowbound collects about you, why we collect it, how we use it, and your rights around it. We've written it to be genuinely readable — not a wall of legal text you'd never get through.
This Privacy Policy applies to all users of Barrowbound — whether you're on a Free or Gold plan, based in New Zealand or anywhere in the world. We comply with the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020, the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the UK GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and Australia's Privacy Act 1988.
Information you give us directly
Information collected automatically
Information from third parties
We only collect and use personal information for legitimate purposes: to provide and improve the service, process payments, communicate with you, keep the service safe, and comply with legal obligations.
For users in the EU and UK: our legal basis is performance of a contract, legitimate interests, your consent, and legal obligation where required.
We use your information to create and maintain your account, save your reading data, enable community features, process payments, send transactional emails, and improve the app using aggregated anonymised data.
We do not sell your personal information to anyone. We do not share it with advertisers. Barrowbound is and will remain ad-free.
We may also disclose personal information if required by law, court order, or regulatory authority.
Barrowbound is operated from New Zealand. Some service providers are based in the US, meaning your data may be processed there. New Zealand has an adequacy agreement with the EU. For data transferred to the US, we ensure our providers maintain appropriate protections including Standard Contractual Clauses under GDPR where applicable.
To exercise any of these rights, email hello@barrowbound.app. We aim to respond within 20 working days.
We use essential cookies (required for login and preferences — cannot be turned off) and analytics cookies (anonymised, help us improve the app). We do not use advertising or tracking cookies and do not share cookie data with advertisers.
We take reasonable steps to protect your personal information, including encrypted password storage, HTTPS for all data in transit, and access controls on production data. In the event of a serious data breach, we will notify affected users and the NZ Privacy Commissioner within 72 hours.
We keep your personal information for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we aim to remove your personal data within 30 days, except where legally required to retain it (financial records are retained for 7 years for tax purposes).
Barrowbound is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, contact us at hello@barrowbound.app.
In accordance with Information Privacy Principle 3A, if we collect personal information about you from a source other than you directly, we will take reasonable steps to ensure you are aware of this collection, its purpose, and how to access and correct it.
We'll only send you marketing emails if you've signed up for our waitlist or opted in through the app. Every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link. Transactional emails are sent regardless of marketing preferences.
The privacy contact for Barrowbound is the founder, reachable at hello@barrowbound.app.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. For significant changes, we'll notify you by email or in-app notification. The effective date at the top of this document will always reflect the latest version.