Privacy policy
Updated 29 September 2026
Blackletter is a private, invite-only app for friends to log, rank and talk about books. This page says what it keeps about you, who can see it, and how to take it back.
What Blackletter keeps
- Your account: your name, your handle, the phone number your invite was sent to, and the identifier Sign in with Apple gives the app. Blackletter doesn't ask Apple for your email address and never sees your Apple ID password.
- What you add: your photo and bio, and the books you log, rank, review, quote, list, want to read or are reading, with your progress, goals, recommendations, comments, likes, blocks and reports.
- Finding friends: if you choose to look through your contacts, the app sends one-way hashes of their phone numbers, never names. The server compares them with members and doesn't store them; it only counts how many you checked each day, and forgets that after two days.
- Notifications: if you allow them, your device's push token.
- Goodreads imports: the file you upload is matched to books and becomes your entries; the uploaded rows are deleted a week after the import finishes.
What it doesn't do
No ads, no tracking across other apps or websites, no analytics services, and your information is never sold or shared with anyone for their own use.
Who sees what
Your friends in Blackletter see your reading: rankings, reviews, diary, shelves, passages and lists. Other members see only your name, handle, photo, who invited you and friends you share. Book pages show a club-wide average score, never who gave it.
Services Blackletter runs on
- Cloudflare hosts the app's server, database and photos, and processes network information such as IP addresses to deliver and protect it.
- Apple provides Sign in with Apple and delivers notifications.
- Open Library (the Internet Archive) supplies book details. Searches are sent from Blackletter's server; book covers load straight from Open Library, which sees your device's network address when they do.
How long it's kept
Everything stays until you delete it or your account. Deleting your account in Settings erases your account and everything you made, straight away. Sign-ins expire after 180 days without use, and read notifications are cleared after 180 days. Reports are kept as a moderation record, without the link to accounts that are gone. If the owner removes a member for breaking the community rules, only a one-way hash of their phone number and Apple ID is kept, so they can't rejoin.
Your choices
- Change your name, bio and photo, and which notifications you get, in Settings.
- Download everything you've made with Settings → Export my data.
- Delete your account with Settings → Delete account.
- Block anyone from their profile or a post's ••• menu.
Children
Blackletter isn't meant for children under 13 and doesn't knowingly keep information about them.
Changes and questions
If this policy changes, this page and its date will too. For questions or requests about your data, email support@aarushsah.com.