Privacy Policy

Scrovel (“Scrovel”, “we”, “us” or “our”) is a reading and publishing platform. This Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information when you use the Scrovel website at scrovel.vercel.app, the Scrovel Android app, and related services (together, the “Service”).

It applies to visitors who browse the feed, readers who create an account to save novels and track their reading, and authors who publish books and chapters.

It does not apply to third-party websites, apps or services that you reach through Scrovel, including Google, Supabase, Vercel, app stores, or websites that host cover images. Those services have their own privacy policies.

For the purposes of the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Scrovel is the data controller for the processing described in this policy. You can contact us at developer.prasant@gmail.com.

Account information

When you create an account, we collect your email address and authentication credentials. Passwords are handled by our authentication provider, Supabase, and are stored in hashed form; we do not have access to your plaintext password.

If you choose “Continue with Google”, Google authenticates you and shares basic account information with us, such as your name, email address and profile picture. What Google shares is controlled by your Google account settings and Google’s privacy policy.

Profile information

We collect the display name and handle you choose, and, if provided, an avatar image URL and your theme preference. Your display name and handle are public. Your email address is not shown publicly.

Content you create

If you publish, we collect the information you put into your books and chapters: titles, synopses, cover image URLs, status and visibility settings, chapter titles, and chapter text, including drafts. You choose what to publish and which books are public, unlisted or private.

Scrovel accepts a cover image URL rather than an uploaded image file. The image itself remains on the third-party host you link to, and that host may receive technical information such as your IP address when the image is loaded.

Communications

If you contact us, report content, request account deletion or send a copyright notice, we collect the information in your message, including your email address and any attachments or evidence you provide.

We do not ask for your phone number, precise location, contacts, payment card details, or government identification to create an account or use the reader features. Please do not send sensitive personal information in a support request unless we specifically ask for it.

When you use the Service, we and our infrastructure providers generate and record limited technical and usage information:

• Account activity: the novels you save, the chapter and paragraph where you stopped reading (so “Continue reading” works), your theme choice, and the timestamps of those actions.
• Device and connection data: IP address, browser and device type, operating system, referring page, requested URL, timestamps, and error or security log data.
• Authentication data: session identifiers and tokens needed to keep you signed in and to authorize requests to the Scrovel API.

The Android app does not request access to your precise location, contacts, calendar, camera, microphone, photo library or health data. It uses internet access to communicate with the Scrovel API. If you use the system share sheet to share a novel, the app you choose receives the link and handles it under its own privacy policy.

We do not currently use third-party advertising networks, behavioural analytics, or cross-site tracking technologies. For details, see Advertising, analytics and tracking.

Scrovel uses a small number of cookies and local storage entries:

• Authentication cookies (essential): set by Supabase to keep you signed in, refresh your session, and protect your account. Blocking these cookies prevents sign-in and other account features from working.
• Theme preference (functional): a scrovel-theme cookie, a matching local storage entry on the web, and a local preference in the Android app remember whether you chose dark or light mode. The web cookie lasts up to one year.

The Android app also stores your signed-in session and theme preference in the app’s local storage so you do not have to sign in every time. Signing out clears the session on that device.

We do not use advertising cookies, social media pixels, or cross-site tracking cookies. You can delete or block cookies in your browser settings; clearing site data also resets your saved theme. Because we do not track you across sites, there is no separate “Do Not Track” signal to honour.

We use personal information to:

• create and manage your account, authenticate you, and keep your session secure;
• provide the feed, search, reader, saved shelf, reading-position tracking, profiles, publishing tools and sharing features;
• remember your preferences, including dark or light mode, and sync them to your profile when you are signed in;
• display the public content you choose to publish, including to visitors, search engines and link previews;
• operate, maintain, troubleshoot and improve the Service, including understanding aggregate usage and fixing errors;
• protect the Service and its users from fraud, abuse, spam, infringement, security incidents and violations of our Terms of Service;
• respond to support requests, reports, copyright notices and data rights requests; and
• comply with applicable law, legal process and our own legal obligations.

We do not use your personal information for automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects, and we do not build advertising profiles about you.

We may use aggregated or de-identified information that cannot reasonably identify you to understand how the Service is used and to improve it.

Where data protection law requires a legal basis, we rely on the following:

• Performance of a contract: processing needed to create your account, provide the reader and publishing features, and deliver the Service you requested.
• Legitimate interests: keeping the Service secure, preventing abuse, debugging, improving features and protecting the rights of Scrovel and its users, where those interests are not overridden by your rights.
• Consent: where we ask for it, such as optional communications or non-essential technologies. You can withdraw consent at any time without affecting processing that already took place.
• Legal obligation: processing needed to comply with tax, record-keeping, law enforcement or other legal requirements.

If you have questions about the legal basis we rely on, contact us at developer.prasant@gmail.com.

We do not sell, rent or trade personal information. We share it only in the limited circumstances below.

Service providers

We use trusted providers to run Scrovel. They process information on our behalf or as independent controllers for their own services:

• Supabase provides authentication and the database that stores accounts, profiles, books, chapters, saved books and reading history. See Supabase’s privacy policy.
• Vercel hosts the website and the Scrovel API and processes request logs and technical data. See Vercel’s privacy policy.
• Google provides Google Sign-In if you choose it, and Google Play distributes the Android app. See Google’s privacy policy.

Public content

If you publish a book publicly, your display name, handle and the content you published are visible to anyone, including search engines and link-preview services. Your email address and private activity are not included. See Public content and sharing.

Legal and safety reasons

We may disclose information if we believe in good faith that it is necessary to comply with a law, regulation, court order or valid legal request; to protect the rights, property or safety of Scrovel, our users or the public; to investigate fraud or security issues; or to enforce our Terms of Service.

Business changes

If Scrovel is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization or sale of assets, information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will require the recipient to honour this policy and will notify you if your information becomes subject to a different policy.

With your direction or consent

We may share information when you ask us to, for example when you use the share sheet to send a novel link to another app or person.

Scrovel is a publishing platform, so some information is public by design:

• Your display name, handle and optional avatar are shown next to books you publish.
• A public book, its synopsis, cover image and published chapters can be viewed by anyone, indexed by search engines, and previewed when someone shares a link.
• Draft, private and unlisted books are not shown in the public feed and are visible only to you while signed in.

Your email address is never displayed publicly. Your saved shelf and reading position are private to your account; authors cannot see who saved their books.

When you share a link through another app, that app and its recipients may copy or retain the link and the preview. Once content has been copied, indexed or shared by others, we cannot guarantee that deleting it from Scrovel will remove every copy. Please think carefully before publishing personal or sensitive information in a story.

The Service relies on third-party infrastructure and may contain links to other websites, including author-provided cover image hosts. When you follow an external link or load an external image, the destination may receive your IP address, browser information and the page you came from. We do not control those services and are not responsible for their content or privacy practices.

If you install the Android app from Google Play, Google may collect installation, crash and device information under its own policies. If you sign in with Google, Google handles your authentication under its own policies. The Android app may also fetch fonts from Google Fonts, which receives standard request information such as your IP address and device type. Please review the privacy policy of any third-party service you use.

Scrovel is accessible worldwide, and our service providers may process information in countries other than your own, including the United States and the European Union. Those countries may have data protection laws that differ from the laws where you live.

Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards for international transfers, such as standard contractual clauses or an equivalent mechanism offered by our providers. You can contact us for more information about the safeguards used for your information.

We keep personal information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide the Service. Specific retention periods depend on the type of information:

• Account, profile and published content: until you delete the content, delete your account, or ask us to delete it.
• Saved books and reading history: until you remove them, replace them, or delete your account.
• Support, report and legal records: for as long as needed to resolve the matter and meet legal, security or record-keeping obligations.
• Server and security logs: for a limited period consistent with security, fraud prevention and troubleshooting needs.
• Backups: residual copies may remain in encrypted backups for a limited period, typically no longer than 30 days, before being overwritten or deleted. We may retain information longer if required by law or to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

When information is no longer needed, we delete it or de-identify it. Aggregated or de-identified information that cannot reasonably be linked to you may be kept indefinitely.

We use technical and organizational measures designed to protect personal information, including HTTPS/TLS for data in transit, authentication through Supabase, database row-level security that limits access to the owner of each record, and restricted access to production systems.

Passwords are hashed by our authentication provider and are not stored in plaintext. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, however, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. If we become aware of a breach affecting your personal information, we will notify you and the relevant authorities as required by applicable law.

You are responsible for keeping your password and Google account secure and for signing out on shared devices.

Depending on where you live, you may have some or all of the following rights:

• Access and portability: request a copy of the personal information we hold about you in a portable format.
• Correction: ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete information.
• Deletion: ask us to delete your account and personal information, subject to legal exceptions.
• Restriction and objection: ask us to restrict or object to certain processing, including processing based on legitimate interests.
• Withdraw consent: withdraw any consent you gave, without affecting processing that already occurred.
• Complaint: complain to your local data protection authority. If you are in the EEA or UK, you can contact the supervisory authority in your country.

California residents: you have the right to know what personal information we collect, use and disclose; to delete it; to correct it; to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information; to limit the use of sensitive personal information; and not to be discriminated against for exercising these rights. We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, and we do not use sensitive personal information for purposes that require a right to limit. You may use an authorized agent to submit a request; we may ask for verification.

India: if you are in India, you may have rights under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, including access, correction, erasure and grievance redressal, and the right to withdraw consent. You can reach our grievance contact at developer.prasant@gmail.com.

To exercise a right, email developer.prasant@gmail.com from the address linked to your account. We may need to verify your identity before acting. We aim to respond within 30 days, and will tell you if we need more time or if an exception applies.

You can change your theme at any time in Settings, remove saved novels from your Saved shelf, and sign out from the sidebar or Settings.

You can request deletion of your Scrovel account and its personal information at any time. Full instructions are on our account deletion page.

To start a request, email developer.prasant@gmail.com from the email address associated with your account, using the subject “Account deletion request”. If you signed up with Google, use the Google email address you signed in with. Never send your password.

When we delete an account, we delete the account record, profile, published and draft books, chapters, saved books, reading history and theme preference, unless we are required to keep something for legal, security or fraud-prevention reasons. Public book links will stop working. Encrypted backup copies may remain for up to 30 days before being overwritten.

Uninstalling the Android app or clearing your browser data does not delete your Scrovel account. You must submit a deletion request or delete your individual content.

Scrovel is not directed to children under 13, or under the minimum age at which digital consent can be given in your country (for example, 16 in parts of the EEA). We do not knowingly collect personal information from children below that age.

If you are under 18, you may use Scrovel only with the involvement and consent of a parent or legal guardian. If you believe a child has provided personal information to Scrovel, contact us at developer.prasant@gmail.com and we will take appropriate steps to delete it.

The current version of Scrovel does not include third-party advertising SDKs, behavioural analytics SDKs, or cross-site tracking pixels. We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it to build advertising profiles.

Our hosting and authentication providers may keep standard server logs for security and reliability, as described above. These logs are not used by us for behavioural advertising.

If we introduce advertising, analytics or other tracking in the future, we will update this policy first and, where required, ask for your consent before using non-essential technologies.

We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes to the Service, our providers or applicable law. When we do, we will update the “Last updated” date at the top of this page.

If a change materially affects how we use your personal information, we will provide a prominent notice on the website or in the app, and where required, ask for your consent before the change takes effect. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date means you acknowledge the updated policy.

Scrovel is responsible for the processing described in this policy. If you have a question, concern or request about privacy, contact:

Email: developer.prasant@gmail.com

We aim to respond within 30 days. If you are in the EEA or UK and are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to your local supervisory authority. If you are in India, you may also have the right to complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

For copyright complaints, see the copyright section of our Terms. For account deletion, see Delete your account.