Privacy Policy

Welcome to Books & Vocab. Books & Vocab is a reading and vocabulary app that pairs books with levelled word lists, definitions, memory hooks, and review. It is published by HeyGhoshi, an independent Australian app studio.

This page is the privacy policy for Books & Vocab only. Our other apps publish their own policies, because each of them handles data differently — the legal index links to all of them. What follows describes exactly what this app does.

When you tap to see what a word means, to get a memory hook for it, or to illustrate it, the app asks our servers, which pass that request to an AI provider. The request contains the word and the passage it appears in - never anything about you.

• What is sent: the word, and the passage from the book that the word appears in. When you ask for a memory hook or an illustration, the definition we already generated for that word is sent alongside it.
• When it is sent: only when you tap for a meaning, a memory hook, or an illustration. Simply reading a book sends nothing.
• Who receives it: a third-party AI service, acting on our instructions. Which provider handles a request can change over time, and this page stays current.
• What is never sent: your name, email address, account identifier, advertising identifier, device location, reading progress, or any page you have scanned.
• Caching: the definition, memory hook, or illustration that comes back is saved to our own content store against the book, not against you, so the next reader of the same book does not pay to generate it again. Those saved answers contain the book's words and nothing about you.

Because AI feedback is generated for a single request and is not attached to an account, there is no stored history of your requests for us to hold, sell, or disclose.

Reading positions, vocabulary lists, review schedules, and book sessions are stored on your device in the app's own database, not on our servers. An account changes only one thing: it lets your library follow you between devices.

• Your reading progress, saved words, and review history live in the app's own store on your device.
• Scanned pages are read on your device. The photograph is never uploaded, and it is discarded once the words have been taken from it.
• If you do not create an account, nothing about your reading reaches us at all.
• If you back up your device through iCloud Backup or Android system backup, your local Books & Vocab data follows your system backup settings.

Books & Vocab is one of two of our apps that offers an account. This section explains exactly what that involves, and it applies only if you choose to sign in. You can use the app without one.

What we hold

• Your email address — this is how you sign in, whether you use Sign in with Apple or Google. If you use Apple's private relay, we receive the relay address rather than your real one.
• An internal account identifier — a number that links your records together. It is not your email address, and it is not given to advertisers.
• Your display name, if your sign-in provider chooses to share one.
• The books you ask us to add — the ISBN, the title and author you searched for, the date you asked, and whether we have added it yet. There is a limit of four requests per month.
• A push notification token, if you allow notifications, and a subscription to a notification topic for each book you have asked for.

What we do not collect

• your reading progress, saved words, or review history — those stay on your device;
• the pages you scan, or the text taken from them;
• your contacts, photographs, location, or microphone;
• your payment details — Apple handles purchases and we never see your card;
• your device's advertising identifier, in connection with your account. We do not ask for tracking permission in this app at all.

To provide its features, Books & Vocab may ask for the following device capabilities. Each one is requested by iOS at the moment it is first needed, and refusing any of them leaves the rest of the app working.

Four measurement services sit in the app, covering app analytics, conversion measurement, product analytics, and advertising measurement. None of them is sent your password, your scans, or the passages sent for AI answers — but one of them can record what is on screen while you use the app, and that recording can include whatever you are reading at the time. Its entry below explains this.

* You can change your tracking choice at any time in iOS Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Tracking. We do not sell your data, and we never send an advertising partner the content of anything you create in Books & Vocab.

Here is every kind of outside service the app contacts, and why.

• Our cloud platform — holds your account, signs you in, runs the word and illustration lookups, and delivers notifications.
• Our file storage — serves the book word lists, and stores the definitions, memory hooks, and illustrations that have been generated for a book.
• Our AI providers — they turn the word and passage you asked about into a definition, a memory hook, or an illustration prompt. We may use more than one, and which one handles a request can change.
• Public book-metadata services — used to look up a book's details when you search for one by title or ISBN.
• A public cover-image service — some book cover images are loaded directly from a public image network, so that request reaches that service.
• Measurement services — the app analytics, conversion, product analytics and advertising measurement described above.
• Apple — App Store distribution and in-app purchases, handled entirely by Apple.

We do not sell personal data. Beyond the services listed above, nothing about you is shared with anyone.

* Third-party services that handle your data publish their own privacy policies, and Apple — which handles App Store distribution and purchases — is one of them: apple.com/legal/privacy.

Books & Vocab is rated for general audiences (Education) and is not directed to children under 13.

Books & Vocab is intended for students, and an account should be created by a parent, guardian, or teacher. Because we collect an email address, we do not knowingly let a child under 13 create an account. If you believe one has been created, contact us and we will delete it and everything attached to it.

Depending on what Books & Vocab keeps, your control works like this:

• Delete your account: open Settings in the app and choose Delete Account. That removes your account, the books you requested, any free-access grant, and this device's notification registration; the Sign in with Apple credential is revoked with Apple as well, and your progress is wiped from the device. The shared book entries stay, because other readers use them. If you can no longer sign in, email us from the address on the account and we will delete it for you.
• Use it without an account: you can read and review words entirely on your device with no account, in which case we hold nothing about you.
• Access and correction: email us to ask for a copy of what is held against your account, or to correct it.
• Clear your progress: deleting a book, or clearing the app's storage, removes your local progress immediately. Uninstalling the app removes all of it.

Depending on where you live you may also have rights under the GDPR or the CCPA — to object to processing, or to receive your data in a portable format. Email us and we will action the request within 30 days.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect improvements in Books & Vocab or legal updates. Any change is published on this page with a new "Effective Date" shown at the top.

This version is effective from September 23, 2026. Earlier versions are available on request from the address in the next section.

Have a question about how Books & Vocab handles your information, or need assistance with the app? We are happy to help.