Privacy Policy

Last updated: March 6, 2026

1. Information We Collect

Account Information

When you create an account, we collect your email address, username, and display name. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email, and profile photo from Google.

Profile Information

You may voluntarily provide a bio, avatar, reading preferences, and social links. Authors may provide additional information such as website URLs and publisher affiliations.

Usage Data

We collect information about how you interact with SageChimp, including pages visited, books browsed, reviews written, and features used. This helps us improve the Platform and personalize your experience.

Survey & Preference Data

If you complete the reading preference survey, your responses are used to generate AI-powered book recommendations. This data is stored securely and processed via OpenAI and Pinecone.

2. How We Use Your Information

  • To provide and maintain the Platform
  • To personalize your experience (AI recommendations, feed curation)
  • To process payments via Stripe
  • To send transactional emails (verification, password reset, notifications)
  • To detect and prevent fraud, spam, and abuse
  • To improve the Platform through analytics

3. Data Sharing

We do not sell your personal data. We share data with the following categories of service providers:

  • Authentication: Clerk (account management)
  • Payments: Stripe (payment processing)
  • AI Services: OpenAI (recommendations, content moderation), Pinecone (similarity search)
  • Cloud Storage: AWS S3 (file uploads)
  • Email: Amazon SES or Resend (transactional emails)
  • Hosting: Render (server infrastructure)

4. Data Retention

We retain your data for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, your personal information will be removed within 30 days, though anonymized contributions (reviews, forum posts) may persist to maintain community content integrity.

5. Cookies

SageChimp uses essential cookies for authentication and session management. We also use functional cookies to remember your preferences. We do not use tracking cookies for advertising purposes.

6. Your Rights

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the following rights:

  • Access: Request a copy of the data we hold about you
  • Correction: Update inaccurate personal information
  • Deletion: Request deletion of your account and data
  • Export: Download your library data via the Export feature
  • Objection: Opt out of certain data processing activities

7. Children's Privacy

SageChimp is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn that we have collected such information, we will take steps to delete it.

8. Security

We use industry-standard security measures including encryption in transit (TLS), hashed passwords, and secure authentication tokens. However, no system is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

9. International Users

SageChimp is operated from the United States. If you access the Platform from outside the US, your data may be transferred to and processed in the United States.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes via the Platform or email.

11. Contact

For privacy-related inquiries, contact us at privacy@sagechimp.com.