Privacy policy
Last updated: 04 October 2026
We’ve written this to be clear and short. It explains what we collect, why, who we share it with and your rights. We collect as little as we can, especially about children.
Who we are
ReadWisely is the “controller” of your personal data under UK data protection law (the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018).
Questions about your data: If you have any questions about how we use your personal data or wish to exercise your data protection rights, please contact us through the Contact Us page on our website.
What we collect
About you (the adult)
- Account details: your name, email address and a scrambled (hashed) version of your password. We can’t see your password.
- How you heard about us, if you choose to tell us.
- Your settings, such as light or dark mode and whether you want the weekly email.
- Plan and payment status: which plan you’re on and whether it’s active. Card details are handled by our payment provider, Stripe; we never see or store them.
- Problems you report with a guide, including any comment you write.
- Technical information needed to run the service securely, such as your IP address in our server logs and a sign-in cookie.
About your child
- A nickname (not their full name) and the month and year they were born, so guides suit their age.
- Their reading: the books on their bookshelf, which they’ve finished, reading goals and the reading days you’ve marked as reading together.
- Reading checks: for each question, whether you noted they “got it”, “partly” got it or weren’t sure.
Children don’t use ReadWisely themselves and we never ask for information directly from a child. You choose what to record.
How we use it, and our legal reasons
- To provide the service you’ve signed up for: your account, children’s bookshelves, guides, progress and family sharing. Legal basis: contract.
- To take payment and manage your plan. Legal basis: contract, and legal obligation for financial records.
- To send emails about your account, such as confirming your email, resetting your password, your trial ending, payment problems and replies to your reports. Legal basis: contract.
- To send the weekly reading summary. Legal basis: legitimate interests in helping you build a reading habit. You can turn it off at any time from the email or your account.
- To keep the service secure and working well, and to improve guides using reports you send. Legal basis: legitimate interests.
- To understand how people find us, using the optional “How did you hear about us?” answer, counted together. Legal basis: legitimate interests.
- To see how the website is used with Google Analytics, only if you accept analytics cookies. Legal basis: consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
We don’t sell your data, show adverts, or use it to build marketing profiles. We don’t make decisions about you or your child by automated means that have legal or similarly significant effects.
How guides are written
Guides are written with the help of an AI service. We send it only the book’s title, author and description, and an age group (for example “ages 6–8”). We never send your name, your email, your child’s nickname or anything about your child’s reading. Your child’s nickname is added to guides on our own systems, after they’re written.
Who we share data with
We use these service providers (“processors”), who may only use your data to provide their service to us:
- Hosting: our hosting provider, which stores our database and runs the service.
- Payments: Stripe, for subscriptions and payments.
- Email: our email provider, to send our emails.
- Website analytics: Google (Google Analytics), only if you accept analytics cookies. See “Cookies and storage” below.
- Security: Cloudflare, which protects the website and runs the “not a robot” check on our forms.
To look up books and covers, our servers ask Open Library (run by the Internet Archive). We send them your search words and book identifiers only; your browser doesn’t contact them and nothing about you is sent.
If you share your account with family members, they can see your children’s information. We may also share data if the law requires it.
Where a provider processes data outside the UK, we make sure there are appropriate safeguards, such as UK adequacy regulations or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement.
How long we keep it
- Your account and your children’s information: until you delete your account, then deleted straight away from our live systems and from backups within [backup retention period, e.g. 35 days].
- Copies of emails we’ve sent: 30 days.
- Unused password-reset and email links: up to 3 days; family invitations: 14 days.
- Payment records: Stripe keeps these as the law requires (usually 6 years).
Cookies and storage
Essential: one cookie keeps you signed in, and one recognises a device you’ve used before so we can warn you about sign-ins from new ones. We also save a few settings in your browser, such as your light or dark choice, your place in the welcome tour, when you last used the app (so we can sign you out after a while for your security) and your cookie choice. These are needed for the service to work, so we don’t ask first.
Analytics (optional): only if you choose “Accept analytics”, we use Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages are used, so we can improve ReadWisely. It sets cookies named _ga and _ga_… that last up to 2 years. Before anything is sent, we remove anything that could identify you or your child from page addresses: Google sees, for example, “a guide page”, never your child’s nickname, their books or your email. We’ve turned off Google’s advertising features and signals, and Google Analytics doesn’t store full IP addresses. You can change your mind at any time with Cookie settings at the bottom of every page; saying no removes the cookies.
Your rights
You have the right to:
- Get a copy of your data. Use “Download my data” on your Account page, or contact us.
- Correct your data. You can change most things yourself in the app.
- Delete your data. Use “Delete account” on your Account page. This deletes your children’s information too.
- Object to or restrict how we use your data, and stop the weekly email at any time.
- Move your data to another service, using the download.
Contact us at [privacy contact email address] about any of these. If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk, though we’d appreciate the chance to put things right first.
Keeping data safe
We protect your data with encryption in transit (HTTPS), hashed passwords, limits on sign-in attempts and strict checks that each family can only see its own information.
Changes
If we make important changes to this policy, we’ll tell you by email or in the app before they take effect.