Afterword — Privacy Policy

Last updated: 24 September 2026

Afterword is an app for keeping the books you have read, in the order you loved them, and following friends who do the same. It is run by Jeffrey Ma ("Afterword", "we"). This policy says what the app collects, why, who else sees it, how long it is kept, and what you can do about it.

Where Afterword is offered

Afterword is offered only to people in the United States, and it is not offered anywhere else. Your information is stored and processed in the United States.

What we collect

Account. Your email address and a password, held by Amazon Cognito. The password is never stored in a form we can read. Your email is used to sign you in, to send a code confirming it is yours when you join, and to send a reset code if you forget your password. It is never shown to other readers and never used for marketing. When you create your account we record which version of the Terms of Use you agreed to and when.

Your date of birth. When you sign up we ask for your date of birth, to check that you are at least 13 and, in time, to wish you a happy birthday. We keep it, and it is never shown to other readers. Readers who joined before we asked are asked once, the next time they open the app.

Profile. The first name you give, the username (handle) you choose, and, if you add them, a line about yourself, a profile picture, and your handles on Instagram, X and TikTok. Your account also has an internal user ID. Your name, handle, bio, picture and social handles are visible to every signed-in reader. Your profile picture is stored at a public web address: anyone who has that address can open the picture, even without an account and even if your profile is private.

Your phone number (optional). If you add your number on arrival or on Edit Profile, we keep it, with a salted hash of it, so friends who have your number in their contacts can find you. It is never shown to anyone. You can remove it on Edit Profile at any time.

Finding friends from your contacts (optional). If you allow the app to read your contacts, it reads the phone numbers and email addresses in your address book — not names, not anything else — and sends them to our server, a few hundred at a time and up to a limit each day. The server turns each one into a salted hash, compares it with the members who can be found that way, answers which members matched, and keeps nothing of what you sent. These numbers and addresses can belong to people who are not Afterword members; they are used only for that comparison and are not stored. The app reads your contacts again when you open the people-to-follow list, so friends who joined since show up. You can turn contacts access off at any time in the iPhone's Settings.

Being found by your email. So that friends who have your address can find you, your own sign-in email is kept as a salted hash for matching, once you have verified that address. A private profile is only ever offered to readers you already follow.

Reading. The books you add, how far through them you are, whether you finished them, your reaction to each, where you ranked them, reviews you write (up to 5,000 characters), and the books you choose to hide from others. If you import from Goodreads, the books, star ratings, reviews and dates in your export become part of your library.

Social. Who you follow and who follows you, follow requests, likes and comments on readers' entries, @mentions, the book clubs you found or join and the notes you post in them, books and profiles you send to another reader with a message, readers you block, and reports you file (a report keeps a copy of the words reported).

Notifications. If you allow notifications, Apple gives the app a push token for your device, which we store so we can send you notifications. The text of a notification, which can quote a comment, review, club note or a message someone sent you, passes through Apple's push service.

Bug reports. If you send one, we keep what you wrote with your app version and build, your device model, your iOS version and the screen you were on.

Copyright notices. If you send one, we keep it, and we may send a copy, with your name and contact details, to the reader whose post it concerns, as the law expects. If one is sent about your post, we keep it with your account.

Server logs. Our servers log the requests your app makes — which feature, your user ID, the time and how long it took — to keep the service working. Amazon Web Services also sees your IP address when your phone connects.

Invitations. Afterword is invite-only. The code you joined with, and the email address you used with it, are recorded so a code cannot be used more times than it was meant for. If you join the waiting list on our website, we keep your email address and the date to send you a code.

What we do not collect

No location. No names from your contacts. No advertising identifiers. No analytics, advertising or tracking SDKs. We do not sell your personal information or share it for advertising. What we may share with publishers is aggregated and de-identified, as described under *Aggregate reading insights* below.

Who can see what

• Public profile (the default): any signed-in reader can see your profile, your shelves and rankings, your rating spread and your recent activity. Your finished books and reviews appear in the feeds of readers who follow you.
• Private profile: other readers see your name, handle, picture, bio and counts (books read, followers, following, your place on the leaderboard). Your shelves, reviews and activity are visible only to readers you approve.
• Hidden rankings: a book you hide stays ranked for you and counts, without your name, in averages and totals. It is left out of every feed, of your lists as others see them, and of what friends are shown about a book.
• Blocking: a reader you block cannot see your shelves, reviews, comments or club notes, and you cannot see theirs. They are not told.
• Clubs: notes in a club are visible to its members, each only up to the page they have read.

Who else receives information

• Amazon Web Services hosts Afterword: the database, sign-in (Amazon Cognito), the servers, file storage and email (Amazon SES). Your data is stored and processed in the United States.
• Apple delivers push notifications.
• Book services our server asks. When you search, scan a barcode or import, our server asks Google Books and Open Library about books. It sends what you searched for or the book's ISBN, and nothing that identifies you. Book lists come from The New York Times Best Sellers, and author biographies and some book facts from Wikipedia, Wikidata and BookBrainz; these are sent nothing about you.
• Services your phone contacts directly. Your phone loads book covers from Open Library and Google, so they see your IP address and which cover was asked for, but not who you are on Afterword. When you tap Buy, your phone asks Bookshop.org whether it has a page for the book's ISBN and opens that page, or its search for the book, in an in-app browser, or hands Amazon's link to the Amazon app or Safari; those stores see your visit as any website would. When you import from Goodreads, Goodreads' own website opens in the app, and signing in there is between you and Goodreads (and Amazon, if you sign in with Amazon); we receive only the export file, read it, and discard it.
• Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate and a Bookshop.org affiliate, Afterword earns from qualifying purchases. The stores know a visit came through Afterword's link; they do not learn your Afterword account from us.
• We may disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect readers or the service.

Aggregate reading insights

We may create aggregated, de-identified information from the reading on Afterword and share it with, or sell it to, publishers, authors, booksellers and others in the book trade. For example: how readers who loved one book rank another, which genres and themes are rising, or how a book's scores compare with others like it. This is how we plan to pay for Afterword without ads.

What such a report can contain:

• Totals, averages, rankings and trends across many readers. No figure is drawn from fewer than 50 readers.
• Books, authors, genres and themes. Never a reader.

What it never contains:

• your name, handle, email, phone number, picture, user ID, date of birth or anything else that identifies you;
• your reviews, comments, club notes or messages, quoted or summarised as yours;
• a list of what any one reader has read, ranked or saved, even without a name on it;
• anything from readers under 18.

Books you hide count in these figures as they count, without your name, in Afterword's own averages. Readers with private profiles count too, the same way.

We keep this information in de-identified form, we do not try to re-identify anyone from it, and anyone we share it with must agree in writing not to try either. Aggregated, de-identified information is not personal information, so sharing it is not a "sale" of personal information under state privacy laws. If we ever wanted to share information about you as an individual, we would ask for your permission first, in the app, and it would be off unless you turned it on.

How long we keep it

• Your account and everything in it: until you delete your account.
• Server logs: 30 days.
• Cached answers from book services: 1 day, and they contain nothing that identifies you.
• Push jobs: removed within a day.
• Database backups: 7 days. Something you delete can remain in a backup until it expires.
• Waiting-list addresses: until you ask us to remove yours.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account from the You tab, under Delete account. This removes your profile and picture, your library, rankings and reviews, your follows in both directions, your likes, comments and club notes, your blocks, your phone number and contact-matching data, your push tokens, and then your sign-in account. It happens immediately and cannot be undone.

What remains:

• notifications you caused in other readers' inboxes are removed with your account;
• a club you founded passes to its longest-standing member, with the other members' notes kept;
• reports you filed, and reports others filed about you, are kept without your name, so that moderation records are not erased;
• the record that your invite code was used, without your email address;
• bug reports you sent, without your name;
• copies in backups, until they expire within 7 days, and server logs, until they expire within 30.

Your rights

You can see and correct most of your information in the app, and delete all of it by deleting your account. To ask for a copy of your data, or anything else about your privacy, write to jeffzma2000@gmail.com.

Security

Your password is handled by Amazon Cognito. Everything between the app and our servers is encrypted in transit, the database is encrypted at rest and not reachable from the internet, and database rules decide who can read each row, so that one reader cannot read or change another's private information.

Cookies and the website

The website joinafterword.com sets no cookies. The in-app Goodreads page keeps Goodreads' cookies on your phone so you don't have to sign in again, and they are cleared when you sign out of Afterword.

Children

Afterword is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.

• We ask for a date of birth before anything else. If it shows that you are under 13, sign-up stops there and nothing is stored on our servers. The phone keeps a note that sign-up was refused on it, so that it can't be tried again with a different date.
• We keep your date of birth and never show it to other readers, as described under *Your date of birth* above.
• An account we learn belongs to someone under 13 is suspended, and then deleted. If you believe an account belongs to a child under 13, report the profile in the app (… → Report → Appears to be under 13) or email jeffzma2000@gmail.com.
• If you are between 13 and 17, you may use Afterword only with a parent's or guardian's permission (see the Terms of Use).

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will update the date above and tell you in the app before the change takes effect. We will not use information we already hold in a materially different way without your consent.

Contact

Questions about privacy: jeffzma2000@gmail.com, or see the support page.