FinnBook

Privacy policy

Last updated 20 September 2026

FinnBook is an ebook reader for iPad, made by Maziar Rezvani. This policy covers the FinnBook app and this website. It is written to be read, not to be survived, so it says plainly what leaves your iPad and what does not.

We never receive a single thing about what you read. Not titles, authors, series, tags, file names, the addresses of your Calibre servers, your searches, your bookmarks, or your place in a book. If you turn on iCloud sync, those go to your own iCloud account — never to us. We cannot read them, lose them or hand them over.

What stays on your device

Your library and everything about it — the book files themselves, covers, reading positions, bookmarks, notes, themes, goals and your reading history — are stored on your iPad. We operate no account system. There is nothing to sign up for and no password to give us.

What we do collect

One thing: a small set of anonymised product counts, so we can tell whether features work. This is the complete list of events, and there are no others.

Worth separating two things that share a word: the reading statistics FinnBook shows you — your hours, your streak, which books took the time — are worked out on your iPad and stay there. They are never part of what is sent. Nothing below mentions them because we never see them.

EventWhat it carries
App openedNothing else. It is the denominator that makes the rest meaningful.
Import finishedHow many books succeeded and how many failed. Counts only.
Calibre connection testedWhether it worked, and if not, the kind of failure — unauthorised, timed out, TLS, server, other. Never the message, never the address.
Calibre download finishedThe file format: epub or mobi.
Paywall shownWhether you already subscribe.
Purchase completedWhether the plan was monthly or yearly. No amount, no transaction, no storefront.
Book openedWhether it opened, whether it was the first time, and whether it came from an import or from Calibre.

Every event also carries the app version and a random identifier generated on your device the first time you open FinnBook. That identifier is not your Apple Account, not your device ID, not an advertising identifier, and is not derived from anything about you or your iPad. It exists only so that two events from the same install can be counted as one install. Delete the app and it is gone for good.

We also switch off the location lookup our analytics provider would otherwise perform: every event is sent with the IP address blanked and geolocation explicitly disabled. We do not know where you are.

Turning it off

The switch is on by default. We would rather say so here than have you find out later: an opt-in default answers none of the questions this exists for, because the people who tick a box are not the people whose import silently failed. Sending as little as possible is the honest mitigation, which is why the list above is as short as it is.

To switch it off, open Settings → Privacy in FinnBook and turn off Help improve FinnBook. It takes effect immediately — nothing is queued on the device, so there is no backlog to send. The same list is repeated in the app next to the switch.

What we do not do

iCloud sync

If you turn on iCloud sync, your library, reading positions, bookmarks and — if you choose — your book files are copied to your own private iCloud account, so your iPads can keep each other up to date.

That data goes to Apple, under Apple's privacy policy, in the private database of your account. We have no access to it. It counts against your iCloud storage, not ours. Switch the feature off and nothing further is copied. Sync is off unless you turn it on.

Connections FinnBook makes on your behalf

Your Calibre server

When you connect a Calibre content server, your iPad talks to your server directly. Nothing is proxied through us and we never learn the address. If the server needs a username and password, they are held in the iOS Keychain on your device and sent only to that server.

Project Gutenberg

Searching or downloading from Project Gutenberg sends that request to Project Gutenberg, who will see it as any website sees a visitor. We are not in the middle of it. See their privacy policy.

Purchases

FinnBook Pro is sold through Apple's In-App Purchase. Apple handles the payment and tells the app only whether a subscription is active. We never see your payment details — no card number, no billing address, no name.

Who else touches the data

One processor: PostHog, which stores the product counts described above, on servers in the European Union. They process it on our instructions and for no purpose of their own. Their policy is at posthog.com/privacy.

Apple is involved as described above, for iCloud and for purchases. That is the entire list. Nobody else receives anything, and nothing is ever sold.

How long it is kept

Analytics events are kept for up to 12 months and then deleted. Because they carry nothing that identifies you, they cannot be traced back to a person after they are sent. Everything else lives on your device or in your iCloud account, for as long as you keep it.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to ask what data is held about you, to have it corrected or deleted, or to object to how it is used. In practice, for FinnBook:

Our legal basis for the product counts, where UK or EU law applies, is legitimate interest in knowing whether the app works — narrowed by sending as little as possible and by giving you a switch.

Children

FinnBook is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect anything from them. There is nothing in the app that asks a user who they are.

This website

finnbook.app is a handful of static pages served by Cloudflare Pages. There are no cookies, no analytics and no trackers on it. Cloudflare keeps standard server and security logs, which is outside our control; see Cloudflare's privacy policy.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected, the date at the top changes and the app's release notes will say so. Material changes will not be applied quietly.

Contact

Questions about any of this: support@finnbook.app.