Privacy Policy (United States)

Version 1.5 — Effective date: 2026-11-08

The short version: BeyondRead is a local-first reading app. Your books, bookmarks, quotes and reading progress stay on your device — we cannot see them — unless you turn on Premium Voice for a book, which sends the text being read aloud to our narration provider (see §4). Three things talk to our server: the AI features and Premium Voice — only when you are signed in and have turned them on — and the Browse tab, our catalog of free books, when you browse it, search it or download from it. Using the Browse tab does not require an account and is not linked to you. The one exception is sharing a book you downloaded from Browse, which is noted under your account to apply the monthly sharing limit (§3). We do not sell your data, we do not show ads, and we do not track you across other apps or websites.

1. Who we are

BeyondRead (bundle id com.zhinengbooks.us) is developed and operated by Zhang Liu, an individual developer.

• Developer location: South Carolina, United States
• Servers for the US edition: United States (Tencent Cloud, Silicon Valley region)
• Contact: zhang3917@hotmail.com

2. What never leaves your device

The reader works without an account and without a network connection:

• The books you import (EPUB, PDF, MOBI) — stored only in the app's sandbox on your device. If you choose Premium Voice for a book, the sentences being read are sent for narration as described in §3 and §4; the book file itself is never uploaded.
• Bookmarks, quotes, reading positions, folders, reader settings.
• Your reading history. We have no analytics SDK and no advertising SDK.
• Your voice. "Hey Reader" and the questions you ask out loud are recognized on your device by Apple's on-device speech recognition. Audio is never sent to us or to any provider; only the recognized text of a question is sent, as an AI question (§3).
• Read-aloud with the System Voice uses Apple's speech synthesis on your device and sends nothing.

If you never sign in and never open the Browse tab, the app sends us nothing at all. What the Browse tab sends is described in §3.

3. What we collect, and why

Apart from the catalog requests described at the end of this list, we collect information only when you sign in and use the AI features or Premium Voice:

• Apple account identifier (the stable sub Apple issues for this app) — collected at Sign in with Apple, to recognize your account.
• Email address (may be Apple's private relay address if you chose "Hide My Email") — provided at your first Apple authorization only. Shown in Settings so you know which account you are in, and used to match support requests.
• Optional username — if you set one in Settings, as a second way to sign in to the same account.
• Password — if you set one. Stored only as a salted scrypt hash; we cannot read it.
• AI request content — the passage you selected, nearby context, your follow-up questions, and the book's title and author, each time you use "Ask AI". Sent to the AI model to produce the answer; retained as described in §6.
• AI Digest input — the book's table of contents and a short opening sample of each chapter (at most 200 characters per chapter), when a digest is generated. The digest is grounded in the real structure of the book. **The full text of your book is never uploaded.**
• Premium Voice text — when you listen with Premium Voice (including the free preview), the text of the sentences being read, and the text of AI answers read aloud, are sent to our server and relayed to the narration provider (§4) to produce audio. **We do not store this text.** The audio is kept only on your device.
• Premium Voice records — a one-way fingerprint of the book file (a SHA-256 hash; it cannot be turned back into the book), the voice you chose, how many seconds of audio were generated, the preview time used, and the narration purchases you made for that book, so that previews and purchases are counted correctly.
• Usage counters — how many AI calls and digests you used, to enforce plan quotas.
• Security records — IP address, request identifiers, timestamps, token counts and outcome of each AI call, for abuse prevention, billing integrity, and answering complaints about a specific AI output.
• Subscription tier and expiry — if you subscribe, to grant the features you paid for. Payment itself is handled entirely by Apple; we never see your payment details.
• Purchases — if you buy a subscription or an AI Top-Up pack, the signed transaction Apple gives the app, which we verify and record against your account, and the number of Top-Up credits you have left. When you start a purchase we pass your account's internal identifier (a random UUID, not your email or Apple ID) to Apple as the appAccountToken, so that the purchase is credited to the account that made it.
• Catalog requests (the Browse tab) — when you browse, search or download free books from the Browse tab: your search words and filters, the identifier of the book you download, the identifiers of the books whose cover images are shown, and the country code of your App Store storefront (copyright terms differ by country, so the catalog you see depends on it). Your own library — the books on your shelf — is never part of this. These requests work without an account; if you are signed in, they also carry your sign-in token, which we use only to check whether your account has extended catalog access — we do not record which account made a request. We keep only daily totals — how many searches, how many downloads of each title, which filters were used — with no account, no IP address and no device identifier attached. As with any web request, your IP address reaches our server in order to deliver the response; for catalog requests we do not store it. If you are signed in and share a book you downloaded from Browse (a Pro feature), we record that book's identifier and the month under your account so that the monthly sharing limit can be applied (§6 says how long we keep it). Books from your own files are never recorded.

We do not collect your name, phone number, contacts, location, photos, or device advertising identifiers. We do not use your content to train AI models.

4. AI processing, narration, and our providers

When you use "Ask AI" or "AI Digest", the content described above is sent to our server in the United States and relayed to Google LLC (United States), whose Gemini models generate the answer. We send Google only what is needed to answer: your selected passage, nearby context, your questions, and the book's title, author, table of contents and short chapter openings. Our server holds no conversation state; each request stands alone. Google processes this content as a service provider under the API terms that apply to our use of the Gemini API; its handling is described in Google's own terms and privacy documentation.

When you use Premium Voice, the text described in §3 is sent to our server in the United States and relayed to Alibaba Cloud (Qwen text-to-speech, Model Studio), whose servers for the service we use are in mainland China. Alibaba Cloud processes this text only to return the audio, as a service provider under the API terms that apply to our use of the service. Premium Voice is optional and asks for your consent the first time you choose it; if you never turn it on, no book text is sent to Alibaba Cloud.

The US edition uses no other AI or narration provider. Every AI-generated article carries a notice that it was generated by AI. AI output can be wrong. It is not professional advice (see the Terms of Use, §5).

5. Legal bases and purposes

We use the data in §3 to: provide the AI features you request; enforce plan quotas and prevent abuse (including quota fraud); maintain security and audit records; respond to complaints about specific AI outputs; and comply with legal obligations. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

6. Retention

• AI request records: your input and the AI's answer are stored encrypted; the IP address and the book title recorded with them are stored unencrypted. All four are kept for up to 3 months, then permanently scrubbed. What remains afterwards is minimal technical metadata (timestamps, token counts, model name, document type such as book or contract, outcome). It stays linked to your account until you delete it (§7), and can no longer show what you read or asked.
• Sessions: a signed-out session is revoked immediately and its record is deleted within 7 days.
• Account data (identifiers, email, username, password hash, counters): kept while your account exists; deleted when you delete your account (§7).
• Quota ledger: see §7 — one non-reversible hash, kept to protect the free allowance, at most until the end of the month in which you delete your account.
• Premium Voice records (§3): kept while your account exists, so that purchased narration stays available. Premium Voice text is not retained. The audio on your device is deleted when you delete the book or the app.
• Shared catalog books (§3): kept for the current and the previous month only, then deleted; deleted at once if you delete your account.

7. Deleting your data

• Local data: delete the app. Everything in §2 is gone; we never had it.
• Your account: Settings → Account → Delete Account, entirely in-app, no need to contact us. This deletes your account row, usage counters and subscription record, and asks Apple to revoke the app's authorization for your Apple ID.
• Three narrow exceptions, stated plainly: 1. AI request records within the retention window. They are kept for the remainder of the 3-month window for security and complaint-handling, but are immediately detached from your deleted account and are not used for anything else. They are scrubbed as described in §6. 2. One salted, non-reversible hash of your sign-in identity. It cannot be turned back into your Apple ID or email, and contains nothing that can contact you. Its only purpose is that if the same identity signs up again in the same calendar month, the allowance you already used that month is not issued a second time. It is kept with that month's usage counts and deleted automatically within a day after that month ends (US Eastern time) at the latest. 3. Records of AI top-up packs and narration you bought, with the link to you removed. Only Apple's transaction ID, the product, the unused balance or narration time, the book fingerprint and the seconds generated remain, so that the same receipt cannot be redeemed a second time on a new account. Nobody can use them. Preview records are deleted.

To exercise any request by email instead, write to zhang3917@hotmail.com from the email address associated with your sign-in (Apple's relay addresses work too). We respond within 30 days.

8. Your privacy choices and applicable U.S. privacy rights

Depending on your state (for example California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia), you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or obtain a copy of your personal information, and to opt out of "sales", "sharing" or targeted advertising. We voluntarily provide access, correction, and deletion options to all U.S. users — regardless of whether a particular state privacy law applies to us — through the in-app mechanisms and the email above. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined in those laws, so there is nothing to opt out of; for the same reason, browser "Global Privacy Control" signals have no effect on this app. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.

You can listen with the System Voice at any time, which keeps everything on your device. Turning AI features off in Settings also stops all Premium Voice requests (audio already on your device keeps playing).

9. Children

The app is intended for users 17 and older and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has used the AI features, contact us and we will delete the associated records.

10. Security

All traffic uses HTTPS. Retained AI content (your input and the AI's answer) is encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM) with keys held outside the database; the book title and IP address recorded with a request are not encrypted and are scrubbed together with it after 3 months (§6). Passwords are stored only as salted scrypt hashes. Session tokens are stored hashed; signing out revokes the session server-side immediately. No system is perfectly secure, but unencrypted copies of your input and the AI's answers do not sit in our database or backups.

11. Changes to this policy

If we change what we collect or who receives it, we will present the updated policy in the app and ask for your consent again before the AI features continue. A new optional feature that sends data to a new recipient (such as Premium Voice in version 1.3) asks for your consent separately, before it sends anything; the existing AI features are unchanged. Cosmetic edits do not trigger re-consent. Earlier versions are available on request.

12. Contact

• Email: zhang3917@hotmail.com (responses within 30 days)
• Developer: Zhang Liu, South Carolina, United States