Privacy Policy

Effective date: July 1, 2026. Last updated: July 1, 2026.

Our privacy commitments, in brief. Viraldico is built so that trust, especially around what you read, is the product rather than the price of using it. In plain terms:

• We do not sell your personal information, and we never share it with data brokers or advertisers.
• We run no advertising and no cross-site tracking. There is no ad network and no algorithmic feed. For analytics we use only a privacy-first, cookieless tool that we run on our own servers, so your usage data is never handed to an outside analytics company.
• We use no artificial-intelligence features to analyze, profile, or generate content from your reading data.
• Library participants can take part without an account. Where a library hosts a club through Viraldico, patrons can join without creating a profile, and our systems are designed so that we cannot hold an individual patron's reading history.
• We collect the minimum we need to run your clubs and your account, and we keep it only as long as we need it.

This box is a summary for convenience. The full policy below governs.

1. Who we are and how to reach us

This Privacy Policy explains how Viraldico d.o.o. ("Viraldico," "we," "us," or "our"), a limited-liability company (društvo s ograničenom odgovornošću) organized under the laws of the Republic of Serbia with registered office at BK 15, Niš, Serbia, collects, uses, discloses, and protects personal information in connection with the Viraldico book-club platform, our website at viraldico.com, and related applications and services (together, the "Service").

Viraldico is the controller responsible for the personal information described in this policy, except where we act on behalf of a library or other institution, in which case Section 16 applies.

You can reach us about privacy at privacy@viraldico.com. For postal mail: Viraldico d.o.o., BK 15, Niš, Serbia. We have not appointed a data-protection officer or an EU or UK representative; if we appoint one, we will list their contact details here.

2. Who and what this policy covers

This policy applies to everyone who interacts with the Service, but different people give us different information. Throughout this policy we refer to:

• Members, readers who create a Viraldico account to track their reading and join or run book clubs.
• Hosts, Members who create and organize a club, including its meetings, reading queue, and roster.
• Librarians, staff of a public library or similar institution who run library-hosted clubs through the librarian console.
• Library participants, patrons who take part in a library-hosted club. As described in Sections 3.3 and 14, participants may take part without an account.
• Visitors, people who browse our public website without signing in.

This policy does not cover third-party websites or services that we link to, such as a bookseller or a library catalog. When you follow a link out of Viraldico, the privacy policy of that destination applies. See Sections 7 and 8.

3. Information we collect

3.1 Information you give us

Depending on how you use the Service, you may provide:

• Account information, your email address, a display name, and a password, which we store only in hashed form. You may optionally add a profile photo or short bio.
• Club information, clubs you create or join, member rosters, meeting details including a physical location and date if you choose to add one, RSVPs, the reading queue and current title, book votes, and discussion-guide selections.
• Reading activity, books you add to your shelves, your reading status, and your genre, mood, and half-star ratings. This is the most sensitive category of information for many readers, and we treat it accordingly. See Section 14.
• Communications, messages you send within a club, and any message you send to us for support.
• Survey responses, if you respond to an outcome or feedback survey. Library outcome surveys are designed to be answered anonymously. See Section 3.3.

3.2 Information we deliberately do not collect

Some choices in this policy are about what we leave out. By design:

• We do not build advertising or behavioral-profiling records about you, and we run no advertising trackers and no cross-site tracking. The only analytics we use is privacy-first and cookieless (see Section 3.6).
• We do not apply artificial-intelligence systems to your reading data to profile you or generate recaps, roasts, or recommendations.
• For library participants, our data model is designed so that we cannot associate an individual patron with a history of titles read. See Sections 3.3 and 14.

3.3 Library-hosted clubs and accountless participation

When a library hosts a club through Viraldico, a patron may participate in library-mediated mode without creating an account. In that mode:

• We do not collect a patron's name, email, or login, and we do not create a personal reading history for that patron.
• Attendance and participation are recorded in aggregate by default, for example a count of attendees at a meeting, so the library can report program statistics without identifying individuals.
• Outcome and feedback surveys for library programs are designed to be anonymous, so responses are not linked to an identifiable participant.

Where a patron chooses to create their own personal Viraldico account, that account is governed by the rest of this policy as for any other Member, and is separate from the library's aggregate program records.

3.4 Payment information

We do not collect or store your full payment-card details. All paid subscriptions are sold and processed by our Merchant of Record, Paddle (the "Payment Processor"; see the defined term in Section 7.1). When you purchase a subscription, you transact with the Payment Processor, which collects the information needed to take payment, such as your name, billing address, country, and card or other payment details, and processes it under its own privacy policy as an independent controller of that payment information.

The Payment Processor passes back to us only the limited information we need to provision and support your subscription, typically your email address and non-identifying transaction details such as the country of purchase, the product purchased, the price, and the renewal status. We never receive your full card number. See paddle.com/legal/privacy for how the Payment Processor handles your information.

3.5 Information you import

If you import a library from another service, for example by uploading a Goodreads CSV export, we process the contents of that file to create your shelves and ratings inside Viraldico. We use it only for that purpose. You can delete imported data at any time by deleting the corresponding items or your account.

3.6 Information collected automatically

When you use the Service we collect a limited amount of technical information needed to operate and secure it:

• Essential session and security data, a sign-in session identifier, and security logs such as IP address, approximate timestamp, and device or browser type, used to keep your account secure and to prevent abuse.
• Basic operational logs, error and performance logs that help us keep the Service running.
• Privacy-first, cookieless analytics, run by us. We use Umami, a privacy-focused, cookieless analytics tool that we host ourselves on our own infrastructure, to understand aggregate traffic, such as how many people visit a page and which pages are popular. Because we self-host it, this usage data stays on our own systems and is not shared with any third-party analytics company. It does not set cookies, does not track you across other websites, and does not collect information that identifies you or builds a profile of you. It measures visits to our website and app, never the contents of your reading, your shelves, or any library patron's activity.

We do not use advertising cookies, cross-site trackers, or any analytics that profiles individuals. See Section 9 for details on cookies and similar technologies.

4. How we use information

We use personal information to:

• Create and maintain your account and your personal bookshelf;
• Run clubs and their logistics, including meetings, reminders, RSVPs, voting, rosters, and discussion guides;
• Provide library-hosted clubs and produce aggregate program reports for the hosting library;
• Send service communications you have asked for, such as meeting reminders and account notices, which you control in your settings;
• Provision, renew, and support paid subscriptions, working with our Payment Processor;
• Keep the Service secure, prevent fraud and abuse, and troubleshoot problems;
• Comply with our legal obligations and enforce our Terms of Service.

We do not use your personal information to build advertising profiles, to train artificial-intelligence models, or to sell or rent to third parties.

5. Legal bases for processing

Where the Serbian Law on Personal Data Protection (Zakon o zaštiti podataka o ličnosti) or, for individuals in the European Economic Area or United Kingdom, the EU or UK General Data Protection Regulation applies, we rely on the following legal bases:

• Performance of a contract, to provide the Service you have signed up for, including running your clubs and your account.
• Legitimate interests, to secure the Service, prevent abuse, and improve reliability, balanced against your rights and freedoms.
• Consent, for any optional processing that requires it. You may withdraw consent at any time without affecting prior processing.
• Legal obligation, where we must process information to comply with applicable law.

Our Payment Processor relies on its own legal bases for processing payment information as an independent controller.

6. How and with whom we share information

We share personal information only as described here. We do not sell it, and we do not disclose it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

6.1 Within your clubs and libraries

Information you contribute to a club is visible to the other members and the host of that club, for example your display name, your RSVPs, and your votes. In a library-hosted club, the librarian sees aggregate program information as described in Section 3.3, not individual patrons' reading histories.

6.2 Service providers and subprocessors

We use a small number of vendors to operate the Service. They process information on our behalf under contract, only for the purposes we specify, except for our Merchant of Record, which acts as an independent controller for payment information (Section 7.1). Our current providers are listed in Section 7.

6.3 Legal and safety disclosures

We may disclose information if required to do so by a valid legal process, or where necessary to protect the rights, safety, or security of users, the public, or Viraldico. Because reading records are specially protected by law in many places, we treat any demand for them with particular care. See Section 14.

6.4 Business transfers

If Viraldico is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets, personal information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will require any successor to honor the commitments in this policy, and we will notify you of any change in the controller of your information as required by law.

6.5 What we never do

• We never sell your personal information.
• We never share it with advertisers, ad networks, or data brokers.
• We never use it to train artificial-intelligence models, ours or anyone else's.

7. Our service providers

7.1 The defined "Payment Processor" (Merchant of Record)

"Payment Processor" means Paddle (Paddle.com Inc. for buyers in the United States, and Paddle.com Market Limited, registered in England and Wales, for buyers elsewhere), which acts as the Merchant of Record and reseller for paid Viraldico subscriptions, and as an independent controller of payment information. The Payment Processor handles checkout, payment processing, fraud screening, billing-related communications, and sales-tax and VAT compliance.

7.2 Current subprocessors and providers

The table below lists the providers we currently use. We will update it as our providers change.

Our analytics tool, Umami, is self-hosted on our own infrastructure, so it is not a third-party processor and does not appear above. A current list of subprocessors is available on request at privacy@viraldico.com. If you are an institutional customer, your agreement and the Data Processing Agreement (Section 16) govern subprocessor changes.

8. Affiliate links and outbound links

Viraldico shows links to buy or borrow a book. These are an optional convenience, and following them is always your choice.

• Bookshop.org, we show an affiliate-tagged "Find it on Bookshop.org" link that supports independent bookstores. If you buy through it, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
• Libro.fm, we show an affiliate-tagged link to the audiobook where one is available. If you buy through it, we may earn a small commission.
• Library catalogs, we may deep-link to a library's own catalog so you can borrow the book.

We do not use an Amazon affiliate program. When you follow any outbound link, the destination's own privacy policy and cookies apply. We do not control them, and we do not pass your reading data to these partners. A link is a link, not a data transfer.

9. Cookies and similar technologies

We use the smallest practical set of cookies and similar technologies:

• Strictly necessary, to keep you signed in, to keep the Service secure, and to remember essential preferences. These are required for the Service to work.
• Checkout, when you purchase a subscription, the checkout step is hosted by our Payment Processor, which sets its own cookies for payment and fraud-prevention purposes on its checkout pages, under its own policy.

We do not use advertising cookies, cross-site tracking pixels, or analytics cookies; the analytics tool we use is cookieless and sets nothing in your browser. Where required by law, we will ask for your consent to any non-essential cookies and honor your choice. You can also control cookies through your browser settings.

10. How long we keep information

We keep personal information only as long as we need it for the purposes described in this policy:

• Account and reading data, for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we delete or irreversibly anonymize your personal data within 30 days, except where we must keep limited records for legal, tax, or security reasons.
• Billing records, the Payment Processor and we retain transaction records for the period required by applicable tax and accounting law.
• Aggregate and anonymous data, library program statistics and anonymous survey results are not tied to an identifiable person and may be retained to support reporting.
• Security logs, kept for a limited period appropriate to their security purpose, then deleted.

11. How we protect information

We use administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information, including encryption in transit, hashing of passwords, access controls, and the data-minimizing design choices described throughout this policy. The Service is built toward the WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standard, and we design our systems so that the most sensitive information, such as individual reading histories of library participants, is not collected in the first place. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, but we work to protect your information and to respond promptly to any incident, including notifying you and the relevant authorities where the law requires.

12. International data transfers

Viraldico is operated from the Republic of Serbia and serves people in the United States and elsewhere, so your information may be processed in countries other than your own, including Serbia, the United States, the European Economic Area, and the United Kingdom. Where we transfer personal information across borders, we rely on appropriate safeguards, such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, and the equivalent mechanisms recognized under Serbian law, or another lawful transfer mechanism. Our Payment Processor likewise relies on its own approved transfer mechanisms. You can ask us for more detail at privacy@viraldico.com.

13. Your privacy rights

Depending on where you live, you have some or all of the following rights over your personal information:

• Access, to know what we hold about you and to get a copy.
• Correction, to fix information that is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Deletion, to ask us to delete your information, subject to limited legal exceptions.
• Portability, to receive certain information in a portable format, and to export your shelves.
• Objection and restriction, to object to or restrict certain processing.
• Withdraw consent, where we rely on consent, at any time.

For residents of California and other US states with privacy laws, this includes the rights to know, to delete, to correct, and to opt out of "sale" or "sharing" of personal information. Because we do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, there is nothing to opt out of in that respect, but you may still exercise your other rights. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any privacy right.

To exercise any right, contact us at privacy@viraldico.com. You may use an authorized agent where the law allows. We will verify your request and respond within the timeframe required by applicable law. If you are unhappy with our response, you may complain to your local data-protection authority. In Serbia this is the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection.

14. Reader privacy and library confidentiality

Reading records are specially protected by law in many places. Library patron records are protected by confidentiality statutes in nearly every US state, and commercial "book service" reading records are protected by laws such as the California Reader Privacy Act. Protecting reading privacy is central to how Viraldico is built, not an afterthought. Specifically:

• We treat your reading activity, the books you shelve, rate, and read, as sensitive, and we do not sell it, share it with advertisers, or use it to profile you.
• For library-hosted clubs, our systems are designed so that we cannot assemble an individual patron's reading history, because library-mediated participation does not collect it (Section 3.3).
• We design library program reporting to use aggregate counts and anonymous survey responses.
• We will resist any demand for reading records that is not supported by valid legal process, and, where we are lawfully permitted to do so, we will notify the affected person or institution before disclosing.

This section describes data practices and our commitments. It is not legal advice, and the precise protections that apply depend on your jurisdiction.

15. Children's privacy

The Service is intended for people aged 16 and older, and accounts are not directed to or intended for children under that age. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16. A child may, however, take part in a library-hosted club in accountless library-mediated mode, where no personal information about the participant is collected (Section 3.3). If you believe a child has provided us personal information through an account, contact us at privacy@viraldico.com and we will delete it.

16. Library and institutional users

Where a library or other institution uses Viraldico to host clubs for its patrons, the institution and Viraldico enter into a separate institutional agreement and a Data Processing Agreement ("DPA"). For the personal information we process on the institution's behalf under that DPA, the institution is the controller and Viraldico is the processor, and the DPA, which references applicable state library-confidentiality law, governs that processing. Our Payment Processor is not part of that patron-data processing chain. Institutions can request the current DPA and subprocessor list at privacy@viraldico.com.

17. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. If we make a material change, we will update the "Last updated" date above and take reasonable steps to notify you, for example by email or an in-Service notice, before the change takes effect, where the law requires. Your continued use of the Service after an update means you accept the revised policy, except where we need your fresh consent.

18. How to contact us

Questions, requests, or complaints about privacy can be sent to privacy@viraldico.com, or by post to Viraldico d.o.o., BK 15, Niš, Serbia. We aim to respond promptly and within any timeframe the law requires.