Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains what personal information ZBookShelf (operated by SYNAPSE LLC) collects, why, and how it's used, when you use the ZBookShelf website and services (the “Service”).

• Account information: your email address and display name, collected at signup (directly, or via Google sign-in). Authors additionally provide a public bio, profile picture, and optional social media links.
• Optional demographic information: the signup form has optional date of birth and sex fields. Both are entirely skippable, collected for reporting purposes only, and never used to determine what you can do on the Service or to gate your access to it.
• Purchase information:which books you've bought, the price paid, and any promo code used. We do not store your full payment card number — payment is processed by Stripe, our payment processor, under its own privacy policy.
• Content you upload:if you're an author, the book files, cover images, and descriptions you submit.
• Payout details, for authors who add them: bank account details (including an account number or IBAN), a PayPal email, or a mobile wallet number — whichever payout method you choose on your author dashboard. This is genuinely sensitive financial information. Only you and ZBookShelf can see it; it is never shown publicly or to other authors, and it can only ever be set by you directly — not entered or edited by anyone else on your behalf, including an admin.
• Purchase-request information:if you request to buy an approval-gated unlisted book, your account email is shared with that book's author so they can identify your request.
• Data embedded in downloaded files: every book you download is watermarked with your name, email, and order id, embedded directly in the file itself — not just stored in our database. This is a deliberate anti-piracy measure; see the Terms of Service.
• Usage and session data: standard technical data needed to keep you signed in and the Service working (authentication tokens, basic request logs). We do not use third-party advertising or analytics trackers.

• To operate your account, process purchases, and deliver downloads.
• To review author submissions and enforce these policies.
• To calculate and pay out author and affiliate earnings.
• To detect and prevent fraud or abuse (for example, self-referral on promo codes).
• To respond to support requests you send us.

We do not sell your personal information.

We share information with the service providers that make ZBookShelf work: Google Firebase (authentication, database, and file storage) and Stripe (payment processing). Each processes data under its own privacy policy and only for the purpose of providing their service to us. If you send a purchase request on an approval-gated book, your account email is shared with that book's author. We don't otherwise share your personal information with third parties, except where required by law.

Account and purchase records are kept for as long as your account exists and, for purchase records specifically, indefinitely after that — this is what makes permanent re-download access possible (see the Terms of Service). When an author replaces a book's file with a new version, the previous version's downloadable file is kept for a limited retention window after being superseded and then deleted; the version's record and changelog are kept indefinitely.

You can update your display name and password at any time from your account settings. Email address changes currently require contacting support, since your account email is also how we and authors identify you for support and purchase requests.

If you'd like to request a copy of, or the deletion of, your personal data, contact contact@thesynapselabs.com. We don't yet have a fully self-serve tool for this, so requests are handled manually today. Note that deleting an account does not remove purchase records tied to completed sales, since buyer access to a purchase is designed to be permanent (see Section 5 of the Terms of Service) — we'll explain what can and can't be deleted when you reach out. If you're located in the EEA, UK, or a jurisdiction with similar data protection law, you may have additional rights under that law; contact us and we'll do our best to accommodate them.

We use the minimum browser storage needed to keep you signed in (via Firebase Authentication). We don't use third-party advertising cookies or analytics trackers.

Book files and personal data are never publicly readable by default — access is gated by security rules and server-side checks, and downloads are only ever issued as short-lived, signed links after a purchase (or an approved request) is verified. No system is perfectly secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security of information you provide.

ZBookShelf's catalog is educational content, and readers may be as young as 12 — see the eligibility rules in the Terms of Service. A reader between 12 and 18 may only use the Service with a parent or guardian's involvement and consent, and purchases are made through a payment method the parent or guardian controls.

We collect no more personal information from a minor's account than from any other account — an email address and display name, and purchase history for books they buy. We don't run behavioral advertising or share account data with ad networks for any user, minor or otherwise.

A parent or guardian may contact contact@thesynapselabs.com at any time to review, correct, or request deletion of their child's account information, subject to the purchase-permanence limits described in the Terms of Service.

If you believe a child under 12 has created an account without the required parental involvement, contact us and we'll act on it. Depending on where our users are located, serving readers under 13 can bring additional legal obligations (for example, COPPA in the United States) beyond what's described here — this is an area we're flagging for dedicated legal review, not one this policy claims to have fully resolved.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make a material change, we'll update the “Last updated” date above.

This Privacy Policy is governed by the laws of the Arab Republic of Egypt.

Questions about this policy, or a data request? Reach us at contact@thesynapselabs.com.