Privacy policy

Last updated October 26, 2026. This policy explains what Wormies stores, why, and how you stay in control.

Your books never leave your device

Wormies reads EPUB and PDF files that are already on your iPhone or iPad, or in folders you connect from the Files app. The app never uploads, copies or transmits the contents of a book. To check that club members are reading the same copy, the app computes a fingerprint on your device (a SHA-256 hash of the file, its size, the publisher identifier inside an EPUB or the document identifier inside a PDF, and a hash of the chapter structure) and shares only that fingerprint, together with the title and author, with your club.

What we store

• Account: a display name, a handle, a worm color, an optional photo, and the identifier Apple gives us when you sign in with Apple. If you hide your email from us, we only ever see Apple's relay address.
• Clubs and sessions: club names, membership, invite codes, the books each session is about (title, author, fingerprint), waiting-room messages, checkpoints and recaps.
• Reading positions and presence: where you are in a book, expressed as a chapter and a percentage, and whether you are reading right now. Members of the same session can see these unless you turn on ghost mode.
• Notes: your highlights, comments, thoughts, reactions and replies, each anchored to a short quoted passage so it can be placed in other members' copies. Notes are visible only to the club they were left in.
• Purchases: capacity packs and tips are handled by Apple. We keep the transaction identifier, product and date so we can honor what you bought and process refunds.
• Device tokens: if you allow notifications, a push token so we can tell you about replies, nudges and sessions starting.
• Usage analytics: anonymous events such as "page turned" or "club created", with device type and app version, so we can see what works. Analytics never include book text or your notes.

Who can see what

Everything social is scoped to a club. Only members of a club see its sessions, positions, notes and messages. Nothing is public, there is no discovery feed, and we do not sell or share personal data with advertisers.

Services we rely on

Wormies runs on Google Cloud and Firebase (authentication, database, notifications, crash reports and analytics) in the United States, and on Apple's App Store for sign-in and purchases. These providers process data on our behalf under their own terms.

Your choices

• Ghost mode hides your position and presence from a session.
• The Marks toggle controls which notes you see; the Spoiler Shield hides notes ahead of you by default.
• You can block members and report content from inside the app.
• You can turn off every notification type in Settings.
• You can delete your account in Settings. We remove your profile, memberships and devices within 24 hours and anonymize your notes so club conversations still make sense. Remaining purchased capacity is forfeited.

Children

Wormies is rated 12+ and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect data from them.

Contact

Questions about privacy go to support@wormies.app.