Privacy Policy

Introduction

At YouVerseBooks ("we," "our," or "us"), we are committed to protecting your privacy. YouVerseBooks is operated by FJ Cognitive, LLC, a California limited liability company. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you visit our website youversebooks.com and use our services.

If your question is specifically about how we handle data relating to a child, please also see our Child Data Policy, which goes into greater detail.

Information We Collect

Personal Information

We may collect personal information that you voluntarily provide, including:

Name and email address when you create an account
Photos you upload for book personalization
Shipping address for order delivery
Payment information (processed securely by our payment provider)
Dedication messages and customization preferences
For the A Life, Seen concierge pilot, photos of adults and written memories that you or an invited contributor submit about the person the book is about

Automatically Collected Information

When you visit our website, we may automatically collect:

Device and browser information
IP address and location data
Pages visited and time spent on our site
Referring website information

How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to:

Create and deliver your personalized books
Process payments and fulfill orders
Communicate with you about your order
Improve our products and services
Send marketing communications (with your consent)
Prevent fraud and maintain security

Photo Processing

Your photos are processed using AI technology to create illustrated characters for your book. We take special care with this sensitive data:

Photos are processed securely on encrypted servers
We do not share your photos with third parties except as necessary for book production
You may request deletion of your photos at any time
Source photos are automatically deleted 90 days after order completion
Illustrated characters (the final AI-generated art) are retained for 12 months after order completion to support reprints and disputes, then permanently deleted

Photos and memories submitted for the A Life, Seen pilot follow the pilot retention rule below instead of the 90-day and 12-month periods above. For that pilot we do not use face recognition, and we never use the photos to train AI models.

We may share your information with:

Payment processors to complete transactions
Shipping carriers to deliver your order
Print partners to produce your book
Service providers who assist our operations
Advertising and referral partners, only after you consent, to measure and attribute visits and purchases. The data may include cookies, IP address, transaction data, and device identifiers. Google Analytics provides measurement for our Google advertising. When you consent, we also store the click identifier Google adds to an ad link, so we can tell which ads lead to orders. The copy in your browser expires after 90 days, and we delete it if you withdraw consent. If you place an order, the identifier is saved with that order and kept for as long as we keep the order record. See the Google Privacy Policy. Our affiliate network is Awin, and for that tracking YouVerseBooks and Awin act as joint controllers. See the Awin Privacy Policy.

We do not sell your personal information for money.

Your Rights (GDPR)

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and similar laws, you have the following rights:

Right of Access (Article 15): Request a copy of all personal data we hold about you
Right to Rectification (Article 16): Request correction of inaccurate information
Right to Erasure (Article 17): Request deletion of your personal data ("right to be forgotten")
Right to Data Portability (Article 20): Export your data in a machine-readable format
Right to Object (Article 21): Opt out of marketing communications at any time

How to exercise your rights: If you have an account, you can access these features directly from your Account Settings (click your profile icon, then "Account"). From there you can:

Export Data: Download all your personal data as a JSON file
Delete Account: Permanently delete your account and all associated data. If your account has A Life, Seen pilot history, self-service deletion is held for manual review first (see the pilot retention rule below); contact support@youversebooks.com to complete it sooner

You may also exercise these rights by contacting us at support@youversebooks.com. We will respond to your request within 30 days.

Legal Basis for Processing

We process your personal data under the following legal bases:

Consent: When you attest that you have permission and consent for photo processing. See the Child Data Policy for the photo-specific timing.
Contract: To fulfill your order and deliver your personalized book
Legitimate Interest: To improve our services and prevent fraud
Legal Obligation: To comply with tax and accounting requirements

Data Retention

We retain your data for the following periods:

Upload sessions: 24 hours for guest uploads where checkout was never started (automatically deleted). Uploads made while signed in, or on a session where checkout was started but not completed, are not on this 24-hour sweep; see the Child Data Policy for what applies to them.
Source photos: 90 days after order completion
Illustrated characters (AI-generated art): 12 months after order completion
Account data: Until you delete your account
Order records: 7 years (for tax/legal compliance)
A Life, Seen pilot material: kept while the project is active and for 90 days after final delivery for corrections, then deleted unless you ask us to keep it for reorders. This pilot deletion is manual, not an automatic sweep. Email support@youversebooks.com to have your material deleted sooner.

Cookies

We use cookies and similar technologies to:

Essential cookies: Keep you logged in and maintain your session
Analytics: Understand how visitors use our site through privacy-friendly, cookieless Vercel Analytics
Marketing cookies: Used for the advertising and referral processing described under Data Sharing. This includes Google Analytics cookies after you consent

You can change your marketing-cookie choice at any time using the control below. You can control cookies through your browser settings. Disabling essential cookies may prevent you from using certain features.

Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

We do not sell personal information for money. Some privacy laws may define consent-based marketing tracking as sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising. Use this control to reopen our cookie choices and select Essential only to opt out.

Choosing Essential only stops Awin's script from loading and deletes the affiliate-attribution cookie we set. Any cookies Awin already set in your browser before you withdrew consent belong to Awin and may remain until they expire. To remove those, clear cookies in your browser settings or exercise your rights under the Awin Privacy Policy.

Choosing Essential only stops the Google tag from loading, prevents new Google Analytics events from being sent, and deletes the ad click identifier we stored in your browser. If you already placed an order, we still report that one sale to Google when your payment completes. Cookies Google already set before you withdrew consent may remain until they expire. To remove those, clear cookies in your browser settings. See the Google Privacy Policy.

Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your personal information, including:

Encryption of data in transit (HTTPS) and at rest
Secure cloud storage with access controls
Regular security audits and monitoring
Staff training on data protection

Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy or wish to exercise your rights, please contact us at:

Email: support@youversebooks.com