Effective and last updated 13 October 2026
Cartalore is a reading app. It asks you for as little information as we can manage: enough to pick stories you might actually want to read, and enough for the person who makes it to tell whether it is working. Nothing is collected because it might be useful later. This page says exactly what that is, in the order you are likely to care about it.
Cartalore is offered on the App Store worldwide, including the European Union and the European Economic Area. Some of what you can ask us to do depends on where you live, and Your rights where you live sets that out.
We deliberately ask for very little. The app never asks you to type in your name, age, gender, occupation or location, and there is no form to fill in. Setting up is two questions: which parts of history interest you, and anything you want to say about what you like reading. You can skip both, leave them blank, or change them later in Settings. Recommendations get less specific and nothing else about the app changes.
The only thing that is not optional is what makes an account an account: a sign-in identity from Apple or Google, the stories you save, and where you got to in them. Without those there is nothing to come back to. Even that can wait: you can read as a guest without signing in at all.
Cartalore is operated by Samrat Thapa, an independent developer based in Japan, and Japanese privacy law (the APPI) applies to how your information is handled wherever you are. The law of your own country applies on top of that: for readers in the United Kingdom that means the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, for readers in the European Union and the European Economic Area it means the GDPR, and elsewhere it means the laws named under Your rights where you live.
For UK and EU data protection purposes, we are the controller of everything described on this page.
Contact: [email protected]. A postal address is available on request to that address.
| What | Where it comes from | Why |
|---|---|---|
| An email address if your sign-in provides one, and your name if Google Sign-In includes it | Sign in with Apple, or Google Sign-In | To have an account at all. Apple's Hide My Email gives us a relay address; that is fine and we never see your real one. We do not ask Apple for your name. Google sends it with the sign-in; the app does not store it with your profile or show it anywhere. |
| A country | Worked out from your device's time zone. We never ask, and we do not read your location | Two things: where the map first opens, which happens on your device, and, for Pro Plus readers, a hint to lean the suggested stories towards your part of the world. "Asia/Tokyo" becomes "Japan" and nothing finer. If your time zone is one we do not recognise, we simply have no country for you and the suggestions do without it. |
| Your interests and reading notes: keywords, and anything you write about what you like reading | You | Same: they steer recommendations. |
| Reading history: which stories you opened, how far you got, what you saved, archived or finished | Using the app | So you can resume where you stopped, and so recommendations are not repeats. |
| Usage statistics: when you open the app; which screens, map dots, stories, library shelves and story sources you open, and from where; which places in a chapter you show on the map, and which years you move the map to; how long and how far you read each chapter, and whether you listen; what you type into the library search and the topics you ask to have written; which subscription offers you see and what you choose; and when you switch usage statistics on or off | Automatic, while you use the app with a connection. Nothing is recorded while you are offline | To find out what works: which stories people finish, where they stop, and what they look for that the library does not have yet. You can switch it off in Settings → Usage statistics. |
| Stories you generate, and the topics you asked for | You | They are yours. They stay private unless you deliberately share one. |
| Questions you ask the AI about a passage | You | To answer them, and to count usage against the monthly allowance. |
| Usage and cost records: which operation ran, when, whether it succeeded, how many tokens it used | Automatic | To know what the app costs to run and what is failing. No story text is stored in these. |
| Crash reports: an error message, a stack trace, your platform and app version | Automatic, when something breaks | To fix it. There is no third-party crash SDK in the app; these go to our own database. |
| Problem reports you send: the category, your message, your account email if you have one, which story and chapter, and your app and iOS version | You, from Settings → Report a problem | To fix what you reported, and to follow up with you if needed. |
| Subscription status | Apple, via our payment provider | To know which plan you are on. We never see your card. |
UK and EU law ask us to name a lawful basis for each use, on top of listing what we hold. This is that list. It has no legal force if you live elsewhere, but the reasoning behind it is the same wherever you are.
| What | Lawful basis | In plain terms |
|---|---|---|
| Sign-in identity, saved stories, reading progress, stories you generate, questions you ask, subscription status | Performance of a contract | You asked for an account and for the things Cartalore does. We cannot provide either without these. |
| Your interests and notes, and the country read off your time zone | Legitimate interests | To make recommendations worth reading. You can leave them blank, clear them whenever you like, or tell us to stop using them. See your rights below. |
| Usage and cost records, crash reports | Legitimate interests | To know what the app costs to run and what is broken. One person maintains Cartalore and this is how they find out that something is failing. |
| Usage statistics | Legitimate interests | To make the app better for the people reading it: what to write next, what to fix, what nobody uses. Switching them off in Settings is telling us to stop, and takes effect at once. |
| Problem reports you send us | Legitimate interests | You wrote in about something. This is us being able to read it and reply. |
| A waitlist address on this website | Consent | You typed it in and pressed the button. You can withdraw that at any time and the entry is deleted. |
This one is about this website rather than the app, which is why it sits on its own. Cartalore is not on the App Store yet, so the home page offers to email you when it arrives. That is the only thing on this site that collects anything.
If you enter an address we store the address itself, the date you gave it, and which page it came from. Not your IP address, not your browser, not your country, and nothing that tracks you around the web. There are no analytics and no advertising cookies on this site.
It is used for one email, when the app is released, and for nothing else. We do not send a newsletter, and the list is never sold, shared or used for advertising.
To be taken off it before then, email [email protected] and the entry is deleted. You do not have to explain why, and there is no account to close, because joining the waitlist does not create one. It is entirely separate from any Cartalore account you may later make.
You can skip the first screen and read as a guest. A guest account is anonymous: it exists on your device and in our database as a random identifier with no name and no email attached. If you later sign in, the stories and progress you built up as a guest move across to your account.
Only these, and only to make the app work. Each of them acts on our instructions under its own data-processing terms, which hold it to at least the protection this policy describes. None of them is paid to receive your data, and none of them may use it for their own purposes.
| Who | What they process |
|---|---|
| Supabase (database, authentication and server functions) | Everything listed above. This is where the app's data lives. |
| Google (the Gemini API) | The topic you asked for and the source text a story is written from, so a story can be written; your interests, notes, country and the topics of stories you have read, so recommendations can be made; and a question you ask about a passage, with the passage. Your name and email are not sent. The app asks your permission before it first sends anything to Gemini, and until you give it nothing is sent; you can withdraw it at any time in Settings → AI features. |
| Google (Sign-In) | Your identity, if you choose that sign-in method. |
| Apple (Sign in with Apple, and the App Store) | Your identity, if you choose that sign-in method, and your subscription and payment. |
| RevenueCat (subscription management) | An account identifier and your subscription status. No card details, no reading history. |
| Cloudflare (this website, and the waitlist database) | Only what is described under “The waitlist on this website”. Nothing from the app passes through it. |
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for advertising. If Cartalore is ever sold or transferred, you will be told before your information moves.
On Supabase infrastructure in the United States, on Cloudflare infrastructure for the waitlist, and on Google, Apple and RevenueCat infrastructure for the parts listed above. Because the business is run from Japan, your information is also accessed from Japan by the person who maintains the app. That is one person, doing support and debugging, not a team with broad access.
So if you are outside the United States, your information leaves your country. That is how the app works, and these are the protections around it:
This is the one place where something of yours becomes visible to other people, so it is worth being exact. Sharing is never automatic: the app asks first, in a dialog that says what will happen, and nothing is published until you agree.
A shared story can be read by anyone who has the link, whether or not they have an account. The link is the only way to reach it: shared stories are not listed, not searchable, and do not appear on the map or in the library for anyone else. Someone who has the link can pass it on.
You can stop sharing a story, which makes every link to it stop working. Deleting your account does the same thing to all of them.
Stories are generated by a language model grounded in well-known online sources, and are shown with those sources. They can be wrong, and they are not a reliable account of any real person's life. Nothing in a story should be treated as fact-checked, and it is not written by a historian.
No decision with a legal or similarly significant effect on you is made by automated means. What the app decides automatically is which stories to suggest, and nothing turns on that.
These five are open to everyone who uses Cartalore, wherever you are and whatever your local law says:
We answer any of these within 30 days, and we will not charge you or treat you differently for asking. On top of them, your own country gives you these:
Under the UK GDPR you have the right to be informed, the right of access, and the rights to rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, data portability, and to object to processing we carry out on the basis of legitimate interests, including the recommendation profiling described above, which you can stop by telling us to. Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time without affecting what was lawful before you did.
If you think we have handled your information badly, please tell us first so we can fix it, though you do not have to. You can complain directly to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk, helpline 0303 123 1113).
Under the GDPR you have the right to be informed, the right of access, and the rights to rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, data portability, and to object to processing we carry out on the basis of legitimate interests, including the recommendation profiling described above, which you can stop by telling us to. Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time without affecting what was lawful before you did. No decision with a legal or similarly significant effect on you is made by automated means.
If you think we have handled your information badly, please tell us first so we can fix it, though you do not have to. You can complain to the data protection authority of the country you live in; the European Data Protection Board lists every one of them.
Under PIPEDA you can ask what personal information we hold, why we have it, and who we have given it to, and you can ask us to correct anything inaccurate. Complaints go to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca). If you are in Quebec you may also contact the Commission d'accès à l'information.
We handle your information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles. You can ask for access to it and for correction of anything wrong, and we will tell you if we cannot do either and why. Complaints go to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au).
Under the Privacy Act 2020 you have the right to access your personal information and to request correction of it. Complaints go to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (privacy.org.nz, 0800 803 909).
Under the PDPA you can request access to the personal data we hold about you and information about how it has been used, ask us to correct an error, and withdraw consent for any use that relies on it. If you withdraw consent for something the app needs, it will no longer be able to do that thing. Complaints go to the Personal Data Protection Commission (pdpc.gov.sg).
The four rights above are given to every reader rather than only to residents of states that require them, so a Californian, a Virginian and a Texan get the same thing as everyone else. In particular:
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for advertising or cross-context behavioural advertising. There is no advertising SDK and no third-party analytics SDK in the app. We have never done either and there is no mechanism in the app that would allow it.
The four rights at the top of this section apply to you in full. If the law where you live gives you more, such as Brazil's LGPD or Japan's APPI, those rights apply too, and the address for all of them is [email protected].
Cartalore is not directed to children under 13 and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them, as required by the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and by the equivalent rules wherever you live. In the European Union, where each country sets the age below which a child cannot agree to an online service for themselves at between 13 and 16, nothing in the app rests on a child's consent: an account rests on the agreement to provide it, and the waitlist on this website is not meant for children. If you are a parent or guardian and believe a child under 13 has given us information, write to [email protected] and the account and everything in it will be deleted.
History is a school subject, so we assume some readers are under 18 and the app is built for that: it is private by default, collects nothing it does not need, requests no location, shows no advertising, contains no third-party tracking, and profiles only to pick which history story to suggest next. This is the standard the UK's Age Appropriate Design Code asks for, and we apply it to everyone rather than only to readers in the UK.
If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected or who sees it, the date at the top changes and the app tells you before the change takes effect. Smaller corrections just get the new date.