ParFocal.

One word at a time.

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 24 October 2026 · Applies to ParFocal 1.0.0 (beta)

1. Who is responsible

ParFocal is published by a sole trader registered in France, identified in full on the legal notice. That person is the data controller for everything described below, within the meaning of article 4(7) of the GDPR.

For any question about this policy, or to exercise the rights described in section 9, write to contact@parfocal.fr. There is no Data Protection Officer: ParFocal is a one-person operation that carries out no large-scale or systematic monitoring, so article 37 does not require one.

2. What ParFocal stores on your device

ParFocal uses your device's local app storage. This data never leaves your phone. It is not backed up to any server we operate, and we have no way to read it. It covers:

• your reading position and progress in each book;
• your reading speed setting, in words per minute;
• the last book you opened;
• your music and ambient-visuals preferences, including the default ambience and the ambience chosen per book;
• your personal library: the books you added, their reading status and favourites, and their cached metadata;
• your completion statistics for finished books;
• the number of words you read each day, kept for 60 days, which drives your daily goal, your streak of reading days and your best streak;
• whether you have completed the introduction;
• if you turn on the daily reminder: that it is on and the time you chose. The next reminders are scheduled on your device by iOS and nothing is sent to us;
• the day you chose your current reading speed, and how many times you tapped "Later" on a suggestion to try the next speed, with the date of the last one, so that ParFocal does not suggest it again too soon;
• for the tester feedback invitation: the date of your first launch, whether you opened the feedback form, and how many times you chose “Later”. The app knows the form was opened, never what you answered.

Deleting ParFocal from your device deletes all of it. We hold no copy. Like any app data, it may be included in your own iCloud or computer backup of the device, which you control and we never have access to.

3. What ParFocal does not do

• No user account, sign-up, or login.
• No analytics, telemetry, crash-reporting, or advertising software. ParFocal contains no third-party tracking SDK.
• No advertising identifier, and no tracking of you across other apps or websites.
• No selling, renting, or sharing of personal data — there is none to sell.
• No access to your contacts, photos, microphone, or location.
• No push notifications from a server and no push token. The optional daily reminder is a local notification created on your phone: it is off until you accept it, it is at most one a day, and it shows the title of the book you are reading and your page on your lock screen unless you hide previews in iOS settings.

4. Requests ParFocal makes to the internet

To find and download public-domain books, ParFocal sends read-only requests to these public catalogues:

• gutendex.com and gutenberg.org — Project Gutenberg search and book files;
• standardebooks.org — Standard Ebooks search and editions;
• ebooksgratuits.com — search and French-language public-domain titles;
• openlibrary.org and covers.openlibrary.org — book metadata and cover images;
• parfocal.fr — one small file, version.json, that holds the number of the latest beta build. ParFocal reads it to tell you when a newer version is available on TestFlight. The request carries nothing about you or your reading.

These requests carry only what is needed to find or fetch a book (your search terms and book identifiers), or, for parfocal.fr, nothing at all beyond the request itself. They contain no account, no device identifier, and nothing from section 2. As with any request made from a web browser, the operator of each catalogue necessarily receives your IP address and can log it under its own policy. We have no relationship with these operators and no access to their logs.

5. The tester feedback form

This is the only place where information can deliberately leave your device, and it only happens if you choose it.

ParFocal may invite you to give feedback during the beta, and Settings contains a Share Your Feedback row. Both open a Google Form in your device's browser — you leave the app, and ParFocal sends nothing on your behalf. The form asks for your age bracket, gender, reading habits, and preferred reading format, together with your impressions of the app. It does not ask for your name or your email address.

The form is hosted by Google, so submitting it is subject to Google's privacy policy and Google receives your IP address and any information tied to a Google account you may be signed into. Answers are used for one purpose only: deciding what to build and fix during the beta. They are not published, not sold, and not combined with anything from section 2 — there is no identifier that could link a form answer back to an installation of ParFocal. Legal basis: your consent (article 6(1)(a)), given by choosing to open and submit the form.

Answering is entirely optional. Declining changes nothing about how the app works.

6. The parfocal.fr website

This policy covers the website you are reading as well as the app. The two are separate: the site is four static pages, and visiting it has no connection to anything the app stores on your device.

No cookies, no trackers. These pages set no cookie of any kind, contain no audience-measurement or advertising script, and load no font, image, or stylesheet from any other domain. Everything you receive comes from parfocal.fr itself. There is therefore nothing to consent to, which is why you are not asked to dismiss a banner.

Server logs. The pages are hosted by GitHub, Inc. on the GitHub Pages service, whose servers are in the United States. Like any web server, it records requests — including your IP address, the page requested, the time, and your browser's user-agent string. We do not operate those servers, do not receive those logs, and have no access to them; they are processed by GitHub under GitHub's privacy statement. This is the only transfer of data outside the European Union that visiting the site involves, and it rests on the standard contractual clauses adopted by the European Commission, which GitHub applies through Microsoft's data protection terms. Legal basis: legitimate interest (article 6(1)(f)) — serving and securing the pages you asked for.

7. If you write to us

Two things on this site invite you to send an email. Both are voluntary, and neither has a form: you write from your own mail client.

• Support and questions — anything sent to contact@parfocal.fr. We keep the exchange for as long as it takes to answer you, and at most three years after the last message. Legal basis: legitimate interest (article 6(1)(f)) — answering someone who asked us something.
• The beta invitation list — the install page offers to send you the installation link when the beta opens. If you ask, we keep your email address for that single purpose, until the link has been sent to you or until you ask us to remove it, and at most until the beta closes. Your address is never used for anything else, never added to a newsletter, and never passed to anyone. Legal basis: your consent (article 6(1)(a)), given by writing to us — withdrawable at any time by replying to say so.

These messages are stored in a mailbox hosted by OVH SAS in France, on the Zimbra service. They stay in the European Union.

8. Children

ParFocal is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect anything from them. The catalogues ParFocal reads are general-purpose libraries of classic literature and are not curated for children.

9. Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to access, correct, and erase your personal data, and to object to its processing. In practice:

• For everything in section 2 — it is on your device and under your sole control. Deleting the app erases it. We cannot access it, so we cannot retrieve, export, or delete it for you.
• For a feedback form answer — write to the address in section 1 describing when you answered, and the response will be deleted. Because the form collects no identifier, that description is the only way to locate it.
• For an email you sent us (section 7) — write to the same address and we will send you a copy of what we hold, correct it, or delete it. Removal from the beta invitation list is immediate and needs no reason.
• For the server logs (section 6) — they are GitHub's, not ours. Exercise your rights over them directly with GitHub, whose privacy statement explains how.

You may also object to a processing based on legitimate interest, ask for it to be restricted, and — where a processing rests on consent or a contract and is carried out by automated means — ask for your data in a portable format. In practice, the only data we hold that this can apply to is an email you sent us.

We answer within one month. There is nothing to prove your identity with, so a request is honoured if it comes from the address concerned.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your national data protection authority — in France, the CNIL, 3 place de Fontenoy, TSA 80715, 75334 Paris Cedex 07.

10. Changes to this policy

If ParFocal ever starts collecting data — for example if accounts or purchases are added — this page will be updated before that version ships, and the date at the top will change. This page is versioned, so its history is public.