App privacy

Last updated: October 27, 2026

This notice covers the Sustainable Books book finder for ChatGPT. Our website privacy policy covers visits to this website and our contact form.

Information sent to the app

When ChatGPT uses the book finder, it sends the tool inputs needed for the lookup. These can include search words, shopping country, price or page limits, language, excluded authors, selected book identifiers, short explanations accompanying selected books, and your book request for editable Custom Mystery Box preferences.

The service does not request your full conversation history. However, information you put in a search or recommendation request may be included in a tool input. Please leave out private information that is not needed to find a book.

If you have not specified a shopping country, the app may use an approximate country supplied by ChatGPT to choose the Canadian or US market and currency. You can correct this country in chat. If the hint is unavailable or identifies another country, the app asks you to choose Canada or the United States.

The app reads only the country from ChatGPT's location hint. It does not infer your country from a city, coordinates, IP address, locale or time zone. The hint itself is not logged or stored separately. The resolved shopping country is used in the same Shopify searches, cached results and shop links described in this notice.

How searches work

We use these inputs to search our Shopify catalog, filter results, and return book details and links. Relevant search terms, shopping country and book identifiers are sent to Shopify to retrieve the catalog information. We do not use this connection to access customer accounts or orders, or to change the catalog.

The book finder does not require a Sustainable Books account and does not collect payment information. Its Shopify access credentials remain on our server and are not included in book cards.

Technical information

Our hosting systems process connection information, which can include an IP address, request time, endpoint and response status. The book finder records limited operational information, such as request outcomes and timing, to diagnose faults and protect the service. It is designed not to log search text, full tool inputs or private credentials.

Technical records are used for operating and securing the service. We do not use book-finder searches to create customer accounts or advertising profiles.

How long information is kept

The service processes tool inputs in memory. It keeps up to 100 successful search requests and their results in an in-memory cache. Results can be reused for 15 seconds, but this is a freshness limit, not a deletion deadline. An entry can remain in memory until it is replaced, removed to make room, or the service restarts.

The server journal has no fixed time-based retention limit. Older records are removed as storage limits require. Separate system log files are checked for rotation weekly and keep four archived files. Web-server log files are checked daily and keep 14 archived files. Empty files are not rotated, so these file counts are not guaranteed deletion deadlines measured in days or weeks.

These settings describe the book finder's cache and active server logs. Information handled by OpenAI and our Shopify store is subject to their respective privacy policies below. Support messages sent through our contact form are handled under our website privacy policy.

ChatGPT, book covers and checkout

OpenAI handles your ChatGPT account and conversation under its own privacy policy and your ChatGPT settings. This notice describes our service; it does not change OpenAI's handling of your conversation.

Book cover images load from Shopify's image service. Opening a book takes you to our Shopify store, where the store's privacy policy and checkout controls apply. The book finder does not place an order or submit payment on your behalf.

Shop links include fixed campaign labels so we can measure visits and sales referred by the book finder through Shopify's existing analytics. These labels do not contain your reading request or a personal identifier. The shop's privacy settings and analytics controls still apply.

A Custom Mystery Box link carries your reading request to prefill the shop's editable Book preferences field. Review or change it before adding a box to your cart. If you add the box, its preferences and a fixed book-finder referral label accompany that cart item and any resulting order under the shop's privacy policy. The app does not receive your order or payment details.

Your choices and requests

You can stop further book-finder lookups by no longer using the app or by disconnecting it in ChatGPT. Disconnecting does not delete your ChatGPT conversations or completed shop orders. Use ChatGPT's controls for your conversation history.

Use our contact form for a privacy question or to request access to or deletion of personal information we hold. Mention the ChatGPT book finder and provide only the details needed to help us locate the relevant records. Do not send passwords or payment details.

We will update this page when the app's data handling changes.