Privacy policy

This policy explains what information ebooks.pk collects, why, who it is shared with, how long it is kept and the choices you have. We collect as little as we can: you can search, read and download books without an account, and the pages you browse are the same for every visitor — your own details are loaded separately by your browser and never written into the pages themselves.

Information we collect

When you simply visit

• Counts, not people. Views, reads, downloads and searches are counted per book and per search phrase. These counters store no IP address and no account.
• Security and error records. Like every website, our servers handle your IP address and browser details to deliver pages and to protect the site from abuse. Error reports keep the page address and a scrambled (hashed) form of the IP address, never the address itself. Our own logs are kept for 14 days.
• Your browser's own storage. Your reading position, bookmarks, theme, data-saver and other display choices, the books you saved for offline reading and, if you have an account, a copy of your own library are kept in your browser so pages load fast. This stays on your device; clearing your browser's site data removes it.

When you create an account

• Account details: your name, username, email address and password (stored only as a secure hash), and anything you add to your profile — a photo, bio, location or website. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email address and profile photo from Google.
• Your library and activity: books you shelve, rate, review, upload or request, your reading progress, goals and streaks, reading lists, the people and authors you follow, and your notification choices.
• Sign-in records: your active sessions (with the IP address and browser they came from) and a security log of important account events, so we can spot and stop misuse.

When you write to us or use a form

Messages sent through the contact form, reports about books or reviews, book requests, newsletter sign-ups, copyright notices and counter-notices, book and author claims and licence requests are stored with the details you give, the time and the IP address they were sent from (to deal with spam and abuse). Copyright notices and counter-notices include the contact details the law requires.

Optional programmes

Some features collect more, only from the people who use them: the Partner Program (your legal name and payout account — stored encrypted), coin top-ups (the transaction ID and, if you add one, a screenshot), the Book Bazaar (your listings and messages; your phone number, stored encrypted and shown only if you choose to) and advertising (the advertiser's billing details, stored encrypted). Each asks for this information on its own pages, and only for what it needs.

What other people can see

Your public profile (name, username, photo, bio), the books you have shared, your reviews and ratings, your public reading lists and the people you follow are visible to everyone. Your email address is never shown. You can hide your reading statistics (books finished, streaks and goals), keep reading lists private and block people in your settings.

How we use information

• To run your account and your library, and to show your activity to the people who follow you.
• To send the emails you need or ask for: account and security messages, replies to your messages, email notifications and the weekly recap of your reading (both can be switched off in your settings, the recap also with the link in any recap) and — only if you subscribe — the newsletter.
• To review uploads and keep the library free of spam, abuse, broken files and infringing books, and to handle copyright notices.
• To see which books readers look for, so they can be added, and to keep the site fast and secure.

We do not sell or rent your personal information, and we do not use it to build advertising profiles.

Cookies

• ebookspk-session and XSRF-TOKEN — keep you signed in and protect forms from forgery. They are set when you sign in or use a form, and last up to 30 days.
• remember_web_… — keeps you signed in on this device when you choose to stay signed in (or after you register).
• ebk_auth and ebk_lv — tell the pages that you are signed in and when your library changed, so your browser knows when to refresh its copy. Both are removed when you sign out.
• ebk_flash — carries a one-time message (such as “Saved”) to the next page, for two minutes.

These cookies are needed for signing in and for the site to work; we use no tracking cookies of our own, and visitors who are not signed in normally receive none of them. If visitor statistics are switched on, the statistics provider (for example Google Analytics) may set its own cookies to count visits; you can block them in your browser. Advertising cookies and your choices about them are described in Advertising, affiliate links & cookies below.

Notifications on your device

You can ask for notifications on your phone or computer — for example when an exam board's date sheet is shared, a web novel you read has a new episode or an author you like has a new book. Your browser asks for permission only after you tap Notify me.

• What we keep: the address your browser's push service gives us and the keys to encrypt messages to it, the topics you chose, your device type and browser (for example “Android, Chrome”), where on the site you turned notifications on, and when your browser last checked in. For a visitor without an account, that is all — no name and no email address.
• Who delivers them: your browser's own push service (from Google, Mozilla, Microsoft or Apple) carries the encrypted message to your device and cannot read it.
• Turning them off: every notification has a Turn off button, and Notifications on this device lets you remove any topic, or all of them. A browser that stops answering, or that has not been used for 120 days, is forgotten.

Services we use

• Hosting and email: our web hosting provider runs the site's servers and database and delivers the emails we send.
• Cloudflare delivers the site and its files, protects it from attacks (it may set a short-lived security cookie to do so) and stores book files, covers and our encrypted backups. When a form shows a verification check, Cloudflare Turnstile receives your IP address to tell people from bots.
• Google receives your sign-in only if you choose Sign in with Google. Google Analytics counts visits for us: the pages you open, how you arrived, your device and browser, and your approximate location (worked out from your IP address, which Google Analytics does not store). It sets its own cookies and Google's privacy policy applies; you can block it in your browser.
• Players and viewers from other sites (an audio narration hosted on YouTube, SoundCloud or the Internet Archive, or a book shown in another site's viewer) load only when you press play or open them; that site then applies its own privacy policy.
• Search engines are told the addresses of new pages — never anything about you.

These providers process information only to provide their service to us. Some of them work outside Pakistan, so information about you may be handled in other countries.

Other times we share information

• Copyright cases: when a book you uploaded is the subject of a notice, we tell you who complained and what was claimed. If you send a counter-notice, we forward it — including your contact details, as the procedure requires — to the person who sent the notice. Our transparency report shows totals only, without personal details.
• The law: we may disclose information when we are required to by law or by a lawful order, or when it is needed to protect our readers, the site or the safety of others.

How long we keep information

• Your account — as long as it is open. When you delete it you have 14 days to change your mind by signing in again; after that your profile, reviews, lists, library, follows, comments and notifications are deleted for good. Books you shared that stay on the site, and records we must keep (such as copyright cases and payments), are no longer linked to you.
• Our logs — 14 days. Security log — 1 year. Notifications — 120 days after you read them, and never more than a year.
• Deleted uploads — restorable from your uploads for about 30 days, then removed for good.
• Backups — encrypted copies of the database are kept for up to eight weeks, then replaced.
• Repeat-infringer records — if an account that received copyright strikes is deleted, we keep a one-way fingerprint (a hash, never the address itself) of its email address and linked Google account, with the number of strikes, for up to three years after the last strike, so that strikes carry over to a new account of the same person. We keep it because we have a legitimate interest — and a duty under copyright law — in stopping repeat infringement.

Security

Connections to ebooks.pk are encrypted, passwords are stored only as secure hashes, payout and phone details are encrypted, staff accounts are protected by two-factor sign-in, and access to personal information is limited to the people who need it to run the site. No website can be perfectly secure, so please use a strong password that you use nowhere else.

Children

ebooks.pk is a general library for readers of all ages. Children under 13 should use it with the permission and help of a parent or teacher and should not create an account on their own. Books for adult readers ask visitors to confirm they are 18 or older before they open.

Your choices and rights

• Edit your profile, your email and notification choices and what others see in Settings.
• Unsubscribe from the newsletter or the weekly recap with the link in any email.
• Delete your reviews, reading lists and uploads, or your whole account, yourself.
• To ask what information we hold about you, to correct it or to have it deleted, write to [email protected] from the email address of your account. We answer within 30 days.

Changes to this policy

We update this policy when the site changes. The latest version is always on this page, with the date it was last updated at the top; if a change matters to how we use your information, we will also say so on the site.