1. Who is responsible for your data
Parallelo is operated by Luke Parsons in Barcelona, Spain ("Parallelo", "we", "us", or "our"). For privacy questions or requests, email parallelo@luke.ac.
This policy applies to parallelo.cc, the Parallelo progressive web app, and the Parallelo iOS and Android apps.
2. Data we process
Account and authentication data
When you sign in with Google or Apple, we receive and store identifiers needed to create and secure your account, such as your provider account identifier, email address, name, profile image URL, login times, and hashed or opaque session credentials. We do not receive your Google or Apple password.
Books, audio, and generated reading data
We process files and information you choose to add, including ebooks, PDFs, audiobooks, covers, filenames, titles, authors, languages, extracted text and images, parsed book structure, audio transcripts, timing and alignment data, and AI-generated translations, glosses, definitions, speech, and audiobooks.
Reading, device, and preference data
We process reading position, progress, selected languages, playback state and speed, library activity, upload and processing state, offline-download state, device or client identifiers used for syncing, and push-notification tokens if you enable notifications. Many appearance and reading preferences are stored only on your device in local storage or IndexedDB.
Usage, diagnostics, and support data
We collect product events, performance measurements, page and feature use, model and storage usage, costs, request and session identifiers, errors, network diagnostics, browser/app and device information, approximate location derived from network information, and communications you send us.
3. How we use data and our legal bases
We use personal data for the following purposes:
- Provide the service and perform our contract: authenticate you; store, parse, translate, narrate, align, sync, download, and display your books and audio; maintain your library and reading position; and provide requested support.
- Legitimate interests: secure and operate Parallelo; prevent abuse; diagnose failures; understand feature performance; improve accessibility, reliability, and product design; control provider costs; and de-duplicate or cache identical processing work.
- Consent: send push notifications or use device capabilities such as files, camera, or photos when you choose to grant the relevant permission, and process data on another consent basis where local law requires it. You can withdraw a device permission in your operating-system settings.
- Legal obligations and claims: comply with law, respond to valid legal requests, and establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.
We do not sell personal data and do not use it for third-party behavioral advertising.
4. When data is shared
We share data only as needed to operate Parallelo, comply with law, or complete a transaction you request. Recipients may include:
- Sign-in providers: Google and Apple.
- Cloud and infrastructure providers: hosting, database, network, and object-storage providers, including Hetzner and Cloudflare.
- AI and media-processing providers: services that receive the text, images, PDF pages, or audio needed for the requested feature. Depending on the feature and current configuration, these may include Google Gemini, ElevenLabs, xAI, OpenAI, Microsoft Azure, MiniMax, or Boson/Higgs.
- Analytics and diagnostics: PostHog and tools used to monitor errors, performance, security, and service health.
- Authorities or transaction parties: when required by law, necessary to protect rights and safety, or involved in a reorganization, financing, acquisition, or transfer of the service, subject to appropriate safeguards.
AI providers may process submitted content under their service terms and data-processing arrangements. Do not submit content you are not comfortable having processed by the providers needed for the feature you invoke.
5. Storage on your device
Parallelo uses cookies, local storage, IndexedDB, Cache Storage, and equivalent native-app storage. These technologies keep you signed in, remember preferences, cache parsed books and translations, enable offline reading and listening, resume uploads, and protect requests. Clearing site/app data or uninstalling the app can remove local copies but does not by itself delete cloud account data.
6. Retention and deletion
- Account, library, progress, uploaded source files, and account-owned generated data are generally kept while your account exists or until you delete the relevant item.
- Normal sign-in sessions expire after 90 days unless refreshed or ended sooner.
- Correlated operational trace events are normally pruned after about 14 days. Other security, provider-cost, analytics, and diagnostic records are retained according to operational need, legal requirements, and provider settings.
- Backups and deletion queues may retain data for a limited additional period before it is overwritten or permanently removed.
- Shared content-hash caches—such as translations, speech, transcripts, and alignments for identical content—may remain after an individual account or item is deleted because they are not account-owned and may still support other users. They are retained until evicted or no longer operationally useful.
You can delete individual books and audiobooks in Parallelo. You can also use the in-app Delete account action to remove your account, owned database records, and account-owned uploaded assets. Limited operational, security, cost, legal, backup, and shared-cache records may remain as described above.
7. International transfers
Parallelo is operated from Spain, while some service providers process data in the United States or other countries. Where required, we rely on recognized transfer mechanisms such as adequacy decisions, standard contractual clauses, or another lawful safeguard. Those countries may have different data-protection laws from your own.
8. Your rights and choices
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, or object to processing; receive a portable copy of data you provided; and withdraw consent without affecting earlier lawful processing. You may also have the right to complain to a data-protection authority.
To exercise a right, email parallelo@luke.ac. We may need to verify that the request relates to your account. If you are in Spain, you may complain to the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD); if you are elsewhere, you may contact your local authority.
9. Security
We use measures designed to protect data, including encrypted network transport, access controls, hashed session tokens, ownership-scoped file access, short-lived signed links, and separate production and development storage. No system is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.
10. Children
Parallelo is not directed to children under 13. If you are under the age at which you can lawfully agree to online data processing in your country, a parent or legal guardian must authorize your use. If we learn that we collected a child's data without the required authorization, we will take reasonable steps to delete it.
11. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as Parallelo or the law changes. We will publish the revised policy here and change the effective date. If a change materially affects how existing personal data is used, we will provide additional notice when reasonably possible.
12. Contact
Email parallelo@luke.ac with privacy questions, rights requests, or concerns.