Privacy

How Libraree Cards does and doesn't use the information collected from you.

Your library card number

Although you enter this, it will never be sent anywhere, whether that's another party or another computer system.

The reason you need to enter this is twofold:

1. It's displayed on your mobile library card;

2. We use it to help us figure out the correct barcode type to use. There are lots of different types of barcodes, and if we can use one of them to turn your barcode photo into the number you've entered, we know we've found the correct barcode type.

Your library card photo

Again, this never leaves your phone and isn't shared with a another party or another computer system.

The decoding of the barcode back into a number takes place on your phone. As soon as the mobile library card has been generated, the photo is removed from your phone.

Generating the Apple Wallet card

If the library card number and barcode isn't shared with the Libraree server, how does the server generate the library card?

Developers - there's a technical write-up available. Everybody else, read on!

An Apple Wallet card is actually a file containing several sub-files. Those sub-files include the library logo, the barcode images and the information that appears on the card. It also contains a "signature" file.

A signature is created by calculating a "hash" of every sub-file, combining them together and then signing that information using a certificate.

Think of a hash as being the result of a maths calculation performed on each file and a signature as something that says "this set of hashes is trustworthy".

To generate the signature, our server needs only the results of the hash calculations, not the actual library card information or barcodes.

Information Libraree does record

If Libraree Cards needed to use a photo to figure out the type of barcode used by your chosen library service, it will record several pieces of information:

• the library service code;

• a redacted version of your library card number with all the numerical digits replaced with 0s;

• a redacted version of the library card number that was read from the barcode;

• the discovered barcode type.

For example:

Information	Entered as	Recorded as
Library service	Lancashire	E10000017
Card Number	234334624522	000000000000
Scanned Number	A234334624522B	A000000000000B
Barcode Type	-	Codabar

None of this information is personally identifying data.

This information is recorded so that we can learn which library services use which barcode types, how long library card numbers are, and how the number printed on the library cards might differ from the number encoded into the barcode.

Having this information will allow us to shorten the process in the future. For example. if somebody wants to create a Lancashire Libraries card, we already know that we need to create a Codabar barcode based upon the entered library card number with a prefix of "A" and a suffix of "B". No photos would be required, making the user journey shorter and the user experience even easier.