The rules of the shelf.

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") are a binding agreement between you and FirstFinder ("FirstFinder," "we," "us"). They cover the FirstFinder website and app, and everything you do with them.

By creating an account, logging in, or otherwise using FirstFinder, you accept these Terms. If you don't agree with them, don't use FirstFinder.

Our Privacy Policy explains what information FirstFinder collects, why, who else receives it, and how to have it deleted. It forms part of these Terms, and accepting these Terms means accepting it too.

You must be at least 13 years old to hold a FirstFinder account. If you are under the age of majority where you live, you may use FirstFinder only with a parent or guardian who agrees to these Terms on your behalf.

Accounts belong to one person. Keep your password to yourself, don't reuse a password from somewhere else, and tell us promptly if you think someone has gotten into your account. You are responsible for what happens under it.

Give us accurate account information and keep it current. You can permanently delete your account, your collection, and your stored photos at any time from My Account — you don't need to ask us first.

FirstFinder is a cataloging tool for collectors. Use it for that. You agree not to use FirstFinder to do, upload, store, or share any of the following:

Your collection is yours. Photos, records, notes, receipts — you keep every right you already had in them, and we don't claim ownership of any of it.

To run the service, you give us a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, back up, transmit, resize, and display your content, solely to operate and support FirstFinder for you. That license ends when you delete the content or your account, apart from copies in routine backups that age out on their own and anything we are required to keep under section 6.

When you scan a book or use photo identification, the photos you submit are sent to a third-party AI provider (currently OpenAI) to be read or analyzed and returned as suggested details. Don't submit photos you aren't comfortable having processed that way.

Your collection is private unless you publish it. If you turn on a shareable collection page, the items and fields you choose become readable by anyone holding the link, whether or not they have a FirstFinder account, and by search engines if you also choose to have the page listed. Purchase prices, sources, notes, and sold records are only included if you switch them on; receipt photos are never published. You can switch the page off or reset its link at any time, which stops it being served immediately — but we can't recall anything already copied, screenshotted, cached, or indexed while it was public.

You are responsible for having the right to upload whatever you upload, and for what you choose to publish on a shareable collection page.

We do not routinely browse private collections. Items and photos are stored privately and access is restricted, apart from whatever you have deliberately published on a shareable collection page.

We reserve the right to access, review, or remove content, and to suspend or permanently terminate any account and delete everything in it, at our sole discretion and with or without prior notice, when we believe in good faith that:

If we find, or are told about, content on FirstFinder that we believe is illegal, we may preserve it — including account records, photos, and access logs — and report and disclose it to law enforcement or the appropriate authorities. We may do this without notifying you, and we will not notify you where the law forbids it or where doing so could interfere with an investigation or endanger someone.

Apparent child sexual abuse material is reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children as required by 18 U.S.C. § 2258A, and the account is terminated immediately and permanently.

We will respond to valid subpoenas, court orders, warrants, and other lawful requests for account information.

Deleting your account does not delete content we are legally required to preserve or have already reported.

If you come across something on FirstFinder that breaks these rules, tell us at thebookbarterer@gmail.com and include enough detail for us to find it. Logged-in users can also use Send feedback.

If someone is in immediate danger, contact local emergency services first.

FirstFinder shows estimated values, comparable sales, and identification suggestions produced by automated tools and third-party sources. They are informational only.

They are not appraisals, and they are not financial, investment, insurance, tax, or legal advice. They may be wrong, out of date, or built on a misread of your item. Don't rely on them for a sale, a purchase, an insurance claim, an estate valuation, or a tax filing — get a qualified professional appraisal instead.

Reports you generate from FirstFinder, including the insurance report, carry the same caveat. Your insurer decides what it will accept.

FirstFinder is free. It is run as a passion project by one person, not a company with a support desk, an uptime commitment, or anyone on call at three in the morning.

The service is provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, or non-infringement. We don't promise that the service will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free, or that any data will be preserved.

So that this is impossible to miss, by using FirstFinder you specifically acknowledge and agree that:

To the fullest extent the law allows, FirstFinder and anyone working on it will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, lost collections, or the cost of substitute services, arising out of or relating to your use of FirstFinder — even if we were told such damages were possible.

To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability for any claim relating to FirstFinder is limited to one hundred U.S. dollars ($100).

Some places don't allow some of these exclusions. Where that's true, they apply only as far as the law permits, and nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless FirstFinder and the people who run it from any claim, demand, loss, or expense — including reasonable legal fees — arising from your content, your use of FirstFinder, or your breach of these Terms or of anyone else's rights.

We may revise these Terms as FirstFinder changes or as the law requires. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page always reflects the current version.

For material changes we'll make a reasonable effort to give notice in the app or by email before they take effect. Continuing to use FirstFinder after a change means you accept the revised Terms. If you don't accept them, delete your account.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.

Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the service will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and we each consent to personal jurisdiction there. Nothing here stops either of us from seeking an injunction to protect intellectual property or account security in any court with jurisdiction.

If any part of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force. Not enforcing a provision isn't a waiver of it. These Terms are the entire agreement between us about FirstFinder.

Questions about these Terms, abuse reports, and account appeals all go to thebookbarterer@gmail.com.