Safety Basics

Last updated 9 August 2026

Two minutes here is worth more than anything else on this site. Swapping books means meeting strangers, and that deserves the same care as any other meeting with someone you don't know.

Nobody here is checked.

Names, photos, tags and book descriptions are all written by members. BookHome verifies none of it. A profile that looks trustworthy is still just a profile, and a rating is a signal — not a guarantee.

What to watch out for

Meeting strangers. Anyone can make an account in a minute. Treat a first meeting the way you would with any stranger from the internet.
Condition. Photos can be old, borrowed, or of a different copy altogether. Inspect the actual book before you pay.
Money. BookHome handles no payments and holds nothing in escrow. If you pay and get nothing, we cannot reverse it, refund you, or step in.
Pressure. Anyone rushing you, refusing to meet in public, or asking for payment before you have seen the book is telling you something.
Personal details. You never need to give your home address, ID, bank details, or an OTP to swap a book. Nobody legitimate will ask.
QR codes. Scanning a QR code always sends money — it never collects it. Anyone asking you to scan one “to receive” payment is trying to take yours.

Meeting someone

Meet in public — a café, library, metro station, busy market. Never a home, yours or theirs.
Meet in daylight, and tell someone where you’re going and who you’re meeting.
Keep it on BookHome. Moving to private chat early is a common pattern in scams, and we can’t help with what we can’t see.
Inspect first, pay second — in person, once the book is actually in your hands.
Bring someone if the meeting point isn’t somewhere you know.
Leave if it feels wrong. You owe nobody an explanation. No book is worth it.

If something goes wrong

Report the person from their profile, or from the order it happened on. Reports reach a real person, not a queue. You can also block someone, which removes them from your feed and stops them contacting you.

If you are in danger or a crime has been committed, contact the police first. Dial 112. BookHome is one person running a website; we can remove an account, but we cannot investigate, recover your money, or intervene in person.

Your location

BookHome never shares your exact position — it is snapped to a grid cell of your choosing before it leaves the server, and you can leave the map entirely from Settings. Even so, be deliberate about how precise you make it if you live somewhere easily identified.

Questions, or something to report? Use Send feedback at the bottom of any page, or write to hello@bookhome.in. Either way it reaches the person who built BookHome.

BookHome is at the very start, and these pages will keep changing. If something here reads wrong, or you think it should say something different, say so — it’s early enough that suggestions actually change what’s written.