Privacy policy
What Onward keeps about you and your trips, why, and how to have it deleted.
Last updated October 13, 2026
Onward is provided by Firefight Labs, LLC, doing business as Cosmic Genius ("we"). This policy says what Onward keeps about you and your trips, why, who helps us run it, and how to have it all deleted. Questions: [email protected].
What we keep
- Your account: your email address, and what you choose to add in Account: your name, photo, home airport, nationalities, currency, temperature unit and 12- or 24-hour clock.
- How you sign in:
- With your email, a one-time code we email you. It works for ten minutes; we keep only a scrambled form of it, and clear that within a day.
- With Sign in with Apple or Google, the account ID they give us for Onward, the email address they share, and your name if you let them share it. Apple only shares your name the first time. With Apple's Hide My Email, the address we get is a private one Apple forwards to you, and we never see your real one.
- For Sign in with Apple only, a token from Apple that lets us end Sign in with Apple for Onward when you delete your account. It's kept encrypted.
- We never receive your Apple or Google password.
- Your trips: the places, dates, bookings, plans, ideas, notes, tasks and lists you add, and the trips you're invited to. Who's on each trip and what they're allowed to do.
- Photos and files you add: trip covers, photos on places, and the screenshots, PDFs or text of booking confirmations you add, kept as a copy beside the booking.
- Conversations with Onward Advisor: what you ask, what it answers, and the plans it suggests, in your trip's chat. On a shared trip, others on the trip see them, except questions you keep to yourself.
- Your voice, if you talk to the Advisor: your iPhone turns what you say into text on the phone itself, and only that text is sent, as a typed question would be. Your voice recording never leaves your phone. When the Advisor answers out loud, the words of its answer are sent to an AI provider to make the spoken voice (below), and the audio is kept for a while so the same answer doesn't have to be made twice.
- Your devices: the name and kind of each phone you're signed in on (for Account → Signed in on), and the sign-in keys that keep it signed in.
- Notifications, if you allow them: the address Apple gives us for sending notifications to your phone (a push token), the same for a trip's Live Activity on your Lock Screen, and which notifications you allowed. Reminders about your own trip (when to leave, check in, check out) are set on your phone from your itinerary and don't go through us.
- What keeps the service working: when something you asked for went wrong (for example, reading a confirmation or a bus timetable), a short record of it; which booking links were opened (the site and the trip, not what you then did there); and how much of the Advisor you've used, for fair-use limits.
We don't keep your location. Onward uses it on your phone to show where you are on your trip's map, and nowhere else. We don't use advertising or analytics trackers in the app.
Emails
Today, Onward emails you two things: your sign-in codes, and one short welcome email when you create an account. They come from mail.withonward.app, sent for us by an email delivery service. If you reply, your reply reaches a person at Onward.
Why
We use your data to run Onward for you:
- keep your trips, and sync them to your devices and to the people you share them with;
- answer you as the Advisor, in writing or out loud;
- read your confirmations into bookings;
- find places, photos, maps, weather and departures for your trip;
- send the notifications you allowed.
We also use it to keep Onward working and fair: to fix what breaks, and to stop abuse.
We don't sell your data, and we don't use it to advertise to you.
Who helps us run it
A few kinds of services help us run Onward. Each sees only what it needs to do its part. Your questions to the Advisor, and the parts of your trip they need, go to third-party AI providers to be answered.
| Who | What for | What they get |
|---|---|---|
| AI providers | The Advisor's answers, including searching the web when an answer needs current information; reading booking confirmations; the Advisor's spoken voice | Your question and the parts of your trip it needs; the confirmation you add; for the voice, the words of the answer being spoken |
| Apple and Google | Sign in with Apple or Google; Apple delivers notifications and Live Activity updates | What you share with them to sign in; the notification's text and your push token |
| Maps, places and routes | Maps, offline maps and driving routes; finding places, their details, photos and ratings | Map areas, route ends, and place names and areas, not who you are |
| Email delivery | Sending our emails | Your email address and the email |
| Hosting, storage and backups | Running Onward's server, database and website; storing photos, files and backups | Everything the server keeps, stored for us |
| App updates | Delivering app updates to your phone | Your phone's internet address and app version, as any download does |
| Public data sources | Weather forecasts, railway lines for the trip map, and photos and short descriptions of places | Place coordinates and dates, map areas, and place names |
| Booking sites and partners | Bus, van, ferry and train departures, read on your phone from a booking site, and booking them; tracking bookings made through our links, so we're paid a commission | The route and day; that a link was opened, with our partner code, not who you are; on their sites, what you give them |
Booking links
Onward may earn a commission when you book through some of its links (Booking.com, Agoda, Trip.com, Expedia, Klook, GetYourGuide, Viator, 12Go and others), at no extra cost to you. It doesn't change what the Advisor suggests or the order things are shown in. We record that a link was opened; the booking itself is between you and that site, under its own privacy policy, and that site may use cookies to know the booking came from us.
How long
We keep your data for as long as you have an account. When you delete your account, it's gone from our servers at once. Copies in our database backups go within about a day: the backups are kept as a continuous copy, and older copies are cleared as it moves on.
Deleting your account and your data
In the app: Account → Delete account. It deletes your account, your sign-in on every device, your photos and files, and every trip only you are on. Trips you share with others stay with them, handed to another person on each; your messages there show as "Former member".
If you signed in with Apple, we also tell Apple to end Sign in with Apple for Onward. You can check it in your iPhone's Settings, under your name, in Sign in with Apple. If you signed in with Google, you can remove Onward from your Google Account's third-party connections; we hold no ongoing access to it.
Your phone forgets everything too. Account → Download my data gives you a copy first. Or write to [email protected].
Your rights
Depending on where you live (for example, in California), you may have the right to ask what we keep about you, and to have it corrected, exported or deleted. You can do most of it in the app (above), and anyone can write to [email protected]; we answer within 30 days. We'll never treat you differently for asking.
Children
Onward isn't for anyone under 16. We don't knowingly keep data about them, and we delete what we find.
Security
Your data travels encrypted (HTTPS). Sign-in codes are never stored as they are. Your sign-in keys are kept in your phone's keychain, and Apple's token is kept encrypted on our server. No system is perfectly safe; if something of yours is ever exposed, we'll tell you.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, we'll say so in the app before it applies.