Privacy Policy
Northwind exists so founders can say things they can’t say anywhere else. That only works if what you say is genuinely private. This policy describes exactly what is collected, where it goes, and what is kept — in the same plain language as the app, and matching what the app actually does.
There is no account
Northwind has no sign-up, no login and no password. We do not ask for your email address and we do not have one for you. Nothing you say is associated with an identity on our side, because there is no identity on our side.
What we collect, and how
Everything Northwind handles comes from you, inside the app:
- What you say. When you talk, the app records your voice while you speak, so it can be turned into text.
- What you type. Messages you type in a conversation instead of speaking.
- Your profile. What you enter when you set up: your name, and optionally your role, company, a one-line description of it, its stage, team size and months of runway. You can change any of it in You → Your profile.
- Memories. At the end of a conversation, Northwind writes short notes worth keeping (for example, “cash in the bank is about $40k”). You can see, edit and forget every one of them in Memory, and choose which folders Northwind may write to.
- Purchases. If you subscribe, Apple tells the app which plan is active. We never see your payment details.
How we use it
Only to run Northwind for you:
- to turn your speech into text;
- to write each reply, with the context of your profile and relevant memories;
- to read the reply aloud in the voice you chose;
- when a conversation ends, to write its title, the summary you see, and the memories worth keeping;
- now and then, to write a short recap of past conversations for you;
- to count the minutes included in your plan (see The usage meter below).
It is never used for advertising, never sold, never shared with data brokers, never used to track you across apps, and never read by a person at Northwind.
What is stored, and where
- On your phone, encrypted. Your conversations, the memories Northwind keeps, and your profile are stored on your device, encrypted with a key held in the iOS Keychain. They are excluded from unencrypted backups.
- Not on our servers. There is no cloud copy of your conversations or memories. We do not have a database of them to search, hand over, or lose.
- Nothing follows you to a new phone — unless you choose it. By default, the encryption key never leaves your device, so no backup anywhere can open your conversations; if this phone is lost, they are gone, and even we cannot recover them. An optional setting, Restore on a new iPhone (You → Privacy & data, off by default), lets the key ride in your own encrypted iCloud backup so a new iPhone can restore them. Apple holds that backup under your Apple ID — we still hold nothing, and there is still no Northwind database. You can also export a copy any time from the same screen.
- Subscription status. Purchases run through Apple. We never see your payment details.
- The usage meter. Plans include a monthly conversation allowance, so our server keeps one small record per user: a one-way hash of an identifier, the minutes used this period, and when the period started. For subscribers the identifier is the subscription’s Apple transaction number; otherwise it is a random number the app creates when it is installed. No name, no email, and no conversation content — a hash and two numbers, deleted automatically after 90 days of inactivity.
- Abuse limits. To stop the service being flooded, our server counts requests per install number and per IP address in short-lived counters that delete themselves within about an hour. They hold a count, nothing else.
- What is never collected: no advertising identifiers, no cross-app tracking, no analytics on the content of your conversations.
Who it is shared with: AI services
Northwind cannot answer you without sending something. It uses three AI companies, and the app asks your permission before anything is sent to any of them: the “Before we talk” screen, shown the first time you open Northwind, lists each company and exactly what it receives, and nothing is sent unless you tap Allow. You can withdraw that permission any time in You → Privacy & data; the app then stops sending anything until you allow it again.
| Company | What it receives | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Mistral AI (France) | Recordings of your voice while you talk. | To turn your speech into text. |
| Cerebras (USA) | What you say or type in a conversation, your profile, and the memories relevant to it. When a conversation ends, its transcript. Occasionally, summaries of past conversations. | To write each reply (using Gemma, an open-weights model, under Northwind’s own instructions); to write the title, summary and memories when a conversation ends; to write your recap. |
| Fish Audio | Only the text of Northwind’s replies — never your recordings or what you type. | To read the reply aloud. |
All of it passes through Northwind’s own server on the way, which forwards it and keeps none of it: nothing you say is stored there. No other company receives your data, and we will name any change to this list here, and ask you again in the app, before it takes effect.
The same protection. Mistral AI and Cerebras — the only companies that receive what you say, type or record — act as service providers to Northwind, under terms that limit their use of it to providing the service, require it to be kept secure and confidential, and exclude it from training their models: the same protection this policy gives it. Fish Audio receives none of your words, only text Northwind wrote.
Never training data
Nothing you say is ever used to train models — ours or anyone else’s. The model that writes replies (Gemma) was trained by its makers before you arrived, and nothing you say is added to it.
No human review
No person at Northwind reads your conversations. There is no review queue and no sampling programme. This is not only a policy: there is no server-side copy for anyone to read.
How long anything exists
Conversations and memories exist on your phone until you delete them. There is no retention timer, because there is nothing on our side that a timer would apply to.
Deleting everything
You can forget any single memory, or delete everything, from inside the app under You → Privacy & data. Deleting everything removes your conversations, memories and profile from the device and destroys the encryption key, so any copy that might survive in a device backup cannot be opened. Because there is no account and no server-side copy, that is genuinely all of it.
Legal requests
We can only produce what exists. Your conversations and memories are on your device and not in our possession, so we cannot produce them, and no legal process served on us can compel us to. For anything that does exist on our side, we require valid legal process and will notify you where we are able to.
Security
Data is encrypted in transit, and encrypted at rest on your device using Apple’s own cryptography with a key that never leaves it. Northwind is not a healthcare provider and your use of it is not covered by HIPAA.
Your rights
Export and deletion are available to everyone, from inside the app, without asking us. If you are in the EU/EEA, UK, or California you have additional statutory rights; because we hold no account and no copy of your conversations, most of them you can exercise yourself in the app, and you can contact us for the rest.
Age
Northwind is for adults building companies, and you confirm you are 16 or older when you allow it on the “Before we talk” screen. It is not directed at children.
Changes
If we change this policy we will say so in the app before the change takes effect, in plain language. We will never weaken these commitments retroactively.
Contact
Alan Yang, trading as Northwind · New South Wales, Australia · hello@meetnorthwind.com