What you type into 4ward: your major, school, experience, goals, and the optional "a bit about you" answers. If you upload a résumé, we read it to give you feedback and to fill in your profile. That's it. We don't collect anything you didn't type or upload yourself.
Your profile and trajectory are stored in your own browser (localStorage) by default, not tied to an account. If you clear your browser data or switch devices without an account, it's gone unless you rebuild it.
If you choose to sign in (Google or an email link), that same data also syncs to a private database row tied to your account, so it carries over when you switch devices. Only you can access your row. You can leave this off entirely by using 4ward as a guest, and you can delete your synced data any time from your dashboard.
Building your trajectory and using the résumé reviewer send your profile to Anthropic's Claude through our own server, so we can generate a personalized result. That request is not used to train any model, and we don't store a copy of it beyond what's needed to answer you.
A small number of vetted services process data on our behalf, each limited to what they need to do their job:
We don't sell access to any of this data, and none of these providers use it for anything beyond delivering 4ward to you.
All traffic to 4ward is encrypted over HTTPS. Signed-in accounts are authenticated through Supabase Auth (Google OAuth or an emailed magic link — we never see or store a password). Synced data is scoped per-account so only you can read or write your own row. As a small, early-stage team we don't yet hold a formal third-party security certification (e.g. SOC 2); if that's required for your institution, reach out to getfwrd@gmail.com and we'll walk through what we do have in place.
Guest data lives only in your browser until you clear it. Signed-in account data persists until you delete it via "Delete my data" in your dashboard, which clears both your synced copy and the local one. Advisor share links expire automatically after 90 days, or immediately if you delete them sooner.
4ward never shares anything automatically. If you tap "Share a live link," you choose to create a private, one-time link with a summary of your trajectory (your paths, focus areas, target roles, and outreach counts, never your contacts' names or private notes) for your advisor to view. You can delete that link any time, and it expires automatically after 90 days.
As a guest, clearing your browser data is fully in your hands. If you're signed in, use "Delete my data" in your dashboard to clear your synced data and this browser's copy together. For anything you've shared with an advisor, delete the link from the Share modal in the app. For any other question, email getfwrd@gmail.com.