Orbit

Everyone you love, in one orbit.

orbithealth.app

Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 2026 · Applies to Orbit on iPhone and Apple Watch, and to the Android version when it ships

Orbit is a family-safety app. Your personal information is shared only with the family circle (“Nest”) you choose. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own use or for research. We do not use your location, health, or driving data to target advertising. Orbit’s free tier shows non-personalized ads (see “Advertising”).

Information we collect

• Account details — your name, phone number, email, and date of birth, used to identify you to your family and to determine age-appropriate settings.
• Location — your live and recent location, shared with your Nest when you turn on location sharing, and attached to emergency alerts. Some of this happens in the background, while the app is not open: only while you are actively sharing your live location with someone, while a place alert (arrive/leave) you set is active, or while crash detection is running during a drive. When none of those is active, Orbit does not collect your location in the background. Both systems show an indicator whenever an app uses your location, and on Android Orbit also posts an ongoing notification for as long as it is tracking. You can revoke the permission, or reduce it to “While using the app”, at any time in iOS Settings or Android Settings → Apps → Orbit → Permissions — and from inside Orbit under Menu → Manage Access.
• Health & fitness — heart rate, resting heart rate, heart-rate variability, cardio fitness, blood oxygen, blood pressure, glucose, respiratory rate, skin temperature, sleep, water, weight, steps, active energy, exercise, distance, flights climbed and walking speed (and, on iPhone, ECG), read with your permission from Apple Health on iPhone or Health Connect on Android, to power safety features and, if you consent, to share with your family. Orbit only ever reads these — it never writes anything back to Apple Health or Health Connect.
• Physical activity — your phone’s own motion classification (Apple’s Core Motion, Android’s activity recognition), used to tell walking from driving so a drive is recorded as a drive and GPS is not run when you are still.
• Medical ID — blood type, allergies and medications, if you choose to fill them in, shown to the people you pick when an emergency is declared.
• Driving — trip distance, speed, and braking, detected on your device for your driving report.
• Contacts — only the contacts you explicitly choose as emergency recipients.
• Feedback you send — if you submit feedback or a support request, anything you include with it, such as an optional screenshot or voice note.
• Device & usage — app diagnostics and crash reports (Firebase Crashlytics), in-app interaction events, and limited device information such as the push token used to deliver notifications. On Android’s free tier the Google Mobile Ads SDK also uses the device’s advertising ID; see “Advertising”.

How we use it

To provide the app’s safety features: showing your family where you are, detecting possible emergencies, sending alerts, and producing your reports. We do not use your location, health, or driving data for advertising or cross-app tracking, and we do not sell data that identifies you.

Who can see it — and our service providers

Your data is shared only with members of the Nests you join, according to the sharing toggles you control. To operate the app we use trusted service providers who process data on our behalf:

• Google Firebase — hosting, database, authentication, and push notifications. Your data is protected by security rules that restrict access to you and your circle.
• Twilio — on Platinum, sends the emergency SMS messages and places the emergency phone calls to the contacts you choose. Your name, phone number, and the emergency message are shared with Twilio only to deliver those messages.
• Apple (iPhone and Apple Watch) — Apple Weather (WeatherKit) for the weather shown with driving trips, and Apple’s App Store for subscription billing.
• Google (Android) — Google Play billing for subscriptions, Google Maps to draw the map and Google Play services for location and activity detection.
• Open-Meteo (Android) — receives an approximate position, rounded to about a kilometre, to return the weather shown on a drive. No name, account or identifier is sent, and nothing is stored with it.
• Google AdMob — serves ads on the free tier only (see “Advertising”).

Apple Health and Health Connect are not in that list, deliberately. HealthKit on iPhone and Health Connect on Android are interfaces on your own phone, not companies we send your data to. Orbit reads the metrics you permit directly from your device; neither Apple nor Google receives them from us, and they are never sold, shared for advertising, or used for anything but the features you switch on.

Advertising

Orbit’s free tier shows ads through Google AdMob. These ads are non-personalized: we do not share your personal information with advertisers to target you, and we never use your location, health, or driving data for advertising. To serve and measure ads and to limit repetition and fraud, Google may process limited device information (such as a device identifier and general region). Paid tiers (Silver, Gold, Platinum) are ad-free. See Google’s advertising policies for how Google handles ad data.

What AdMob does not receive. Orbit never passes your location to the ad SDK — no ad request we make carries a location — and it never passes health, driving, or family data. Ads are non-personalized on every platform.

Advertising identifiers differ by platform. On iPhone, Orbit requests no advertising identifier (IDFA) at all and no App Tracking Transparency prompt appears. On Android, the Google Mobile Ads SDK uses the device’s advertising ID to cap how often an ad repeats, to measure delivery and to prevent ad fraud — ads stay non-personalized, and the ID is never joined to your health, location or driving data. You can reset or delete that ID at any time in Android Settings → Privacy → Ads, or remove ads entirely by moving to a paid tier.

If you are in the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland, we ask for your consent before the first ad is requested, using Google’s certified consent tool. You may decline, and you can change your answer at any time under Menu → Privacy & Terms → Ad Privacy Options. Declining means you see Orbit’s own upgrade promotion in place of an ad; nothing else about the app changes. Accounts belonging to a minor are additionally flagged to the ad network as under the age of consent, which keeps their ads non-personalized regardless of region.

We do not sell or share your personal information

Orbit does not sell your personal information, and does not share it with third parties for their own purposes — including advertising networks, data brokers, and research partners. We do not operate any program that contributes your data, whether identifiable or de-identified, to outside researchers or partners.

The only parties who ever receive your data are the family members you choose and the service providers listed above, who process it solely to operate Orbit for you.

U.S. residents — Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. We do not sell or share your personal information as those terms are defined under U.S. state privacy laws (including the CCPA/CPRA), so there is nothing to opt out of. You may still email us at any time with a privacy request.

Note: data read from Apple Health or Health Connect is used only to power the features you enable — never for advertising, and never sold or shared. This is consistent with Apple’s HealthKit terms and with Google’s Health Connect policy, both of which forbid using this data for advertising or passing it to a data broker.

Children’s privacy

Orbit is not for children under 13. We do not permit anyone under 13 to use Orbit, with or without a parent, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If we learn that a child under 13 is using Orbit, we will delete the account and its data.

You must be at least 16 — or the age of digital consent where you live, if that is higher — to create your own Orbit account. A parent or legal guardian may add a minor aged 13 or older to their Nest; in that case the guardian sets up and consents to the minor’s participation, and additional visibility for the guardian may apply. From a managed minor we collect only what the family-safety features the guardian enables actually require.

A parent or guardian may review or delete a minor’s information, or withdraw consent, by removing them from the Nest or by emailing us.

Permissions Orbit asks for, and why

Every one of these is optional and can be refused or withdrawn later; refusing one switches off the feature that needs it and nothing else. On Android you can review them all in one place under Menu → Manage Access.

• Location, including in the background (“Allow all the time” on Android) — so your family can see you on the map, so arrive/leave place alerts can fire while your phone is in your pocket, and so an SOS carries your live position. Orbit shows its own explanation of this before Android’s prompt appears. “While using the app” still works; only background alerts stop.
• Health Connect (Android) or Apple Health (iPhone) — read-only access to the metrics listed above, for your Health tab, your own alert thresholds and any sharing you turn on.
• Physical activity / motion — to tell driving from walking.
• Notifications — to deliver alerts, check-ins and emergencies.
• Contacts — only to let you pick emergency contacts. Orbit reads your contact list on the device to show the picker; only the people you actually choose are saved.
• Camera, photos and microphone — optional, for a profile photo, an attachment in an emergency chat, or a voice note with feedback.
• Alarms & reminders (Android) — so a medication reminder arrives at the minute you set it. If you decline, reminders still arrive, just less precisely.
• Battery optimisation exemption (Android) — optional, so Android does not suspend location tracking during a drive or an emergency.
• Biometric unlock — optional, handled by your phone; Orbit never receives your fingerprint or face data.

Your choices

Two screens in the app's Menu hold all of this: Manage Device Access — what Orbit may read from this phone — and Manage Nest Access, which sets health, driving, live location and live heart rate for each person in each Nest, and is also reachable from the tile on the map. You can turn off location, health sharing, and driving at any time in the app, and withdraw the underlying permission in iOS Settings, in Android Settings, or in the Health Connect app itself. You can also do this without the app at orbithealth.app/login — log in with a one-time code to download your data, update your profile, or delete your account. You can export your data or delete your account from the Menu. Deleting your account immediately removes you from all families and deletes your location, health, and driving data; your basic identifying details (name, phone) are then kept for up to 30 days — only so we can recognize you if you contact support — and are permanently erased after that. If you don't want the 30-day window, you can ask us to erase everything immediately by emailing support.

Data retention

Location trails are kept for about 24 hours of visible history; driving trips for about 60 days. Your health and driving data are stored under your own account so they survive reinstalling the app or switching devices, and are shared with your family only while you have sharing turned on; turning sharing off stops others from seeing them. You can remove this data at any time by turning the feature off or deleting your account.

International users, and your rights in the EEA and UK

Orbit is operated using service providers located in the United States, and your information may be processed there. Where we transfer personal data out of the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, we rely on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses (and the UK Addendum where applicable) with the providers listed above.

Why we are allowed to process your data (lawful bases).

• To provide the app you asked for — account details, location sharing you switch on, alerts, driving reports and emergency messaging. Basis: performance of our contract with you.
• Health data — read from Apple Health or Health Connect only where you permit it, and shared with family only where you choose to. Basis: your explicit consent, which you can withdraw at any time by turning the feature off.
• Advertising on the free tier (EEA/UK/CH) — basis: your consent, gathered before the first ad request and withdrawable under Menu → Privacy & Terms → Ad Privacy Options.
• Keeping the service secure and working — diagnostics, crash reports, abuse prevention. Basis: our legitimate interest in a safe, functioning app.
• Meeting legal obligations — for example tax records for subscriptions. Basis: legal obligation.

Your rights. You may request access to your data, correction of anything inaccurate (rectification), deletion, a portable copy, restriction of or objection to certain processing, and withdrawal of any consent you gave — withdrawal does not affect processing already carried out. Export and deletion are built into the app under Menu; for anything else, email us and we will respond within the time the law allows. If you believe we have handled your data improperly you may lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority — in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Do Not Track

Orbit does not track you across other apps or websites, so there is nothing for a “Do Not Track” or similar automated signal to switch off. We do not respond to DNT browser signals because we do not engage in the cross-context behavioural tracking they are designed to stop.

If Orbit is sold or transferred

If Orbit is acquired, merged, or its assets are transferred — including in insolvency — your information may pass to the successor as part of that transaction. Any successor would remain bound by this policy for information collected before the change, and we would tell you, in the app or by email, before your data became subject to a materially different policy. You could delete your account at that point.

Changes

We may update this Privacy Policy as the app evolves. Material changes will be reflected by the “Last updated” date above and, where appropriate, in the app.

Contact

Questions, or to exercise a privacy right? Email supportandfeedback@orbithealth.app.

Orbit is not a medical device and does not replace professional medical care or emergency services. In an emergency, call your local emergency number (911 in the US).