Swarm Knowledge: what we store, what never
Swarm Knowledge is a switch in the settings of Postfluss. If a company switches it on, anonymous categories of its enquiries are counted, such as “delivery late”. These become figures for everyone who takes part themselves. Emails, names and numbers are never part of it. This page says exactly what is stored and what never is.
In short
- Only those who switch it on are counted. The default is off.
- Only values from fixed lists are counted, never texts.
- Only companies that take part themselves see the figures.
- You can opt out at any time, and everything your company contributed is deleted.
- Swarm Knowledge is never sold, never given to third parties and never used to train models.
As of today, we count and show participants comparison figures as soon as a category reaches the minimum numbers (below). The figures are meant to feed into draft suggestions later. We will build that only once enough companies take part, and measure first whether it helps. Only then will we say how well it works.
What we store
For each new customer enquiry of a participating company, one row with exactly these fields is created. The list is exhaustive.
| Field | Possible values |
|---|---|
| Topic | one of ten topics, such as shipment status, return or invoice and payment |
| Sub-topic | one fixed sub-topic, such as “delivery late” or “payment failed” |
| Mood | neutral, annoyed or friendly |
| Repeat | yes or no (second enquiry about the same matter); stays in the waiting row and does not go into the counter in stage 1 |
| Industry | one of 14 broad industries, such as “retail: fashion” or “travel and leisure” |
| Month | month of receipt, such as “2026-11” |
| Outcome | draft sent unchanged, draft sent edited, sent without a draft, or no reply |
| Follow-up | yes or no: did the sender write again within 14 days? |
The row waits in your company’s account for the outcome for 14 days at most. After that it is added to a counter per month and deleted. The counter only says how often a combination of sub-topic, industry, month, mood, outcome and follow-up occurred.
What is never stored
- Text from emails, subject lines, drafts or replies, not even excerpts
- Names, postal addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers
- Order, customer, email, case and company numbers, no identifiers at all
- None of this encrypted or hashed, because a hash of a name is just another name
- Prices, amounts and terms
- Who on your team replied
This applies to storage. So that Postfluss can classify and answer an email, it goes to the language model as described in the DPA. For Swarm Knowledge, only the row above is stored from it.
When figures become visible
A counter is just a number as long as it stands alone. So that figures never point to a single company, minimum values apply per category (sub-topic and industry):
- For internal evaluation and later suggestions: at least 5 different companies and 50 cases, no company with more than 40% of the cases.
- For comparison figures in the app: at least 10 companies and 200 cases, no company with more than 30%.
- Whole percentages are shown. Categories below the thresholds are never visible, to anyone.
Who does not take part
- Companies in health, law and tax, religion and belief, politics and trade unions, and dating and sexuality. For data protection reasons, Swarm Knowledge cannot be switched on there.
- Your company’s own emails, spam and bulk mailings are never counted.
Switch, opting out and sharing
- Only an admin can switch it on, in the settings under “Swarm Knowledge”, after choosing the industry and with confirmation. Switching it on is your express authorisation under DPA § 11 and is recorded in the activity log.
- Switching it off is possible at any time and takes effect immediately. Waiting rows and all counters of your company are deleted.
- Give and take: those who do not take part also get no swarm figures and no comparison figures.
- In the app you can see how many enquiries your company contributed, per month.
Red line
Swarm Knowledge is never sold, never licensed and never given to third parties. It is never used for market research, never to train models and never to draw conclusions about individual companies or persons. Any further use requires a new, express yes from each company.
Legal basis
We process the row in your company’s account on its behalf. For forming and using the anonymous counters, we are the controller ourselves, on the basis of our legitimate interest (Art. 6 (1)(f) GDPR). Details are in the privacy notice (section 10) and in the DPA (§ 11).
Text module for your customers and employees
If you switch on Swarm Knowledge, you should briefly inform your customers and employees, for example in your privacy notice. Where there is a works council, involve it. You can take this text and adapt it:
We use Postfluss for customer service. We have switched on “Swarm Knowledge” there. In doing so, the provider counts only anonymous categories from your enquiry, for example the topic (“delivery late”), the mood, the month and whether our reply fitted. Your text, your name, your address and all numbers are not stored for this. The counters are not sold and not given to third parties. If you do not want your enquiry to be counted, please write to us. More: postfluss.com/en/swarm-knowledge.html
For employees: Which employee replied is not recorded. The outcome of an enquiry (“draft sent unchanged”) appears in Swarm Knowledge only as an anonymous counter.
Contact
Please send questions and objections to the address in the imprint.