Principles
1. You approve everything
Nothing is sent, booked or published without the agent saying so. Every draft shows where its facts came from.
2. The least access possible
Afternoon only reaches what the signed-in agent can, and only once they connect. It cannot read anyone else's mailbox.
3. Your data stays yours
Never used to train AI models. Export it or delete it at any time.
Where your data lives
Your data is stored in the EU, on Google Cloud in Stockholm. The AI model runs at Anthropic in the United States. It reads each new incoming email to sort it, before Afternoon knows whether it is about the agent's listings. When a reply is written, it reads the question, the conversation and the relevant parts of the listing's documents, and checks the reply against the agent's calendar entries and other contacts so none of them end up in it.
AI models
- Incoming email is sorted, and drafts are written, by Claude, Anthropic's model, through Anthropic's API.
- Your data is never used to train AI models.
- Instructions inside incoming email or documents are always treated as content, never as commands.
Microsoft access
Afternoon uses delegated permissions only. It has no application permissions and cannot read shared mailboxes, other people's mailboxes or SharePoint.
| Permission | What Afternoon does with it |
|---|---|
| openid, profile, email, User.Read | Sign in with Microsoft: name, email address and organisation. |
| offline_access | Fetch new email in the background, even when the app is closed. |
| Mail.ReadWrite | Read incoming email (every folder except junk, deleted, drafts and outbox) to find buyer questions, and the agent's sent email to learn how they write. Create reply drafts in the right thread. Never deletes or moves email. |
| Mail.Send | Send only replies the agent has approved, with eight seconds to undo. |
| Calendars.ReadWrite | Read the calendar to find free times and to check nothing from it ends up in a reply. Book a meeting once a time is agreed, and invite the other person only when they ask and the agent sends the reply. |
Your IT approves Afternoon once, and can limit it to one office or group. Pause or remove it at any time in Microsoft Entra; tokens already issued expire within an hour.
How it is protected
- Encryption. TLS 1.2 or newer in transit, encrypted at rest. Microsoft access tokens are also encrypted with their own key in Google Cloud KMS.
- Isolation. Row-level security in the database itself keeps each agent's data apart, even if application code were wrong. Agents never see a colleague's email.
- Sign-in. Always through Microsoft, so your Conditional Access and MFA rules apply. No passwords are stored.
- Transparency. Agents can see in the app every time Afternoon read, sent or booked something.
What we keep, and for how long
| Data | Kept |
|---|---|
| Email unrelated to the agent's listings | The text is not stored. Only the sender, subject and a short note on why it was left alone, deleted after 90 days. |
| Email about the agent's listings, and the replies sent | 90 days, then deleted automatically. |
| Drafts, decisions, assistant conversations, examples of the agent's replies | 12 months. Decisions are then kept only as anonymous statistics. |
| The assistant's work log | 30 days. It can contain email text. Operational logs do not. |
| When the agent disconnects | Afternoon stops reading at once. Everything is deleted after 30 days unless they connect again. |
| When an account is deleted | Microsoft access is revoked and everything is deleted within 24 hours. Backups are gone within 14 days. |
Agents can export all of their data at any time.
Sub-processors
| Provider | Purpose | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud | Hosting, database, files and voice-to-text (audio is not kept) | EU (Stockholm) |
| Google Document AI | Reading text in scanned documents | EU |
| Anthropic | The AI model (Claude) that sorts incoming email and writes drafts | United States |
| Microsoft | Your email and calendar, in your own tenant | Your tenant |
| Google Firebase | Notifications to the iPhone app (a short summary only) | Global |
| Browserbase | Secure browser sessions, only for tasks the agent starts | See DPA |
The full list, with transfer safeguards, is part of our data processing agreement. See also our privacy policy.
Questions, and our DPA
We are happy to walk your IT or compliance team through any of this, and to share our data processing agreement.
Write to adam@afternoon.app.