Your data, simply put.

Seam is a trading name of Futureworks Intelligence Ltd. The company is registered in England and Wales (company number 17458346). Its registered office is 71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ.

When we decide how your data is used, we are the “controller”. That is the law’s term for whoever is responsible for the data. That covers your account, your payments, the questions you ask and the people named in our sources.

When you give us your own material to work on, we handle it only on your company’s behalf and on its instructions. This includes documents you upload, meeting notes, and a calendar, mailbox or CRM you connect. For that material, your company is the controller and we are its “processor”. If your company needs a data processing agreement with us, ask at [email protected] and we will provide one.

Send questions, corrections and requests to [email protected]. We reply within one month.

We keep only what we need to run the service for you.

• Your account. Your email address, your name and organisation if you give them, what you tell us about your company, and what you ask the briefing to watch.
• Payments. Our payment provider handles payments on its own pages. We never see or store your card details. We keep your plan and whether your subscription is active.
• Work you create. Drafts, letters, consultation responses, maps, meeting briefings and documents you add. We keep them until you delete them. Colleagues on the same company account can see them.
• Questions you ask. We keep the wording of questions put to Ask, without your name or address. We use it to see where our coverage needs to improve. When you are signed in, we also keep each question and its answer in your own library, so you can find it again and so we can offer to watch a subject you ask about twice. That copy is yours, and it is deleted when you close your account.
• Searches. When you search Seam, wherever you do it, we keep the words you searched for and the first page of results you were shown, without your name or address. That includes the platform, Slack, emails you forward to us, Ask and meeting briefings. We use them to check how often results are off topic, and delete them after 90 days.
• What you open from our emails. Seam counts which items you open from its emails to improve your briefing. The links to items in our briefing and alert emails go through seamgov.com first, which notes the item and the day, then takes you straight to it. We keep nothing about your device. We use it only to show you a little more of the kind of thing you read, and nothing is ever pushed down for not being opened. Our briefing and alert emails carry no tracking pixels, and our email provider’s own open and click tracking is switched off for them. The Seam newsletter, sent through Kit, does record opens and clicks. You can turn this off in Settings, under Emails.
• When you last used Seam. We note the day each signed-in device last used the platform. If you stop using it for about a month, we may send you one email asking whether your briefing is still right. You can turn that email off in Settings, under Emails.
• Support. If you contact support, we keep the conversation so a person can follow it up.
• Technical data. Like any website, we see the address your device connects from. We use it briefly to keep the site secure and working. We do not use it to build a profile of you.

We count visits and which pages are used, through PostHog, so we know what to improve. It sets no cookie and stores nothing on your device. We do not use advertising trackers or cross-site tracking.

We count visits under the exemption for statistics in the privacy rules, and you can say no. Turn off visit counting in this browser If you do, we keep one small note in your browser so it stays off. We also honour Global Privacy Control, a setting some browsers send for you.

Some tools work from details you give us about other people, such as who you are meeting or who you have written to. We keep what you chose to give us. We do not look for more. We delete it when you delete the work it belongs to.

If you connect a calendar, we ask for read-only access. We read the meetings you ask us to look at to fill in a meeting briefing. We do not store the events themselves. We never ask for meeting locations or attachments. Our use of information received from Google APIs follows Google’s API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements.

If you connect Granola or Notion for your meeting notes, we read the summary each app writes of your meetings. Some meetings we keep: those where somebody has a government address, or where the notes name a public body. For these, we keep the meeting’s summary, title, date, who was there and a link back. We use them in your library, your meeting briefings and your follow-ups. For any other meeting, we keep only a marker that we have seen it, so we do not read it again. You can bring one in yourself. We never read or keep transcripts, or the private notes these apps let you keep. Only you can see your meeting notes, not colleagues on your account. But a briefing you share may quote them. You can remove any note, and if you disconnect you can remove them all. We store any Granola key you give us encrypted.

If you upload a document to your library, we keep the file and the words we read out of it. We use the words to learn how you write and to start your drafts from. Only you can see it unless you share it with your team. When you delete it, we delete the file and stop using its words straight away. When you close your account, your uploads go with it.

If you connect Google Drive or OneDrive to keep copies of your library, we make one folder, “Seam Library”, and save copies of your new documents there. On Google Drive we ask only to create and change our own files, so we cannot open anything else. Microsoft does offer a permission limited to an app’s own folder, but our OneDrive connection does not use it yet, so on OneDrive we ask to read and write your files. We only ever write to our own folder. We never read your other files. We store the permission encrypted. If you disconnect, we delete it, and the copies already made stay in your Drive.

If you connect a mailbox to send letters, we use it only to send the letters you approve. If you switch it on, we also use it to spot replies to them, and to spot when you have sent a Freedom of Information request you wrote with Seam and when the answer comes. For that we see only the sender, date and subject of messages, never their text. We do not read or store the rest of your mail.

If you use Gmail and forward replies to us, you create a rule in Gmail that sends matching messages to a private Seam address. Gmail forwards whole messages, so their text does pass through our systems. But we keep only the date, the sender’s address and which of your letters it answers. We delete anything that answers none of your letters or Freedom of Information requests.

If you forward the answer to a Freedom of Information request to us, we read it once to match it to your request, mark the request answered and keep the date and the body’s address. We do not keep the email itself.

If you forward an email to your pipeline address, we keep its subject, the first web link in it and its first few lines, with email addresses and phone numbers taken out, so you can see what it was and file it on your pipeline. We do not keep the rest of the email. Your colleagues on the account can see it on the pipeline. You can remove it there, and it is deleted when you close your account.

If you use the Add to Seam extension for Chrome, it reads the page you are on only when you open it there, and sends us only what you choose to add: the page’s title and link, any words you highlighted, any note you write, and for a person their name, role and organisation. We keep these on your company’s pipeline, and a person also goes on a Who Matters map of yours, or into your Attio or HubSpot, when you choose that. The extension holds a key that can add things to your pipeline and nothing else; we keep only a fingerprint of it, and Disconnect deletes it.

If you send us meeting notes, by email or from a note-taking service such as Zapier, Otter or Fireflies, we use them to draft what you asked for. We read the notes themselves once and do not keep them. We keep what we made from them until you delete it or close your account.

If you add your LinkedIn connections for warm introductions, your file is read on your own computer and we keep each connection’s name, company, job title and the date you connected. We do not keep their email addresses or profile links. These are your own connections, used only to show you who you know on your Who Matters maps. They are never shown to anyone else, and Seam never contacts them. Uploading a new file replaces the old one. You can delete them in Settings at any time, and they are deleted when you close your account.

If a company asks you to share your connections with it (as its investor, adviser or colleague), nothing is shared until you sign in and agree. The company then sees only that you know someone at a public body on its maps, and how many, or that you know a named official, MP, peer or minister on them. It never sees your list or anyone’s details from it. You can withdraw at any time, which deletes your connections straight away.

If you connect Seam to an AI assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT, the assistant can search Seam on your behalf. We pass what it finds to the assistant under your own account with that assistant.

• To provide the service you signed up for (performing our contract with you): your account, your briefing and the work you create.
• Our legitimate interests: keeping the site secure, preventing misuse, improving our coverage, improving your briefing from the items you open in our emails, and the public records described below. You can stop us using what you open with one switch in Settings, under Emails.
• Legal obligations: keeping billing records for tax purposes.
• Your consent: The Seam newsletter, which you ask for when you sign up. You can withdraw it with the unsubscribe link in any issue.

We do not need consent for cookies, so there is no cookie banner. Some features need your say-so, such as connecting a calendar. Switching the feature on gives your say-so, and switching it off withdraws it.

We use a small number of providers to run the service. Each works only on our instructions and may not use your data for its own purposes. We never send your account email address to AI model providers; if your own documents or notes contain it, it goes with them. Nothing you give us is used to train their models.

Services you choose to connect. These are optional. If you connect one, data passes between Seam and your own account with that service. That service’s own terms and privacy notice apply to it.

When you approve a letter or response, we send it from your own email account, in your name, to the people you chose.

We never sell your data. We will disclose information only where the law requires it. If the business were ever sold, your data would go with it. We would tell you first.

Several of our providers are in the United States, so some of your data is handled outside the UK. UK law only allows that with a safeguard in place. We use one of two:

• The UK–US data bridge. Where a US provider has signed up to the UK extension of the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, the UK government treats it as protecting data to UK standards.
• Approved contract terms. Otherwise, the provider’s data processing terms include the International Data Transfer Addendum approved by the Information Commissioner, which binds it to protect your data as UK law would.

Transfers to the European Union need no extra safeguard, because UK law already treats the EU as protecting data properly. Ask us if you would like details for a particular provider.

• Your account details: while you have an account, and deleted within 30 days of closing it.
• Billing records: six years, because HMRC requires companies to keep their accounting records that long.
• Work you create: until you delete it or close your account.
• Support conversations: two years.
• Searches, kept without your name: 90 days.
• Which items you opened from our emails: 12 months.
• Records in our contacts dataset: five years from the date of the document they came from.

If you close your account, we delete everything we hold about you within 30 days, except billing records. We keep those for six years. The short wait means we can restore an account closed by mistake. Work you shared with your team stays with the team.

We set a cookie only when you sign in, to keep you signed in. We set a second, short-lived one while you sign in with Google or Microsoft. Both are strictly necessary, so the law does not require us to ask first. We set no other cookies and do not track you across other websites.

Your browser also keeps a few things on your own device, such as recent searches and unsaved work. We cannot see them, and clearing your browser’s site data removes them.

• We never sell your data or share it for anyone else’s marketing.
• We never use what you give us to train AI models.
• We never decide anything about you by machine alone. Anything the platform drafts or suggests waits for you to accept it.
• Seam is a service for organisations and is not meant for anyone under 18.

Data travels over encrypted connections. Only the people who run the service can access it. If a breach ever put you at risk, we would tell the Information Commissioner within 72 hours. We would tell you without delay.

We build our datasets from what government and Parliament publish. Those publications name people doing their jobs: ministers, officials and elected members. This section is our notice to them.

Where it comes from. Only official publications. Every record shows the document it came from and its date. We do not buy contact data or add to it from other sources.

Why we are allowed to. Our legitimate interest in helping people find and contact the part of government responsible for a published document. Elected members publish their contact details so that people can write to them.

What we leave out. We do not publish pay bands, the names of private individuals in the registers of interests, or contact details for defence, security, policing, prisons or child protection bodies. Our contacts dataset is not indexed by search engines.

Likely work addresses. For subscribers planning who to approach, the platform can show a likely work email address for a named official. We work it out from the email format their organisation uses, for example firstname.lastname@. We take that format from addresses the organisation has itself published, and we review it body by body. We do not store these addresses. We work each one out when a subscriber views the person, label it as unconfirmed, and show it beside the organisation’s published inbox. We never do this for the bodies listed above, for anyone whose post is unnamed, or for anyone who has asked us to leave them out.

Changes over time. For subscribers following who works where, the platform keeps a dated record of officials starting, moving and leaving posts. It records these moves as the following sources report them: GOV.UK’s people pages, departmental staff charts (organograms), business appointment returns, parliamentary committee hearings, honours lists, GOV.UK blogs and government appointment announcements. Each entry links to the publication it came from. We never fill in a name a department has withheld. At the bodies listed above, we show only people GOV.UK itself profiles. We include committee witnesses, honours recipients and blog authors only when the publication names them in a government job. We never keep where honours recipients live.

If you are named and would rather not be, email [email protected] and we will remove you. You do not need to give a reason. We keep a note of the request so that your details are not collected again.

Writing to every person named in these publications would be a disproportionate effort, so the law allows us to give this notice publicly instead.

You can ask for a copy of the data we hold about you. You can also ask us to correct it, delete it, restrict how we use it, or give it to you in a portable form. Where we rely on legitimate interests, you can object. We will then stop unless we have a stronger reason to continue. Email [email protected]. There is no charge.

You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We would appreciate the chance to put things right first.

If we change how we use data we already hold, we will email subscribers before the change takes effect. Smaller wording changes update the date at the top.