Alcmeon integrates an automatic anonymization mechanism for personal data to help brands comply with their data retention obligations under the GDPR.

Data affected by anonymization

Messages

Messages received in Alcmeon are anonymized after the retention period configured for your environment. This period is calculated from the date the message was created in Alcmeon, not from its publication date on the social network.

This means that an old message can be added to Alcmeon later (for example, if a user comments on an old post) and will only be anonymized once a certain amount of time has passed since its import into Alcmeon. If a user has both older and newer messages than the configured limit, only the older messages will be anonymized.

Users

A user profile is anonymized when no new message from that user has been created in Alcmeon for a period exceeding the configured time limit.

Message retrieval rules

• Private messages: when a new incoming message triggers a retrieval of previous messages in the conversation, messages older than the configured anonymization delay are not retrieved.
• Public messages: when a user comments on or mentions a public post or comment, it is retrieved even if it is older than the configured time limit, in order to have the necessary context for processing.

Anonymization method

Important: Alcmeon's anonymization only applies to data stored on the Alcmeon platform. Data in your CRM (Salesforce, Zendesk, or any other external tool) is not anonymized by Alcmeon. You are responsible for anonymizing data in your third-party systems.

Anonymized message data

• The message content is replaced with an empty message.
• The URL of the message on the social network is replaced with an empty URL.
• The message identifier on the social network is replaced by a unique random identifier.
• The files and images attached to the message are deleted from the file server.

Anonymized user data

• The user's first name, last name and pseudonyms are replaced with empty values.
• The user's profile URL on the social network is replaced with an empty URL.
• The user's social network identifier is replaced by a unique random identifier.
• The profile picture is replaced with a generic photo.

Good to know: statistics are never affected by anonymization. Messages and users continue to exist in Alcmeon; they simply no longer contain personally identifiable data.

Anonymization delay

The anonymization period is configured per client environment. The default value is 24 months .

It is not possible to define different deadlines depending on the accounts, teams or channels within the same environment.

Anonymization is performed automatically every day , around 2:00 AM (Paris time). Each day, Alcmeon anonymizes all messages and user profiles that are older than the time limit configured for your environment.

Impact on Analytics

Some Analytics pages can no longer display results for anonymized messages or users. For example, pages using unique user identifiers (such as chatbot conversation statistics or custom events) no longer collect data beyond the configured retention period.

This data cannot be retrieved once anonymized.