PII Redaction

What is PII Redaction?

PII (Personally Identifiable Information) redaction automatically detects and removes sensitive information from messages stored in ClearFeed. This helps protect customer privacy and supports compliance with data protection and security requirements.

ClearFeed uses industry-standard detection (powered by Microsoft Presidio) to identify and redact sensitive information.

Once redacted, sensitive content is permanently replaced with [REDACTED] and cannot be recovered.

Default Behavior

• PII redaction is disabled by default.

• To enable it, contact support at [email protected].

• When enabled, messages are automatically redacted 7 days after they are sent.

The 7-day delay is designed to balance privacy with operational needs (such as ticket creation and auditing). You can customize this timing if needed

What Information Is Redacted?

ClearFeed detects and redacts the following types of sensitive information:

• Personal identifiers: Names, email addresses, phone numbers

• Financial information: Credit card numbers, IBANs

• Government IDs: Social Security Numbers (SSN), passport numbers, driver’s license numbers

• Location data: Physical addresses and geographic coordinates

• Professional identifiers: Medical license numbers

• Network identifiers: IP addresses, MAC addresses

For the complete list of supported entity types, see Presidio's Supported Entities.

Customization Options

Adjust Redaction Timing

You can control when redaction occurs:

• Immediate redaction: Set to 0 days to redact messages right away

• Shorter delay: Redact messages sooner (for example, after 1 day)

• Longer delay: Retain messages longer before redaction (for example, 30 or 90 days)

Recommendation: Use a delay long enough to complete any ticketing or review workflows before redaction occurs.

Define Custom Sensitive Patterns

You can add custom patterns to detect and redact organization-specific sensitive information beyond standard PII.

Examples:

• Internal employee or customer IDs (e.g., EMP-123456)

• API keys or access tokens

• Internal account numbers or reference codes

• Any proprietary or confidential identifiers

Custom patterns are defined using regular expressions (regex). Each pattern requires:

• Name: A label for the pattern (for example, EMPLOYEE_ID)

• Pattern: A regex that matches the format (for example, EMP-\d{6})

FAQs

1. What message sources does redaction apply to? Answer: PII redaction applies to all message sources stored in ClearFeed, including:

   • Slack

   • Microsoft Teams

   • Email

   • Web Chat

   • Support Portal

   • API-ingested messages

2. Are there any downsides to a short redaction interval?

   Answer: Yes. Short redaction intervals can affect workflows that rely on message content.

   • If a message is redacted before you create an external ticket or task (for example, in Jira or Zendesk), the redacted version may be used.

   • For Slack and Microsoft Teams, ClearFeed may attempt to retrieve the original message text from the platform, but this is not always guaranteed.

   • For Email and Chat, the original content is not available once redacted.

   For this reason, we recommend choosing a redaction delay that allows your team enough time to complete ticketing and operational workflows. The default of 7 days is designed to balance privacy and usability.

3. What happens if I change the redaction configuration?

   Answer: If you update the redaction timing or custom patterns:

   • The changes apply only to messages that have not yet been redacted.

   • Messages that were already redacted are not reprocessed and remain unchanged.

4. Can I recover messages after they are redacted?

   Answer: No. Once PII is redacted, the original text is permanently replaced and cannot be restored or viewed.

5. What happens if a message is edited after some time?

   Answer: If a message has already passed its redaction delay and has been redacted, editing it later will not trigger redaction again. Only the original version at the time of redaction is processed.

6. What about attachments? Answer:

   • ClearFeed does not store Slack attachments. They are fetched from Slack in real time when needed and are not affected by redaction.

   • Attachments received via Email or Web Chat are stored in ClearFeed, but they are currently not subject to PII redaction.

7. How Redaction Affects ClearFeed Workflows

   Answer:

   • Creating External Tickets

     When creating tickets in systems like Zendesk, Freshdesk, or Jira:

     • If the message has not yet been redacted, ClearFeed uses the original content.

     • If the message has already been redacted, ClearFeed may attempt to retrieve the original content from Slack or Microsoft Teams (if available).

     • If the original content is not available, the redacted version will be used.

   • Real-Time Message Sync: Because redaction happens asynchronously after a delay, real-time syncing between request channels, triage channels, and external systems is not affected.

   • All Other Use Cases For all other scenarios including viewing requests and tickets in the ClearFeed WebApp, the redacted version of messages is shown once redaction has occurred.