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What’s This?

PII redaction detects sensitive values in customer messages as they arrive — before the message is saved and before the AI sees it — and replaces each value with a token such as [CREDIT_CARD_2832]. It covers chat, email, and live voice transcripts, and images customers send are checked too.
PII redaction is off by default and you turn it on per organization. It only affects messages that arrive after you enable it. It is not a retention setting: OpenCX never redacts or deletes stored sessions because they reached a certain age. To remove data that is already stored, see Data retention.

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What Gets Protected

Each category has its own switch in the dashboard, so you can redact card numbers but keep email addresses, for example.

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Government ID numbers by country

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How redacted values look

Each value is replaced with a token that keeps a small hint — the last four characters of a number, or the start of an email address — so your team and the AI can refer to “the card ending 2832” without seeing the value. The same value gets the same token throughout a session.

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Images

When redaction is on, images customers send are checked for the categories you enabled. An image that contains one of them, or that looks like a photo of an identity document, is removed, and the AI tells the customer in its next reply and asks them to describe the image in text instead. If an image cannot be checked, it is removed when storage is set to Save messages redacted, and kept when it is set to Save the original messages.

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Configuration

1

Open the PII Redaction settings

In the dashboard, go to Settings → Security and find PII Redaction. Viewing the section needs the Redaction read permission; changing it needs Redaction write.
2

Turn on the categories to redact

Categories are grouped into Financial, Personal Identifiers, and Technical. Use a group’s switch to turn all of its categories on or off, or expand the group to switch individual categories. Redaction is active as soon as at least one category is on.
3

Set a default phone region (optional)

Under Phone Numbers, pick the country used to recognize local numbers written without a country code, such as 06 12345678. International numbers are always recognized, so you can leave this on No region.
4

Choose how messages are stored

Open Storage and pick one:
  • Save messages redacted (default) — only the redacted version is saved. The original text is never stored and cannot be recovered.
  • Save the original messages — the original text is kept alongside the redacted version. The AI still only sees redacted text. Teammates with the Redaction write permission can reveal the original of a message, and every reveal is recorded in the audit log.

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Important Notes

Redaction runs when a message arrives. Messages stored before you turned it on, and history imported from another help desk, are left as they are. To strip content that is already stored, use the Redaction API or a workflow — see trigger-based removal.
Redaction applies to what customers send. Replies written by your team and by the AI are not scanned.
With Save messages redacted, the original value is never written to storage, so it cannot be restored later — not by your team and not by OpenCX. Switching storage mode or categories only affects messages that arrive afterwards.

Need Help?

Contact our security team at security@open.cx for additional redaction patterns or compliance questions.