What personal information to redact
Personal information, or PII, is anything that identifies a person on its own or together with other details. What to remove depends on who will read the file, but this list covers the usual suspects.
Direct identifiers
- Full names, user names and signatures.
- Home and postal addresses.
- Email addresses and phone numbers.
- Government numbers: Social Security, National Insurance, passport, driving licence, tax IDs.
- Financial details: card numbers, IBANs, account numbers and sort codes.
- Customer, patient, employee and case numbers.
- Photos of faces, and voice recordings.
Details that identify in combination
None of these name anyone, yet together they often point to one person:
- Date of birth, age or graduation year.
- Postcode or ZIP code, town and workplace.
- Job title, especially a unique one.
- Rare events, conditions or family situations.
- IP addresses, device IDs, cookies and vehicle number plates.
Special category data
Health, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, political views, trade union membership, biometrics and criminal records get extra protection under GDPR and similar laws. Remove them unless the reader has a clear reason to see them.
Often missed
- Email headers and signatures quoted at the bottom of a thread.
- File names, such as "Smith_J_payslip.pdf".
- Comments, tracked changes and speaker notes.
- Document properties and photo metadata.
- QR codes and barcodes on letters and labels.
- Partially masked numbers, where another document shows the rest.
What to keep
Over-redaction has a cost too. A redacted file should still answer the question it was shared for, so keep the dates, amounts and context the reader needs. Public contacts, such as a company switchboard or a helpline, rarely need removing. AnyRedact finds them but leaves them unticked.