Message Redaction

Vonage's Auto-redact feature enables customers to protect their SMS privacy by replacing personal data in Vonage logs with the string "REDACTED". Auto-redact is automated and is suitable if you would like personal data, like SMS message content, to be deleted from Vonage logs.

How Does Auto-Redact Work?

Redaction is the editing of a document or a record to delete or mask personal data such as your telephone number, bank details, or address.

When you send SMS messages using the Vonage SMS API, three pieces of personal data get recorded: the SMS message body content, the sender’s phone number, and the receiver's phone number. When you use Vonage SMS API to receive SMS, we record the SMS message body content, your number, and the sender's phone number.

This personal data ends up in two places: server logs and transactional records of the activity. Server logs are retained for no more than one month. Transactional records of the activity, however, are stored for 13 months. Transactional records of the activity are known as Call Detail Records (CDRs). Both server logs and CDRs can be viewed by Vonage support staff, for testing, debugging, diagnosing user issues and reconciling CDRs against customers' transaction records.

Advanced Auto-redact is exclusively available for messages sent via the Vonage SMS API. For inbound messages received through the Vonage SMS API, customers can use the Standard Auto-redact feature, unless a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) under HIPAA is in place. For more information on the Standard Auto-redact please refer to the documentation.

Advanced Auto-redact feature ensures that the message content (SMS text) is redacted before it is written to the server logs and CDRs. The phone number cannot be immediately redacted in the server logs due to data retention regulations, thus we provide an option to encrypt it.

The redaction scopes are:

  1. Message content redaction.
  2. Phone number redaction (implies encryption of phone numbers in the server logs and redaction in the long-term storage).

A key point of Vonage's immediate Advanced Auto-redact is that the message body is not stored in any of the logs or the CDRs. Phone numbers are also immediately encrypted, with an encryption key that is stored in the Secret Manager. Only a limited number of authorized Vonage engineers have access to it. Those encrypted numbers get then redacted in the CDRs, which are stored for 13 months, but not in the server logs. Server logs get automatically deleted after the end of their retention period, which is 10 days. Please refer to Vonage Redact Services for more information.

How to Set Up Auto-Redact for Your Vonage Account

Please find relevant pricing for the Auto-redact service here: Vonage Prices. To enable the Auto-redact service on your account, you have two options:

  1. Contact your account manager directly.
  2. Submit a request through our Support portal by visiting this page and completing the required form.

Submitting the form will create a ticket with our Support team, who will then coordinate with the necessary internal teams to activate the service for your account. Please note that we may reach out to you if we require additional information.