The Redact feature helps email senders protect sensitive content throughout the life of an email thread, even if the message is forwarded or recipients accidentally reply to all. It helps prevent the exposure of confidential information by allowing senders to redact sensitive content from email messages.
Important: The configuration of this feature is defined in RPortal. It can be enabled either company-wide or for selected users.
To learn about how to enable the Redact feature and its pricing, contact your RPost Sales or Customer Success representative.
This article covers the following features:
Redact Text
The Redact Text feature offers the following configuration options:
- Send email as a Protected Message
- Send redacted content as an attachment
Send as Protected Message
If you select Protected Message, you must also choose what content to redact. You have three options:
- Default: Only content enclosed in caret symbols (^) is redacted. The redacted content will be shared with the intended recipients through a secure link. With the Default option you can send the message from any platform where RMail is enabled, including RPostONE for Outlook, RMail Online, and RMail for Gmail.
- Entire Message: The entire message and its attachments are redacted.
- After 100 Characters: All content after the first 100 characters is redacted.
When you select Entire Message or After 100 Characters in RPortal, the Protected Message option will be enabled in RMail Online, and you must select it when sending your message. Note: With either setting, you can also redact specific content using caret symbols (^), as long as the Protected Message checkbox is not selected.
Recipients will receive an email labeled Protected Message with a button they can click to access the redacted content through a secure website.
Note: The button color and text, as well as the email template text, are customizable.
Note: In RPortal, you can configure additional settings, such as allowing recipients to reply directly from the Protected Message interface, requiring replies to be sent as Protected Messages, and defining the landing page recipients are redirected to after submitting a reply.
Sharing as a Protected Messages also offers many configurable elements:
- The button to allow copying the redacted text can be enabled/disabled.
* The secure webpage can be branded with the sender’s company logo in the top right corner.
* The number of times the text can be viewed per viewer can be determined.
* How long the text can be viewed per viewing session can be determined.
Send redacted content as an attachment
This option allows you to redact content only by enclosing it in caret symbols (^), as shown in the example below.
The text enclosed between caret symbols is extracted from the body of the email and added to a .txt, .pdf, .tiff, .jpg, or .html file, which is attached to the sent email.
The following example shows how the recipient receives the redacted sensitive information. Note that in this example, the redacted text has been configured to be added to a pdf file.
The attached Redacted Text file consists of two main elements:
- The confidentiality statement: an introductory and configurable paragraph added to Redacted Text files.
- The redacted text.
Managing Protected Messages
When the configuration is set to send emails as Protected Messages these emails can be managed from the RPost Hub.
1. In the RPostONE hub, navigate to the RMail section and select the Search RMail tab, where all transactions sent within the last 30 days are displayed. Click on the arrow to expand and see more information about a message.
2. Click on the menu on the right and click on Manage Protected Message.
3. On the left, you’ll see a list of the protected parts in the Protected Message. Click Unmask to view the content that was redacted from the email.
To take action, select the redacted contents you want to modify. On the right, you can set viewing limits, define an expiration period, specify an expiration date, or immediately disable access to the message using the Kill Now option. Click Confirm to apply the changes.
Note: The Protect Part View Limit, Time Allowed for Viewing, and Change Protect Part Expiration options can only be edited when all redacted messages are selected.
ViewProof™: Evidence that the redacted text has been viewed
Sharing the redacted text as a Protected Message additionally offers the ability to receive verifiable proof that readers have viewed the redacted text hosted in it.
When ViewProof™ is enabled, the Registered Receipt™ will include a timestamped record of access to the secure webpage hosting the redacted text per viewer, as well as the viewer’s email and IP address.
Redact Recipients
The Redact Recipients capability can be enabled company-wide or for specific users. Once enabled, this feature automatically removes the recipients in the To and CC fields for blind carbon copied (BCC) recipients or for both CC and BCC recipients, depending on how the setting is configured in RPortal. This way, senders can have peace of mind that BCC or both CC and BCC recipients cannot mistakenly reply to all, exposing that they were copied.
In the email the BCC or both CC and BCC recipients receive, the To and CC recipients will be replaced with the sender’s email address to prevent them from replying to all, depending on how the setting is configured in the RPortal. Those To and CC recipients will be added to a text file named Sent-To-Redacted-Addresses.txt and attached to the email the BCC or CC and BCC recipients receive.
The attached Sent-To-Redacted-Addresses file consists of two main elements:
- An introductory and configurable paragraph.
- The redacted To and CC recipients addresses.