When a message is sent, Intercom scans the content against your enabled rules. Any matched text is replaced — the original data is overwritten in the database and cannot be restored.

For credit card numbers (PAN), the last 4 digits are preserved (e.g. ****9561). All other rules replace the full match with asterisks.

The following rules are available out of the box:

You can define up to 10 custom rules using regular expressions. This is useful for redacting internal identifiers, policy numbers, account codes, or any other sensitive data specific to your business.

Here's an example of adding a basic email redaction rule:

Each rule requires:

Note: Custom rules replace the full match with asterisks — partial preservation (like the last 4 digits for PAN) is not available for custom rules.

Patterns are validated before saving to ensure they won't cause performance issues. Avoid patterns with unbounded repetition on variable-length input (e.g. (a+)+), as these may be rejected. Each rule also runs with a timeout at runtime — if a pattern takes too long to evaluate against a message, that rule is skipped for that message.

When an end user enters any content which matches a rule, it will be redacted in the UI before being saved and is not saved in the Intercom database. They cannot see the text and it's not recoverable.

Teammates also see redacted text which cannot be recovered.

Navigate to Settings > Workspace > Security > Data and find the Content redaction section. From there you can:

Content redaction applies to messages received on the following channels:

No. Redaction is irreversible — the original data is never saved to the database and cannot be viewed or restored.

False positives can occur, particularly if your customers share long numeric identifiers that happen to match a redaction pattern. Redacted data cannot be recovered, so review your patterns carefully before enabling a rule. You can test a pattern against sample text using a tool like regex101.com before adding it.

The customer sees the redacted version of their message in the Messenger. The conversation in the Inbox will also display the redacted version.

Redaction happens as messages are received, before they are saved. There is no delay.

Yes. All enabled rules run together. If multiple rules match different parts of the same message, each match is redacted. If two rules match overlapping text, the longer match takes precedence.