Harassment complaint redaction is the removal of personal data from an intake form raised under the Equality Act 2010. Section 26 defines harassment as unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic that violates dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. anonym.plus marks names, contacts, and dates on your own machine, so the account stays testable while the people are shielded.
When this applies
An intake form names the person who came forward, the alleged perpetrator, and others present. You hide those identifiers before HR or counsel circulates it.
How anonym.plus handles it
- Open the form in anonym.plus on your workstation.
- Built-in OCR reads any scanned intake pages.
- The app marks names, emails, and telephone numbers.
- Confirm each marking and clear any false positive.
- Swap or black out the confirmed identifiers.
- Save the clean copy locally, with no network call.
What you need to provide
- The intake form (PDF, DOCX, or TXT).
- An operator: Replace, Redact, or Mask.
- Optional alias map to hold one label per person.
PII entity types detected
| Category | anonym.plus entity type | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Names | PERSON | Imogen Hartley → [COMPLAINANT] |
| Names | PERSON | the accused → [RESPONDENT] |
| Contact | EMAIL_ADDRESS | imogen@example.co.uk → [EMAIL] |
| Contact | PHONE_NUMBER | +44 20 7946 0148 → [PHONE] |
| Dates | DATE_TIME | incident on 4 March → [DATE] |
| Location | LOCATION | third-floor office → [LOCATION] |
Compliance achieved
- Keeps the conduct testable against Equality Act 2010 s.26(1) (unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic) and the sexual-conduct limb in s.26(2).
- Preserves the perception, the circumstances and the reasonableness factors a tribunal weighs under Equality Act 2010 s.26(4).
- Supports the preventative duty at Equality Act 2010 s.40A, added by the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 and in force since 26 October 2024.
- Feeds the all-reasonable-steps defence in Equality Act 2010 s.109(4), which an employer can only run on a documented response.
- Treats an account that reveals health, belief or sexual orientation as special category data under UK GDPR Art. 9(1).
- Runs offline with AES-256-GCM on working copies — 340+ PII types across 48 languages.
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Limitations & cautions
Shielding the person who came forward is hard. A single unique event can point back to them even after each name is gone, and the tool cannot judge that. Confidentiality here supports your duty against victimisation under Equality Act 2010 s.27, so read the narrative for indirect clues. Redaction does not discharge the s.40A preventative duty, which asks for reasonable steps before an incident, not only after one.
Frequently asked questions
Can the tool hide who raised the complaint?
It removes names and contacts. Yet a unique detail can still identify the person, so review the free text. Keeping their identity quiet supports the anti-victimisation protection in Equality Act 2010 s.27.
Does redacting the file satisfy the s.40A duty?
No. Section 40A asks an employer to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment. Redaction protects the people in the record; it is evidence of a careful process, not the whole duty.
Is the intake form uploaded anywhere?
No. The desktop app runs on your device with no cloud step. Nothing leaves your machine, so the account stays private.