Anonymise
🛡️ Contact Anonymisation in Acquaint
Acquaint provides a feature to anonymise Contact records, rendering personal data unidentifiable. This supports compliance with GDPR, specifically the right to erasure (also known as the “right to be forgotten”), which allows individuals to request the deletion of their personal data when there’s no compelling reason to retain it.
🔍 Before You Anonymise
All Contacts can be anonymised, but Acquaint performs checks to ensure it’s legally and operationally appropriate. A Contact cannot be anonymised if any of the following apply:
They are a Current User
They have Current Tenancies
They have outstanding charges (excluding future unpaid debits)
They own properties with status: Instructed, Available, or Under Offer
They own Sales Properties that haven’t reached the Completion Date
They’ve accepted Offers for Sales Properties not yet completed
They own Properties with Current Tenancies
They’ve had transactions within the last seven years (configurable in System Configuration)
If any of these conditions apply, anonymisation will be blocked until resolved.
📦 Bulk Anonymisation
You can also anonymise multiple Contacts at once using the Bulk Anonymise feature, subject to the same restrictions.
🧹 What Anonymisation Does
Once a Contact is anonymised, the following actions are performed:
Personal details removed: name, address, email, phone numbers
Bank details deleted
Notes and tasks deleted
External documents/letters removed from Correspondence
Sensitive IDs deleted: NI number, driving licence, passport number
Status set to expired
Marketing preferences (mailing, emailing, SMS, third-party sharing) unticked
Anonymisation note added to the record
Event log entry created
Property requirement notes deleted
Linked Contacts unlinked
🔐 Note: The user must have the “Contact → Delete” permission to perform this action.
🧭 How to Anonymise a Contact
Locate the Contact record
Click Anonymise from the Application button
Confirm the first prompt: “This process will remove all personal information such as name, address, emails, telephone numbers, etc. Are you sure you want to anonymise this Contact?”
Confirm the second prompt: “Are you sure you really want to anonymise this Contact?”
Clicking Yes will permanently anonymise the record