SHA-256 hashing

In order to preserve the privacy of customers and to avoid Personally Identifiable Information (PII) being sent into 3rd party platforms (such as Google Analytics), Delacon can create a one way SHA-256 hash of information such as the callers phone number which can be used for matching purposes instead of the customers personal details.

What is hashing?

Hashing is the process of taking a set of characters (text, numbers or special characters) and generating a new value that cannot be used to determine the original value on its own. For example:

Original value: Delacon

Hashed value: 84a10fe1ec784c97eda1d19e28fe7b8eef664f4375ee4f19c6c1ddb126045e9d

There is no visible correlation between the original and hashed values, and no practical method to reverse the hash into the original. However, as the hash for the original value will always be the same it can be used to compare the same hashed data in two places as long as the original value is known.

How do I generate a SHA-256 hash?

If you have available development resources for your business hashes can be generated programmatically, for example using MessageDigest in Java. Alternatively, SHA-256 calculators can be found online if you need to create a single value for comparison. As the output of SHA-256 is standardised, the hashed value will be the same across various tools.

Delacon use cases

Caller number hashing - Primarily used for CRM upload and Google Analytics integrations. Please note that the caller number needs to be in the E.164 international format (country code + area code + number) excluding the + sign before it is hashed (eg 61412345678).

Notes:

-Even minor changes in the original value, such as changing a letter from lower to upper case, will result in a completely different hashed value.