PII Redaction

Problem

Sensitive user data like emails, phone numbers, credit card details, and social security numbers leak into error logs, analytics platforms, and monitoring tools. This creates privacy violations, GDPR non-compliance, and security risks when logging systems are breached or accessed by unauthorized personnel.

Solution

Automatically remove or mask personally identifiable information from logs and error reports. This protects user privacy and helps comply with regulations without sacrificing debugging capability.

Example

This example shows a simple email redaction function that replaces email addresses in text with a placeholder to protect user privacy in logs.

function redactEmail(text) {
  // Regex matches common email patterns
  return text.replace(
    /[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,}/g,
    '[EMAIL]' // Replace with placeholder
  );
}

// Before logging, redact PII from messages
console.log(redactEmail('Contact user@example.com'));
// Output: 'Contact [EMAIL]'

Benefits

• Protects user privacy by preventing PII from leaking into logs and monitoring tools.
• Helps comply with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy regulations.
• Reduces security risk if logging systems are breached or accessed improperly.
• Maintains debugging capability while protecting sensitive information.

Tradeoffs

• Requires careful configuration to catch all PII patterns without false positives.
• Can make debugging harder if important context is redacted.
• May miss new PII patterns that aren’t covered by existing rules.
• Needs ongoing maintenance as data formats and PII types evolve.