Personal data masking helps prevent unnecessary data from being sent to Contentsquare by masking personal data when it could be collected by Session Replay. This includes replacing masked text with an asterisk (*) and images with a blur effect.
By default, the Contentsquare SDK masks all content displayed on your user interface (UI). However, there are masking mechanisms available that allow you to be more specific about what is/isn’t masked.
Masking/Unmasking mechanisms
Text and image masking
Quickly and easily customize data masking for non-sensitive text and image content, directly from the Contentsquare Console. With predefined rules ready for you to choose from, you can simply overlay additional masking to work alongside any pre-existing API masking rules and/or full masking.
Learn how to customize your text and image masking here.
API masking rules
Having all UI content masked by default can make it difficult to analyze your app’s interface in a replay. Therefore, you are able to control which part of the user interface is collected via our masking and un-masking APIs, allowing you to only mask what’s necessary.
This typically happens during your Contentsquare implementation, with the support of your technical team (as it’s done directly in your app’s code). You can mask or unmask specific components in two ways:
- by ‘type’ (e.g. the model of the component): all instances of this model will be affected by the same masking/unmasking rule, or,
- by ‘instance’: only a specific instance of a component will be affected by the rule
You can find our technical documentation on this below:
- Personal data masking for iOS - Technical documentation
- Personal data masking for Android - Technical documentation
Caution: Avoiding unnecessary personal data collection
When using unmasking mechanisms, you must ensure that you have masked all personal data on your app to avoid unnecessary data collection.
Full masking
Full masking allows you to mask multiple, or all, app and/or SDK versions directly from the Contentsquare Console. This is primarily used if you know, or have concerns, that unnecessary personal data has been exposed, as it allows you to act quickly by applying full masking to specific app versions (and overriding your existing masking configurations).
Learn how to use full data masking here.
How masking displays in Session Replay
- Masked text is replaced by an asterisk (*)
- Images are blurred