This site already does this to itself. Every error report is masked before it is stored — a salary of 45,000 is recorded as ##,### — and the privacy policy explains it in exactly those terms. This is the same machinery pointed outward.
It reports what it found, and that is half the tool. A redactor that silently returns clean-looking text gives you no way to check it worked — and the failure you care about, something missed, is invisible.
Masks preserve shape, never content: 45000 becomes ##### rather than [REDACTED], because the length is usually the point. The exception is a card number, where the length itself identifies the issuer.
And the limit, stated plainly: this is not de-identification. Names, addresses and job titles are not detected and cannot be.
No. The redaction happens in your browser, in this site’s own calculation engine. Nothing is transmitted, logged or stored — which matters here more than on most pages, because the text you paste is by definition the text you did not want to share.
Because a redactor that silently returns clean-looking text gives you no way to check it worked, and the failure you care about — something missed — is invisible. The list shows what was found and on which line, so the output can be audited. It never shows the original value: printing what was redacted would undo the redaction on the same screen.
Because the shape is usually the point. Replacing 45,000 with ##,### tells a reader a five-figure amount was there, which is often what makes the redacted document still make sense. The exception is a card number, where the length identifies the issuer — fifteen digits means Amex — so that one is masked to a fixed width instead.
Because it failed the Luhn check, the arithmetic every real card number satisfies. A sixteen-digit order reference is far more common than a card number in most documents, and masking every long digit run as a card would be wrong more often than right. If you want it masked anyway, switch on the number rule.
No, and this is the important limit. It finds patterns — email addresses, numbers, card and phone formats. It cannot find names, addresses, job titles or the fact that there is only one person in your company with that role. A document redacted here may still identify somebody by everything left in it. Read the output before you send it.
Not here — this works on text you paste. Redacting a PDF properly means removing the content, not drawing a black box over it, because the text underneath survives a copy-paste. That is a genuinely different tool and it is not this one.
The first rule wins, and every match is applied in one pass. Replacing rule by rule would let the number rule re-read the # output of an earlier one and count it twice.
A sixteen-digit order reference is far more common than a card number in most documents. So before a long digit run is treated as a card it must pass the Luhn check — the arithmetic every real card satisfies. It is not proof, but it removes the commonest false match.
Nothing you paste is transmitted or stored. This masks patterns, not identities — names, addresses and free-text identifiers are not detected and cannot be. A document redacted here may still identify someone by what was left in, so read the output before sending it. Nothing you type here is sent to our servers — the calculation runs entirely in your browser.
