Automatically Redact Sensitive Information with Smart Blur

By
Meg Zabrowski
November 22, 2023
min read
Updated
December 10, 2024
Photo credit
Smart Blur helps you automatically redact sensitive information while capturing Scribes — ensuring no private data ever slips through the cracks.


Introduction

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What is Smart Blur?

Depending on your job, company or industry, a lot of the information you deal with could be sensitive. And sensitive details need top-notch security. 

Think employee addresses, personal emails, customer names and company financials. You must protect employee, personal and customer information — but that shouldn’t slow you down when documenting processes.

We take your security as seriously as we take your time, so we’ve made three redaction tools that you can use to quickly redact sensitive info from your screenshots:

  • Manual redaction. 
  • Smart Blur.
  • Smart Privacy Screen. 

This guide focuses on how you can use Smart Blur to automatically redact sensitive information while capturing Scribes — ensuring no private data ever slips through the cracks. 

Curious about the other two redaction tools? Check them out here.

Now, let’s get started. 

How to use Smart Blur

Smart Blur can proactively blur out sensitive information when using the Scribe browser extension. Heads up, Smart Blur is a feature for Pro and Enterprise users only. 

Just click the on-screen controls (the blinking dot in the corner of your browser window) and select “Smart Blur.”

You can choose between seven types of sensitive data to blur automatically: 

  • Email addresses.
  • Numbers.
  • Common names.
  • Long text.
  • Form fields.
  • Table rows.
  • Images.

Just click the toggle next to any data types you want to redact, and you'll see a blurred effect automatically applied to your screen. 

If you have additional elements that you want to blur out, select "Choose Elements" and select. Your finished Scribe will have those blurred-out areas in the screenshots — and nobody can see what's underneath.

Check out the step-by-step guide here.

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Tips & tricks 

#1: Breathe a sigh of relief knowing you’re compliant with Smart Blur

Do you work in a regulated industry with strict compliance needs (read: healthcare or finance)? Smart Blur is for you. Because Smart Blur applies the blur effect before Scribe takes any screenshots, the sensitive data never ends up on our servers, ensuring you stay completely compliant. 

#2: Blur anything Smart Blur may have missed 

Nothing is perfect, even though Smart Blur gets pretty dang close! 

If Smart Blur does miss a particular element you need to blur, just select “Choose Elements” to select more. This blur will persist as long as the item remains visible on the screen. 

#3: Use manual redaction after creating a Scribe

Need to blur something after you’ve made the Scribe? 

No worries, you can always manually redact sensitive information in screenshot editing. You’ll also want to use manual redaction for any Scribe created with the desktop application since Smart Blur is only available through the browser extension. 

Check out this Scribe to learn how to manually redact.

Check out Smart Blur for yourself by capturing a Scribe using the browser extension.

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