Definition
Session replay privacy masking applies rules that replace, hide, blur, or otherwise suppress sensitive text, images, fields, screens, or attributes in a session recording. Depending on the implementation, masking can be configured broadly for a website or app, narrowly for selected elements, or in code through SDK or tracking controls. Contentsquare documents automatic protection for certain personal data as well as configurable masking controls for web and mobile experiences.
The goal is not to remove the entire replay. A well-designed setup keeps the behavioral evidence needed to understand friction—such as a failed form submission or a confusing checkout step—while reducing unnecessary exposure of names, email addresses, account details, payment information, or other sensitive content. Masking is also not a substitute for an organization’s privacy governance, consent decisions, retention policies, or regular data checks.
What does that mean
Think of a replay as a screen recording with sensitive parts covered before others see it. Teams can still understand what happened, but private details are replaced or hidden.
Why this matters
Privacy masking helps organizations investigate digital experiences with less risk of exposing personal information. IT and data teams can set safer collection rules, while product and UX teams retain enough context to diagnose friction and improve journeys.
Use cases
Protect sensitive information in high-risk journeys
Checkout, account, healthcare, financial, and support flows may contain information that a business should not make visible in a replay. Teams can apply masking to sensitive fields, images, attributes, screens, or URLs while preserving the surrounding journey and interaction data. The expected benefit is safer analysis of important flows with less unnecessary personal-data exposure.
Keep replays useful without revealing everything
Full-page or full-screen masking can make a replay difficult to interpret when teams need to see non-sensitive page structure or content. More targeted rules can mask selected elements and attributes, while allowing approved non-sensitive content to remain visible. This balance helps product and UX teams connect behavior to page context without opening up all captured content.
Investigate bugs while limiting access to personal data
A technical issue may occur alongside customer-entered information, making a raw replay unsuitable for broad sharing. Masked session replays can show the sequence leading to an error, the affected interface state, and the user’s next action while sensitive content remains hidden. This gives IT and product teams a safer starting point for triage, reproduction, and prioritization.
How Contentsquare helps
Session Replay lets teams replay user journeys and inspect clicks, scrolls, taps, swipes, and errors while Contentsquare automatically masks personal information such as card and bank details.
Smart Capture collects interactions automatically across web and mobile, supporting complete behavioral analysis without requiring teams to predict every question in advance.
Data masking settings provide project-level controls for choosing masking levels and creating page exceptions; these settings should be reviewed with the organization’s privacy and implementation teams.
Element masking rules let teams target specific page elements, attributes, or selectors so the replay remains informative without exposing the selected content.
Error Analysis connects errors to related session replays so teams can understand how technical issues affect real journeys while respecting the masking configuration.
FAQs on session replay privacy masking
It is a privacy control that hides or transforms sensitive information in a recorded website or app session. The replay can still show behavior and context—such as navigation, clicks, scrolling, and errors—without displaying the protected content.