I've made a react component that hides sensitive information in your app.

Publish Date: Apr 24 '22

154 39

Did you ever want to showcase a site you have worked on or a new feature you just published in a production system but were unable to do so because of the fear of exposing sensitive information?

SafeView is a component that allows you to hide sensitive information in your app visually, for presentation purposes, and more.

In order to hide an element all you need to do is to target it using the data-safe attribute.

const MyComponent = () => {
    return (
        <div>
            <span data-safe>
                // Sensitive info
            <span>
        </div>
    )
}

And then when you want to hide press Shift + S.

There is basically no setup involved other than wrapping your app with the <SafeView> component.

The library is super simple and light-weight and is available at NPM.

"SafeView" on NPM

"SafeView" on Github

if you have any question and/or suggestion I would love to answer in the comments. :)

Comments 39 total

Liad AltifApr 24, 2022
been here since day one 🥳
shalevb108Apr 24, 2022
Very useful and convenient to work just a pleasure!
alxizrApr 24, 2022
Super cool, very useful and unbelievably easy 👌 😀 👍
LiorVainerApr 24, 2022
Used in a personal project of mine and helped me very much with presentation of the project
Christian KozallaApr 24, 2022
Is this similar to using feature flags?
- LarsonApr 24, 2022
  No. Feature flags are normally used to ignore specific parts of your code in the deployment so they wont get shipped.
  
  SafeView "hides" existing components.
  
  SafeView is a component that allows you to hide sensitive information in your app visually, for presentation purposes, and more.
  
  visually
  
  they still exist when you look in your developer tools.
  - hidden_dudeApr 24, 2022
    Hmm then it's not really secure or "safe".
    It's just activating and deactivating.
    - RobbieGMApr 24, 2022
      What did you think the point of it was?
      - hidden_dudeApr 25, 2022
        I don't know.. but "safe" doesn't seem like the right word to use here.
        
        Christian KozallaApr 25, 2022
        When I read the title of the post, "sensitive information" makes me think of API secrets..
        
        If I want to hide something visually, I can provide a global CSS ID for the same purpose myself...
        
        Grant RiordanApr 25, 2022
        My thought exactly , I'd rather have a component which perhaps encrypts the data or redacts it on toggle or component render.
        
        hidden_dudeApr 25, 2022
        yeah.. i was thinking something similar.
        
        ItayLisaeyApr 25, 2022
        Sorry about that, didn't mean to mislead anyone.
        I think I clearly state in the library that it is only for visual purposes it is NOT secure in anyway by design.
        
        hidden_dudeApr 25, 2022
        Of course not. I just suggest you change the name to "activate" or "hide" rather than "safe". Because "safe" gives the impression of being a security feature.
        
        But good work and kudos for your efforts.
  - ItayLisaeyApr 25, 2022
    Thanks Lars, SafeView purpose is not to secure your sensitive information.
    
    You can look at it more like a showcase/presentaion helper.
  - Darkø TasevskiApr 27, 2022
    
    Feature flags are normally used to ignore specific parts of your code in the deployment so they wont get shipped.
    
    You sure about that @larsonnn ?
    
    From my experience so far, the code behind the feature flags is shipped, but is not available to the user in the production. Talking from the the frontend perspective though, not sure if in native development we can remove code behind the disabled feature flags in compile step.
    - Christian KozallaApr 28, 2022
      We're using feature flags like in a simple if else statement. So the code is shipped and we can switch the flag on and off at runtime.
      
      I'm sure a compile step could remove the code behind the flag, but then you couldn't toggle the flags at runtime
      
      Thanks for sharing your experience :)
SauhardoSenguptaApr 24, 2022
Amazing, this will be really usefull
LarsonApr 24, 2022
It's simple, that's the best of it.
Nitzan HenApr 24, 2022
Cool idea! Seems simple to use and useful. Bookmarked for a time of need 📌
Ali ZaidiApr 24, 2022
Wow this is pretty cool !! Will try using it in my projects
Stephanie HandsteinerApr 25, 2022
It's not a good idea to obfuscate sensitive information with CSS, aside from the obvious point that the data is still there and one only has to deactivate CSS in order to deactivate the blur filter, this kind of blur is not actually safe to hide information, just look at the preview image in your article's header.
- ItayLisaeyApr 25, 2022
  Your'e right about that one, the library isn't focused around security at all.
  
  The idea is to enable a quick safe preview for customers/client at a presention or a meeting without revealing sensitive information.
Grant RiordanApr 25, 2022
As other have said the functionality would be better to redact / encrypt the sensitive data.

Other suggestion could be to rename the component as then it could be used across React and React Native. (react native already has a SafeView component.
- ItayLisaeyApr 25, 2022
  Interesting, didn't knew about that..
  I think you can import the component by a different name.
  
  import SafeView as MyComponent from "safeview"
  - Grant RiordanApr 25, 2022
    Apologies ReactNative is called SafeAreaView but point still stands
ItayLisaeyApr 25, 2022
How do you suppose to implement that? What will the hook provide?

I thought about that earlier but eventually decided to go with the attribute approach because it looks cleaner.
ItayLisaeyApr 25, 2022
You're definitely right about that one,
but from my experience the stage/dev isn't always accessible to people outside the dev/product team
AbrahamApr 25, 2022
Lol...I opened the article cause I wanted to know the new tech that helps me hide sensitive data with client side javascript. 😏
ItayLisaeyApr 25, 2022
thanks! looks great.
mind you the key combination and different filters are already available and can be customized using the component (more on that in the library readme).
Maria CampbellApr 27, 2022
And this sensitive info actually does not appear in the HTML? Where does it end up?
- ItayLisaeyApr 28, 2022
  The sensitive information is still available in the DOM.
  
  As I've mentioned before the library's serves only to hide the sensitive information visibly, for presentation purposes.
  - Maria CampbellApr 28, 2022
    Understood. So then basically not helpful regarding sensitive info as I thought. Just wanted confirmation. Thanks!
EECOLORApr 28, 2022
Hello,

Am I correct in thinking that simply adding the following CSS would have the exact same effect?
*[data-safe] { filter: blur(.3rem) !important; }
If that is the case I think it would be better to not use an external library with its associated security and maintenance cost.
- ItayLisaeyApr 28, 2022
  You are definitely correct.
  I actually said exactly that on some of the posts I wrote.
  The reason I made it into a library is for my personal comfort and it fits my use cases.
  
  You are more than welcome to use any of the code in library without using it through npm.

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ItayLisaey @itaylisaey

I've made a react component that hides sensitive information in your app.

Comments 39 total