How to Enable Data Masking

The steps depend on whether you're using Legacy Moderation or the current Moderation experience.

If you're using Legacy Moderation

To enable Data Masking:

• In your CometChat Dashboard, navigate to Moderation from the left-hand menu.

• Select Legacy Moderation, where you'll find the Data Masking extension.
• Enable the Status toggle and click the Settings (⚙️) icon to configure the Data Masking settings.

If you toggle the Drop Message option, messages containing the selected data types will not be sent. If left untoggled, the message will be delivered, but the specified data will be masked.

You can choose from our pre-set list of data types to mask or create custom data masking rules. Custom data masking is based on Regular Expressions—simply find the appropriate Regular Expression for the data you want to mask and upload it in the New Regex Pattern field.

For example, if you wish to mask a ten-digit number you would place ^\d{10}$ in the Regex field. 

Always remember to save your settings!

If you're using the current Moderation Dashboard

In the current Dashboard, Data Masking functionality has been reorganized into three independent moderation rules: Profanity Filter, Contact Details Filter, & Email Filter.

Each rule can be enabled or disabled independently based on your moderation requirements. To enable the filters, please follow the steps below: 

• Log in to your CometChat Dashboard. 
• From the left-hand menu, navigate to Moderation → Settings. 
• Turn on the Moderation toggle. 
• Under the Rules tab, enable the filters you want to use. 

That's it! The selected filters will now be applied to incoming messages.

Profanity Filter: The Profanity Filter detects profane words in messages. You can customize the list of words that should be filtered by navigating to the Lists tab and editing the profanity list. 
Follow this guide for step-by-step instructions on configuring the Profanity Filter and managing profanity lists.

Contact Details Filter: The Contact Details Filter detects and removes phone numbers from messages.

Email Filter: The Email Filter detects and removes email addresses from messages.

Note: Make sure the Moderation toggle is enabled. If Moderation is turned off, none of the filters will be applied.