GA4 New Data Redaction Tool
Google recently implemented a new feature within GA4, Redact data. How does this work, and how does it help protect user privacy?
Redact Data is designed to help prevent the inadvertent capture of Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
This setting can be found under:
Admin > Data Collection & Modification > Data Streams > Your Data Stream>Events>Redact Data
There are two features available within this setting Email & URL Query Parameters.
This uses text patterns to identify likely email addresses across all event parameters. When a potential email address is identified it is redacted, and the rest of your data collection then continues as normal.
Keep in mind that if you are capturing clicks to email for example info@yourcompany.com, this feature will redact the email address. You could use a JavaScript variable here to put the email address in a different format.
URL Query Parameters
Allows you to redact specific information from URL parameters, such as customer names (example below). This feature covers the following parameters: page_location, page_referrer, page_path, link_url, video_url, and form_destination.
To create a URL query parameter, you can enter the data types you want to filter out as keywords (click the opt in button and you will be presented with the box below).
In this example we are using ‘firstname’ as our keyword, we will then test this using the tool at the bottom of the menu.
Conclusion
It is worth noting that newly created properties will have this feature enabled by default, for existing properties this needs to be enabled manually.
Currently this tool is only available for use on web data streams and won’t prevent the collection of PII via Measurement Protocol or Data Import.
If you have a question or need a Google Analytics agency to help with a configuration or project, reach out to us via info@andersanalytics.com.
