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Local image privacy masking — detect and redact sensitive info (IDs, phones, keys, etc.) before images leave your machine.

Project description

privacy-mask

Detect and redact sensitive information in images — 100% local, 100% offline.

CI PyPI version Python 3.10+ License: MIT

Your images never leave your machine. privacy-mask intercepts screenshots before they are sent to AI services, automatically detecting and masking phone numbers, ID cards, API keys, and 40+ other sensitive patterns.

🇨🇳 中文文档 / Chinese Documentation


Demo

privacy-mask demo


Before / After

Original Masked
before after
before after
before after

Why?

When you share screenshots with AI assistants, you might accidentally expose:

  • Personal IDs — national ID numbers, passports, social security numbers
  • Phone numbers & emails — yours or your users'
  • API keys & tokens — AWS, GitHub, Stripe, database credentials
  • Financial data — bank card numbers, IBAN codes

Cloud-based redaction services require uploading your images — defeating the purpose. privacy-mask processes everything locally before any data leaves your machine, making it the only approach that truly protects your privacy.

This matters for compliance too: GDPR, HIPAA, and other regulations require that sensitive data be protected at the point of origin.


Quick Start

# Install
pip install privacy-mask

# Mask a screenshot
privacy-mask mask screenshot.png

# One-time setup: auto-mask all images before AI upload
privacy-mask install

That's it. After privacy-mask install, every image you share with your AI coding assistant is automatically masked before upload.

# Toggle masking on/off
privacy-mask off       # Temporarily disable
privacy-mask on        # Re-enable
privacy-mask status    # Check current state

Agent Integration

privacy-mask follows the agentskills.io SKILL.md standard and works with 20+ AI coding tools that run locally:

Platform How it works
Claude Code pip install privacy-mask && privacy-mask install or /plugin marketplace add fullstackcrew-alpha/privacy-mask then /plugin install privacy-mask@privacy-mask
Cursor SKILL.md auto-detected in project
VS Code Copilot SKILL.md auto-detected in project
Gemini CLI SKILL.md auto-detected in project
OpenHands CLI available via shell
Goose SKILL.md auto-detected
Roo Code SKILL.md auto-detected
aider CLI available via shell
Cline SKILL.md auto-detected
Windsurf SKILL.md auto-detected
OpenClaw SKILL.md auto-detected

Note: privacy-mask only works with local agents. Web-based AI (ChatGPT Web, Gemini Web) uploads images to cloud servers before processing — local masking cannot help there. This tool is designed for agents that run on your machine.


What It Detects

47 regex rules covering 15+ countries:

Category Rules
IDs Chinese ID card & passport, HK/TW ID, US SSN, UK NINO, Canadian SIN, Indian Aadhaar & PAN, Korean RRN, Singapore NRIC, Malaysian IC
Phone Chinese mobile & landline, US phone, international (+prefix)
Financial Bank card (UnionPay/Visa/MC), Amex, IBAN, SWIFT/BIC
Developer Keys AWS access key, GitHub token, Slack token, Google API key, Stripe key, JWT, database connection strings, generic API keys, SSH/PEM private keys
Crypto Bitcoin address (legacy + bech32), Ethereum address
Other Email, birthday, IPv4/IPv6, MAC address, UUID, Chinese license plate, passport MRZ, URL auth tokens, WeChat/QQ IDs

How It Works

Architecture

  1. OCR — Dual-engine: Tesseract + RapidOCR extract text with bounding boxes. Multi-strategy preprocessing (grayscale, binarization, contrast enhancement) with confidence-based merge for maximum accuracy.

  2. Detect — 47 compiled regex rules scan OCR results. Overlapping detections on nearby bounding boxes are merged automatically.

  3. Mask — Matched regions are blurred (default) or filled with solid color. Output is saved as a new file or overwrites the original.


CLI Usage

# Basic: mask → screenshot_masked.png
privacy-mask mask screenshot.png

# Overwrite original
privacy-mask mask screenshot.png --in-place

# Detection only, no masking
privacy-mask mask screenshot.png --dry-run

# Black fill instead of blur
privacy-mask mask screenshot.png --method fill

# Custom config
privacy-mask mask screenshot.png --config my_rules.json

# Output path
privacy-mask mask screenshot.png -o /tmp/safe.png

Output is JSON:

{
  "status": "success",
  "input": "screenshot.png",
  "output": "screenshot_masked.png",
  "detections": [
    {"label": "PHONE_CN", "text": "***", "bbox": [10, 20, 100, 30]},
    {"label": "EMAIL", "text": "***", "bbox": [10, 50, 200, 30]}
  ],
  "summary": "Masked 2 regions: 1 PHONE_CN, 1 EMAIL"
}

Configuration

Rules are defined in config.json. You can pass a custom config:

privacy-mask mask image.png --config my_config.json

Each rule has a name, pattern (regex), and optional flags. Example:

{
  "rules": [
    {
      "name": "MY_CUSTOM_ID",
      "pattern": "CUSTOM-\\d{8}",
      "flags": ["IGNORECASE"]
    }
  ]
}

See the bundled config.json for all 47 rules.


Requirements

  • Python 3.10+
  • Tesseract OCR
    • macOS: brew install tesseract
    • Ubuntu: sudo apt install tesseract-ocr
    • Windows: Download installer

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for details.


License

MIT

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