Can document scanning software mask or redact sensitive fields (e.g., national ID number)?

Yes, field masking or redaction is a commonly available feature in document scanning software, and it addresses a genuine practical need: some businesses need to confirm a document is valid and extract certain fields without needing, storing, or displaying every single piece of data a document contains, particularly highly sensitive fields like a full national ID or social security number that carry meaningful privacy risk if stored or displayed unnecessarily.

Field masking typically works at the configuration level, letting a business specify which extracted fields should be fully captured and stored versus which should be partially redacted (showing, say, only the last four digits of a national ID number) or fully excluded from both the stored record and any displayed results. This gives businesses a practical way to align their data collection with the principle of data minimization, a core concept in privacy regulations like GDPR, which generally requires collecting only the data genuinely necessary for a specific purpose rather than gathering everything available simply because it's technically possible.

This capability matters particularly for age-verification use cases, where a business genuinely only needs to confirm someone is over a certain age threshold rather than needing to know or store their exact date of birth, document number, or other unrelated personal details. Field masking lets a business configure a scanning flow that confirms the age check passes without retaining or displaying the full underlying data that made that determination.

It's also relevant for businesses subject to varying data-handling requirements across different use cases within the same organization. A compliance team handling full KYC checks might need complete field extraction, while a front-desk check-in process might only need name and expiry date, with everything else masked or excluded entirely from that particular workflow's stored output.

ScanDoc supports configurable field masking, letting businesses define which extracted fields are fully captured versus partially redacted or excluded, both in stored records and in cropped document images, aligning data collection with each specific use case's actual requirements rather than defaulting to capturing everything available.