Skip to content

[Feat]: Export data with column anonymization #483

Description

@pokertour

Prerequisites

  • I have written a descriptive issue title
  • I have searched existing issues to ensure the feature has not already been requested

🚀 Feature Proposal

Add an optional anonymization step to the file export: in the export dialog, let the user assign a per-column rule before writing the file. Proposed rules for a v1:

  • Null / fixed value — replace with NULL or ***
  • Partial masking — e.g. j***@***.com, keep first/last chars
  • Deterministic hash (pseudonymization) — HMAC with a per-export key: the same input always produces the same output, so joins on anonymized keys (e.g. user_id) still work across exported tables

Possible follow-ups: synthetic data (seeded faker for names/emails/addresses), generalization (birth date → year, zip → region), name-based heuristics to pre-suggest rules for columns like email, phone, name, ip.

Technically this fits nicely in the existing streaming export pipeline: a transform layer between the row stream and the CSV/JSON sinks, so it would work for all drivers (including plugins) with no driver changes. The database dump could adopt it later as a second step.

Motivation

Very common need: sharing production data with staging environments, external developers, support tickets or analytics without leaking personal data (GDPR / privacy). Today users have to post-process exports manually.

Note on wording: this should be presented as column anonymization / pseudonymization, not "GDPR compliance" — true anonymization under GDPR is a legal assessment (quasi-identifiers etc.) that no tool can guarantee by itself.

Example

Export dialog → "Anonymize columns" (optional) → per-column rule selector → file is written with transformed values, e.g. emaila3f9…@masked, name***, user_id → HMAC hash (stable across tables).


Happy to work on a PR if there's interest — opening this first to discuss scope and UX.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions