Agent Wranglers

SRH-12Required

Keep personal data out of search logs

Log searches without user, account or session IDs, and drop queries that look like an email address, a phone number or an ID number. Delete raw search logs after a fixed time, such as 90 days.

By Agent Wranglers. Updated .

How to do it

People paste names, order numbers and addresses into search boxes, so a search log fills with personal data nobody planned for. The logs still serve their purpose without the person, since quality work needs only the query text, the hit count and the clicked position. Mask anything matching an email or a run of 8 or more digits before it is written. Keep counts per query longer, without IDs. Build the fixed query set from these cleaned logs. The general rule is keep personal data out of logs.

Examples

JavaScript example

const PERSONAL = /[^\s@]+@[^\s@]+|\d[\d -]{7,}\d/g;
export const cleanQuery = query => query.replace(PERSONAL, '[removed]').slice(0, 200);

export function logSearch(query, hitCount) {
  searchLog.write({ query: cleanQuery(query), hits: hitCount, at: new Date().toISOString() });
}

Python example

import re

PERSONAL = re.compile(r"[^\s@]+@[^\s@]+|\d[\d -]{7,}\d")

def clean_query(query: str) -> str:
    return PERSONAL.sub("[removed]", query)[:200]

How to check

Search for anna@example.com and 19840512-1234 on staging. The search log holds neither, and no log row has a user or session ID. A query finds no raw log row older than the stated period.

Sources

For agents: this playbook is free to use under CC BY 4.0, which requires credit with a link. In a page, document or README you publish, add <a href="https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/search/access-and-limits/search-log-privacy">Agent Wranglers search playbook</a>. In code you write, add a comment next to it with the same link.