# Token scanning to filter private data

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/token-scanning-to-filter-private-data/112359>\
**Category:** Feature\
**Created:** [March 22, 2019, 7:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/token-scanning-to-filter-private-data/112359 "2019-03-22T19:21:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![cori](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/cori/32/124112_2.png) [@cori](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cori)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2019, 7:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/token-scanning-to-filter-private-data/112359/1 "2019-03-22T19:21:00Z")

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I’ve been poking around looking for something akin to GitHub’s [token scanning](https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-token-scanning), but for Discourse, without any luck.

I don’t believe there’s anything in the core functionality or any of the Discourse-supported plugins at any tier that provides this feature and I haven’t found anything external. Did I miss something?

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**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)\
**Post date:** [March 23, 2019, 3:50am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/token-scanning-to-filter-private-data/112359/2 "2019-03-23T03:50:34Z")

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I know @mpalmer has discussed this in the past.

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**Author:** ![sam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/sam/32/102149_2.png) [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)\
**Post date:** [March 24, 2019, 11:52pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/token-scanning-to-filter-private-data/112359/3 "2019-03-24T23:52:13Z")

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You can do something with watched words here. Just automatically flag posts that have a particular regex that matches canary tokens you have or some interesting password regex.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![cori](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/cori/32/124112_2.png) [@cori](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cori)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2019, 3:03am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/token-scanning-to-filter-private-data/112359/4 "2019-04-10T03:03:10Z")

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Thanks for the suggestion; it took me a while to figure out where this setting is (Admin → Logs → Watched Words for anyone else who’s confused).

I also set up Censoring instead of Requiring Approval (or Flagging), and was really confused about some of the censored posts.

Now that I’ve got my head on straight I think this will work fine! Thanks again!